John P. Young; Authority on World Monetary System

John Parke Young, an authority on the international monetary system and longtime advocate of a single world currency, is dead at the age of 93.

The former chief of the Division of International Finance in the State Department, member of the U.S. committee that drafted the original charters of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, and author of books still in use by the IMF, died in Pasadena Tuesday.

Born in Los Angeles, the respected economist was the last surviving son of William Stewart Young, a prominent Presbyterian minister and the primary force behind the establishment of Occidental College in 1886.

The son earned an undergraduate degree from Occidental, where he later was to teach and head the economics department, a master’s degree from Columbia and a doctorate from Princeton. He traveled throughout Central America while studying for the doctorate. A resultant book on currency and financial conditions in that area was the first of many research papers, texts and other publications he was to write over the years.

From 1923 to 1925, he conducted a survey for the U.S. Senate Commission on Gold and Silver on post-World War I inflation and currency and exchange problems in Europe, meeting with many world leaders and economists of the day.

He spent much of the 1930s in China advising Chiang Kai-shek’s government on establishing a currency and banking system that would unite all the provinces.

During World War II, Young was with the State Department involved in planning a postwar economy, and in 1945 was a member of the U.S. delegation to the San Francisco conference that drafted the Charter of the United Nations. He also participated in the Bretton Woods Conference, at which the International Monetary Fund and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development were organized and the Dumbarton Oaks Conference, which originated the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade.

He retired after serving as a government adviser in Central America and moved to Pasadena, where he spent the last 20 years writing and teaching.

Survivors include his wife, Marie, two sons, a daughter, eight grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.