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SIPA Faculty
Robert Alexander Mundell
International Affairs Building, Room 1031
Professor of Economics
Phone: 212-854-3669
ram15@columbia.edu
Biography:
For the past 25, Robert Mundell has been a professor of economics at Columbia University in New York. The author of numerous works and articles on economic theory of international economics, he is known as the father of the theory of optimum currency areas. Mundell formulated what became a standard international macroeconomics model, and he was a pioneer of the theory of the monetary and fiscal policy mix. He also reformulated the theory of inflation and interest, was a codeveloper of the monetary approach to the balance of payments, and was an originator of supply-side economics. He has written extensively on the history of the international monetary system and played a significant role in the founding of the Euro.
His books include The International Monetary System: Conflict and Reform; (Private Planning Association of Canada 1965); Man and Economics (McGraw-Hill 1968); International Economics (Macmillan 1968); Monetary Theory: Interest, Inflation and Growth in the World Economy (Goodyear 1971); The New International Monetary System edited with J. J. Polak (1977); Monetary Agenda for the World Economy edited with Jack Kemp (1983); and coedited the following books: Global Disequilibrium (1990); Debts, Deficits and Economic Performance (1991); Building the New Europe, edited with M. Baldassarri (1992); Inflation and Growth in China, edited with M. Guitian (1996); and The Euro as a Stabilizer in the International Monetary System, edited with A. Clesse (2000).
Professor Mundell holds a BA from the University of British Columbia, an MA from the University of Washington, and a PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He has lectured widely in North and South America, Europe, Africa, Australia and Asia. He has been an adviser to a number of international agencies and organizations including the United Nations, the IMF, the World Bank, the Government of Canada, several governments in Latin America and Europe, the Federal Reserve Board and the U.S. Treasury. In 1970, he was a consultant to the Monetary Committee of the European Economic Commission, and from 1972 to 1973 a member of the nine consultants to the commission that prepared a report in Brussels on European monetary integration. He was a member of the Bellagio-Princeton study group on International Monetary Reform from 1964 to 1978 and chairman of the Santa Colomba Conferences on International Monetary Reform between 1971 and 1987. He has also written extensively on the "transition" economies and in 1997 cofounded the Zagreb Journal of Economics.
In 1999, Mundell was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science. He has also received the Jacques Rueff Medal and Prize in the French Senate. In 1997, he became a distinguished fellow of the American Economic Association, and in 1998, he was made a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Science. Mundell has received honorary degrees and professorships in several universities in North America, Europe, and Asia.