In practice, the system was implemented by the commitment of the United States to maintain a fixed relation between its currency and gold and other countries’ agreement to fix their exchange rates relative to the dollar, at rates agreed to at the conference. Fixed exchange rate systems provide a degree of constraint on domestic monetary policies.
Under such a system, imbalances in payments were settled by flows of acceptable assets, typically gold or dollars. Most countries, given limits on their international reserves, had to follow policies consistent with supporting their fixed exchange rates--though, as noted above, they had the option of changing the exchange rate.