« Research Methods for International Quantification Activity: the League’s Financial Statistics, Actors and Practices »

The technical program on financial statistics developed by the League of Nations played a role in the national and local production of knowledge in this field and, consequently, in the resulting national and local policies. This paper focusses on the statistical cooperation process and its actors, as well as on data produced by the League. The goal of such cooperation was to make the available bank information, and the data on financial and monetary issues, internationally comparable. Nonetheless, the program had other, if less noticed, effects through actor participation and discussion: shared statistical methods could entail, in the long run, the implementation of similar policies or, at least, the adoption of a similar perception of matters. The cooperation process influenced participants’ learning of a common economic language as manifested in international data. Yet, the contexts and practices of their banks differed, and actors reacted accordingly taking on different roles in the new monetary “order” coming into being, based, in principle, on financial and monetary “stabilization”.