The Bretton Woods Agreement was a historical agreement signed at a summit in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, in 1944. This agreement established the International Monetary Fund and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). The Agreement created a system of fixed exchange rates among currencies, by encouraging countries to maintain their currency at a rate to the US dollar they were deemed to be valuable at, while the IMF was designed to help country's balance payments when necessary. More broadly, Bretton Woods was an important milestone in the development of the international monetary and trading system, giving countries access to a mechanism to help facilitate global economic cooperation.

See also: global governance, collective action, hypernormal stimuli