Robert A. Mundell

Professor of Economics, Columbia University 1999 Nobel Laureate in Economics

Robert Mundell has the title of University Professor at Columbia University in New York, where he has been a professor of economics since 1974. He was born in Canada, graduated from the University of British Columbia and did post-graduate work at the University of Washington and the London School of Economics before receiving his Ph.D. in Industrial Economics from M.I.T. He taught at several universities and was a member of the staff of the International Monetary Fund coming to Columbia University.
 
He has been an adviser to a number of international agencies and organizations including several governments, the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the European Commission, the Federal Reserve Board, the US Treasury, the Inter-American Development Bank, and companies and institutions throughout the world.
 
Mundell is known as the father of the theory of optimum currency areas that laid the groundwork for the creation of the euro and prepared the first plan for a European currency in 1969. He pioneered the standard international (Mundell-Fleming) macroeconomic model, the theory of growth and inflation, the Mundell-Tobin effect and Supply-Side Economics and has worked extensively in Africa and the transition economies. His writings include several books on economics and over 100 articles in the scientific journals. He has written extensively on economic theory, international economics, transition economies and the history of the international monetary system. Six volumes of his Collected Works were published in Chinese in 2004.
 
Mundell is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Science, a Distinguished Fellow of the American Economic Association and past presidents of both the North American Economic and Financial Association and the International Atlantic Association. He is the Honorary Co-President of the Mundell International University of Entrepreneurship in Beijing, China, an Honorary Professor at more than fifty universities in China and numerous honorary degrees from around the world. He is the Chairman of the Santa Colomba Group on International Monetary Reform in Siena, Italy, the Co-Chairman of the International Financial Forum in Beijing, the Permanent Advisor to the Beijing Nobel Forum and was Honorary Chairman of the Pearl Springs Grand Slam International Chess Tournaments in Nanjing, China. He is a Companion of the Order of Canada.

Mundell was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics in 1999 “for his analysis of monetary and fiscal policy under different exchange rate regimes and his analysis of optimum currency areas.”