This book has been in the making for well over a decade, with each one of us interspersing monetary history with other subjects. An Italian version was published in 1991 by Mondadori. The English version is considerably shorter but has a longer horizon in that it covers the eighties up to the September 1992 currency crisis.

We owe our gratitude to many people who have read parts of our work throughout the years. The ones we cannot fail to mention are: Beniamino Andreatta, Michael Bordo, Karl Brunner, Filippo Cesarano, Paul de Grauwe, Renato de Mattia, Enzo Grilli, Gualberto Gualerni, David Laidler, Thomas Mayer, Allan Meltzer, Stefano Micossi, Manfred J.M. Neumann, Fabrizio Onida, Luigi Pasinetti, Mario Sarcinelli, Paolo Savona, Anna Schwartz, Luigi Spaventa, Richard Sylla, Paolo Sylos Labini, Vito Tanzi, Jürgen von Hagen, and Elmus Wicker. We thank Ralph Vonghia for competent translation.

Parts of the book were presented at Indiana University, University of Brescia, Catholic University of Louvain, the London School of Economics, University of Western Ontario, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, Banca d'ltalia, International Monetary Fund, Konstanz Seminar on Monetary Theory and Policy, University of Cagliari, University of Venice, Bocconi University, University of Rome- Tor Vergata, the NBER Money Workshop, University of Trento, and ISPE.

We are grateful for financial support received from the Banca Credito Agrario Bresciano; and the juries of the Scanno Prize (1991) and the St. Vincent Prize (1992) for having deemed us worthy of their first prizes for the Italian volume.