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Copenhagen
Joined May 2014
This post about Perry Mehrling's comment on Bernanke receiving the Nobel led me to discover the very sad news of Perry's recent and untimely passing. He taught students of monetary economics so much and so well. He will be sorely missed. RIP
Parts of Woodford's _Interest and Prices_ puzzled me, so I wrote him asking questions, very politely. Didn't hear back, so I sent the letter again. Crickets. Other well-known economists had always answered my questions. So I thought it prudent to stick with Wicksell.
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Lovely tribute to Perry Mehrling from @adam_tooze adamtooze.substack.com/p/cha… (worth reading it, particularly the ending, while considering that Michael Woodford just won the Nobel for a model of the economy that explicitly has no money in it at all)
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Thank you, Florin, for sharing this beautiful paper. What I will remember most about Perry, though, is that he eventually took a different road and the courage it took to do so. He had a Harvard PhD and a JPE paper. Everything was there for a conventional career in macroeconomics. Instead, he turned away from mathematical economics and read Bagehot, Hawtrey, Allyn Young, Hicks and Minsky, forgotten traditions of monetary thought that he brought back to life as what he called the money view. He later said he almost did not survive it. Most of his papers were rejected, and Barnard told him his record was not strong enough for tenure. He eventually got it for a book, The Money Interest and the Public Interest, in which he went looking for what he called his intellectual ancestors. Perry sometimes called himself, too modestly, a historian of economic thought. As Florin says, he remained to me an elegant and deep theorist even when not using mathematics, while now working in a direction orthogonal to most of the profession. I genuinely believe he had far more impact this way, and did more for our understanding of money, than he ever could have on the conventional path. He also made a choice that would be unusual today, spending much of his time building his synthesis in his money and banking course at Barnard, with his students. The course became a MOOC with close to 200,000 enrollments, and an eye-opener for many. I was one of them. I signed up while interning at the ECB as a PhD student, without expecting much. I was amazed by how much I learned. It was different from everything I had been taught, and complementary to it. I remember trying to follow the balance sheets of the shadow banking system he drew on the pixelated board, and the eureka moments when he had us look past the institutional details to the same economics of banking and central banking across countries and centuries. I remember him deciphering the euro crisis live. That course, and the reading that followed, shaped the monetary economist I became. Writing on repo, FX swaps and stablecoins, I have tried to understand shadow banking the way he taught us, as an ecosystem of interlocking balance sheets where heterogeneous institutions together transform liquidity exactly as a bank would. Almost every paper I have written starts with the balance sheets of the model. As always happens when someone you have learned so much from passes, I wish I had interacted with him more, and had been more explicit about what my work owes him. Perry found his intellectual ancestors in forgotten books. He is now one of mine, and I will do my best to carry the money view forward.
RIP Perry Mehrling. An incredibly elegant and deep theorist, especially for all things "money". This 1993 note is a gem (on the suboptimality of the Friendman rule in Bewley models due to redistributive effects). (HT @a_auclert who first pointed me to this paper 10+ years ago!)
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Win Monroe retweeted
What a loss. Woke up this morning thinking this can't be true. RIP Perry.
There is international econ - based on "island" view of world econ & then there is analysis of global financial network centered on $ - what @PMehrling in his lovely new book on Kindleberger calls a cosmopolitan view. See Chartbook #160 h/t @HyunSongShin adamtooze.substack.com/p/cha…
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I’m in the wonderful Odd Lots newsletter on why I’m less worried about European bonds or the US than I am about competition with China and the prospect of an escalation on trade. Subscribe and read here: bloomberg.com/news/newslette…
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What a loss indeed. Perry Mehrling's now legendary INET course was also one of the first truly global online courses in economics and reflected deeply the spirit of the global financial crisis years...
I’m told Perry Mehrling has passed away. His money and banking course at Barnard was hugely formative for me and many others. This is an awful year for social thought. And I’m afraid we’re not producing many people of that caliber who can fill the ranks.
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Win Monroe retweeted
During the financial crisis, at the Treasury Department, Perry Mehrling, Gary Gorton, and Paul Tucker were the three thinkers whose work was most useful in helping us reach a deeper understanding of the situation. Later, Perry was
Terrible news. I loved getting to talk to Perry over the years. Someone with incredible range, depth and clarity. A major influence on my own thought, for sure. RIP.
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Win Monroe retweeted
I'll add his reach also tells just how sui generis he was. References to him or his ideas were in both mainstream economics papers or heterodox ones, in theoretical academic work or technical central banking papers or market strategists. His ideas (& charm) were infectuous to all
I spent much of what little free time I had during my PhD in the YSI reading group Perry sponsored. Like everything he did, it was deeply intellectual and inspiring. It tells you everything about him that people from all over the world sought out his class & he provided it free.
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Win Monroe retweeted
I spent much of what little free time I had during my PhD in the YSI reading group Perry sponsored. Like everything he did, it was deeply intellectual and inspiring. It tells you everything about him that people from all over the world sought out his class & he provided it free.
We are deeply saddened to share the news that Perry Mehrling passed away this morning at the age of 67. Perry was the father of the Young Scholars Initiative. He believed profoundly in young scholars, in their ideas, and in the importance of creating a community in which they could learn from one another and find their own voices. Perry, you leave an enormous hole in our midst. Our hearts are aching, and we will miss you dearly. The YSI community will carry your legacy forward. Your ideas, your generosity, and your commitment to generations of young scholars will remain with us. Thank you for everything, Perry.
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Win Monroe retweeted
Perry was an incredibly inspirational professor and hugely formative in my early years of economics. What a loss. Perry Mehrling passes away and Lou Crandall retires. End of an era for money markets.
I’m told Perry Mehrling has passed away. His money and banking course at Barnard was hugely formative for me and many others. This is an awful year for social thought. And I’m afraid we’re not producing many people of that caliber who can fill the ranks.
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Absolutely awful news about an outstanding monetary economist.
Perry Mehrling, RIP. According to the History of Economics Society, Perry Mehrling died "Monday night from injury sustained in a fall several days earlier." He was Professor of International Political Economy at Boston University and, previously, longtime Professor of Economics at Barnard College. He was a highly esteemed historian of economics. Here is his homepage: sites.bu.edu/perry/ His last book: "Money and Empire: Charles P. Kindleberger and the Dollar System" amzn.to/47RVhJ2 "Charles Kindleberger ranks as one of the twentieth century's best known and most influential international economists. This book traces the evolution of his thinking in the context of a 'key-currency' approach to the rise of the dollar system, here revealed as the indispensable framework for global economic development since World War II. Unlike most of his colleagues, Kindleberger was deeply interested in history, and his economics brimmed with real people and institutional details. His research at the New York Fed and BIS during the Great Depression, his wartime intelligence work, and his role in administering the Marshall Plan gave him deep insight into how the international financial system really operated. A biography of both the dollar and a man, this book is also the story of the development of ideas about how money works. It throws revealing light on the underlying economic forces and political obstacles shaping our globalized world." Charles Goodhart: "The discipline of economics is balanced, somewhat unsteadily, between two legs, with the skill of the historian on one side and of the mathematical modeler on the other. In the second half of the 20th century, the tide flowed strongly to elevate the second leg and to diminish the first. In this delightful biography of Charlie Kindleberger, a charming and loveable man, Perry Mehrling shows how Charlie, in his chosen role, as an international monetary economist, fought against that tide, often unsuccessfully. Perry writes so beautifully that one would only need a smattering of economics to enjoy the tale; while if one is interested in the history of economic thought in international monetary economics, then this book is, of course, a must read.' amzn.to/47RVhJ2
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I'll add his reach also tells just how sui generis he was. References to him or his ideas were in both mainstream economics papers or heterodox ones, in theoretical academic work or technical central banking papers or market strategists. His ideas (& charm) were infectuous to all
I spent much of what little free time I had during my PhD in the YSI reading group Perry sponsored. Like everything he did, it was deeply intellectual and inspiring. It tells you everything about him that people from all over the world sought out his class & he provided it free.
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People like that have a bit of magic and we all hope a little bit of it will rub off on us.
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One of the great teachers of how monetary policy actually works. He will be greatly missed.
I’m told Perry Mehrling has passed away. His money and banking course at Barnard was hugely formative for me and many others. This is an awful year for social thought. And I’m afraid we’re not producing many people of that caliber who can fill the ranks.
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Win Monroe retweeted
deeply saddened by this news! Like many, I learnt so much from him. His money and banking course was fantastic, as were his books! A true superstar of “the money view” in economics. May he rest in peace!
I’m told Perry Mehrling has passed away. His money and banking course at Barnard was hugely formative for me and many others. This is an awful year for social thought. And I’m afraid we’re not producing many people of that caliber who can fill the ranks.
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I spent much of what little free time I had during my PhD in the YSI reading group Perry sponsored. Like everything he did, it was deeply intellectual and inspiring. It tells you everything about him that people from all over the world sought out his class & he provided it free.
We are deeply saddened to share the news that Perry Mehrling passed away this morning at the age of 67. Perry was the father of the Young Scholars Initiative. He believed profoundly in young scholars, in their ideas, and in the importance of creating a community in which they could learn from one another and find their own voices. Perry, you leave an enormous hole in our midst. Our hearts are aching, and we will miss you dearly. The YSI community will carry your legacy forward. Your ideas, your generosity, and your commitment to generations of young scholars will remain with us. Thank you for everything, Perry.
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We should all aspire to put out in the world even a fraction of the positive spirit and influence he did.
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We are deeply saddened to share the news that Perry Mehrling passed away this morning at the age of 67. Perry was the father of the Young Scholars Initiative. He believed profoundly in young scholars, in their ideas, and in the importance of creating a community in which they could learn from one another and find their own voices. Perry, you leave an enormous hole in our midst. Our hearts are aching, and we will miss you dearly. The YSI community will carry your legacy forward. Your ideas, your generosity, and your commitment to generations of young scholars will remain with us. Thank you for everything, Perry.
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Perry was an incredibly inspirational professor and hugely formative in my early years of economics. What a loss. Perry Mehrling passes away and Lou Crandall retires. End of an era for money markets.
I’m told Perry Mehrling has passed away. His money and banking course at Barnard was hugely formative for me and many others. This is an awful year for social thought. And I’m afraid we’re not producing many people of that caliber who can fill the ranks.
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