Benjamin J. Cohen

Benjamin J. Cohen is a Canadian-American scholar of international political economy and monetary relations. He retired from the University of California, Santa Barbara in 2021 and is listed as Distinguished Professor Emeritus as at 30 July 2026. He is a theorist, not an operator of currency coercion.

Monetary hierarchy

Cohen's work explains why currencies perform different international roles and why those roles are unevenly distributed. Reserve holding, trade invoicing, private investment, payments and foreign-exchange trading are separate functions. A currency can be important in one function without holding the same position in all of them.

His analysis of currency power distinguishes the benefits of international use from the capacity to influence others. That framework helps explain Dollar hegemony and exorbitant privilege, but the contested term hegemony should not be treated as Cohen's description of every monetary relationship.

Statecraft and rivalry

Cohen's later work on currency statecraft examines how governments may promote, defend or constrain international currency use. It provides a vocabulary for analysing Currency warfare and possible De-dollarisation as backlash dynamic responses. Those are analytical categories. They do not imply that Cohen advocated a particular coercive act or that every reserve shift results from sanctions.

Comparisons with Barry Eichengreen should preserve differences in question, method and evidence. Cohen focuses on monetary geography, hierarchy and state strategy; other scholars may emphasise historical transition, market depth or institutional credibility.

Analytical use

An application should identify the monetary relationship, the actor capable of changing it and the political outcome at issue. Reserve holdings, invoicing, payments, debt and exchange-rate policy are related but not interchangeable. Cohen's categories organise those questions; they do not predetermine whether leverage exists or succeeds in a specific case.

See also

Dollar hegemony and exorbitant privilege · Currency warfare · De-dollarisation as backlash dynamic · Barry Eichengreen

Sources

• University of California, Santa Barbara, "Benjamin J. Cohen", current institutional profile (accessed 30 July 2026).
• Benjamin J. Cohen, The Geography of Money (Cornell University Press, 1998).
• Benjamin J. Cohen, Currency Power: Understanding Monetary Rivalry (Princeton University Press, 2015).
• Benjamin J. Cohen, Currency Statecraft: Monetary Rivalry and Geopolitical Ambition (University of Chicago Press, 2019).