Some Reflections on Yugoslavia, Currency Reforms, and the Future of the Global Financial System
Author: Steve H. Hanke
Outlet: Johns Hopkins Institute for Applied Economics (Studies in Applied Economics, No. 353)
Date: February 2026
Drawing on remarks delivered at an AAB College roundtable in Pristina, Kosovo, Hanke recounts his decades as a monetary adviser in the Balkans. He describes serving as personal economic adviser to Yugoslav Deputy Prime Minister Živko Pregl (1990–91) and proposing a currency board that, had it been adopted, would have averted Yugoslavia's 1992–94 hyperinflation (which peaked near 313,000,000% per month). He explains how that same currency board proposal was later written into Article VII of the 1995 Dayton Agreement establishing Bosnia-Herzegovina's convertible mark, and how he subsequently advised Montenegro's President Milo Đukanović on the 1999 replacement of the Yugoslav dinar with the German mark. Hanke closes by arguing that, despite widespread predictions of de-dollarization, the U.S. dollar's dominance as the world's reigning international currency remains secure, with the euro as the leading regional currency and China's renminbi a rising but capital-control-constrained power.
Full Citation:
"Some Reflections on Yugoslavia, Currency Reforms, and the Future of the Global Financial System," Studies in Applied Economics, No. 353, The Johns Hopkins Institute for Applied Economics, February 2026.