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Robert A. Mundell, Professor of Economics at Columbia University in the City of New York, has been awarded the 1999 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences "for his analysis of monetary and fiscal policy under different exchange rate regimes and his analysis of optimum currency areas," The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced today (October 13, 1999).
Mundell, 66, holds the C. Lowell Harriss Professorship of Economics at Columbia University, and has taught at Columbia since 1974. He became the 60th person who taught or studied at Columbia to have won the Nobel Prize. He is the second Columbia economist to win a Nobel, following the late William S. Vickrey, who was awarded the prize in 1996.
Columbia has a distinguished tradition in economics. Past faculty members have included the eminent economists Edwin R.A. Seligman, Robert M. Haig, Carl S. Shoup, and today, Jagdish Bhagwati, Edmund S. Phelps and Ronald Findlay. The Economics Department this fall added 10 new members to its ranks, including senior professors recruited from Harvard and Princeton.
Robert Mundell has established the foundation for the theory which dominates practical policy considerations of monetary and fiscal policy in open economies. Dating back several decades, Mundell's contributions remain outstanding and constitute the core of teaching in international macroeconomics.
Richard Clarida, chair of Columbia's Department of Economics said, "Robert Mundell is one of the giants of twentieth-century economics. His pioneering work on international capital flows, exchange rate determination, and optimum currency areas has not only profoundly influenced three generations of scholars, but has also directly shaped the range and scope of political and economic relations among the world's major countries. To this day -- nearly 40 years after some of the original papers were published -- Mundell's body of work continues to define the field of international finance. He and his students have trained many of the leading researchers who are now at the forefront of the field of international finance."
The Royal Swedish Academy stated, "Mundell's research has had such a far-reaching and lasting impact because it combines formal -- but still accessible -- analysis, intuitive interpretation and results with immediate policy applications. Above all, Mundell chose his problems with uncommon -- almost prophetic -- accuracy in terms of predicting the future development of international monetary arrangements and capital markets. Mundell's contributions serve as a superb reminder of the significance of basic research. At a given point in time academic achievements might appear rather esoteric; not long afterwards, however, they may take on great practical importance."
Professor Mundell is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and has been an adviser to a number of international agencies and organizations including the United Nations, the IMF, the World Bank, the European Commission, and several governments in Latin America and Europe, the Federal Reserve Board, the US Treasury and the Government of Canada. In 1970, he was a consultant to the Monetary Committee of the European Economic Commission, and in 1972-3 a member of its Study Group on Economic and Monetary Union in Europe. 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.
The author of numerous works and articles on economic theory of international economies, Mundell prepared one of the first plans for a common currency in Europe and is known as the father of the theory of optimum currency areas. He was a pioneer in the development of the theory of the monetary and fiscal policy mix, the theory of inflation and interest and growth, and the monetary approach to the balance of payments, and is the co-founder of supply-side economics. He has also written extensively on the history of the international monetary system, and is the author of more than a hundred articles in scientific journals and books, including The International Monetary System: Conflict and Reform; Man and Economics and International Economics.
Robert Mundell was born in Kingston, Ontario, Canada in 1932. He received his B.A. from the University of British Columbia in 1953. He studied at the London School of Economics and received his Ph.D. from M.I.T. in 1956. Mundell was the Post-Doctoral Fellow in Political Economy at the University of Chicago in 1956-57. He taught at Stanford University and the Johns Hopkins Bologna Center of Advanced International Studies before joining the staff of the International Monetary Fund in 1961. From 1966 to 1971 he was a Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago and Editor of the Journal of Political Economy; and from 1965 to 1975, he was (summer) Professor of International Economics at the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva, Switzerland. Mundell is a Distinguished Fellow of the American Economic Association and among his numerous awards is The Jacques Reuff Prize given by the French Senate.
Mundell is the first C. Lowell Harriss Professor of Economics at Columbia University. The endowed chair was established earlier this year by Mark Kingdon '71C, founder and president of Kingdon Capital Management Corporation, in honor of the distinguished professor emeritus who served as Kingdon's teacher and mentor during his undergraduate years at Columbia.
Members of the press needing further information should contact Columbia's Office of Public Affairs at (212) 854-5573.