Charles Poor "Charlie" Kindleberger (October 12, 1910 – July 7, 2003) was a
historical economistEconomic history is the study of how economic phenomena evolved from a historical perspective. Analysis in economic history is undertaken using a combination of historical methods, statistical methods and by applying economic theory to historical situations. The topic includes business history and...
and
authorAn author is defined both as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created...
of over 30 books. His 1978 book
Manias, Panics, and Crashes, about speculative
stock market bubbleA stock market bubble is a type of economic bubble taking place in stock markets when market participants drive stock prices above their value in relation to some system of stock valuation....
s, was reprinted in 2000 after the
dot-com bubbleThe "dot-com bubble" was a speculative bubble covering roughly 1998–2001 during which stock markets in Western nations saw their equity value rise rapidly from growth in the more recent Internet sector and related fields...
. He is well known for
hegemonic stability theoryHegemonic Stability Theory is a theory of economics and political science which argues that the international financial system is more likely to be stable when a single country is the dominant economic power. The theory is most closely associated with Charles P...
.
Kindleberger was born in
New York CityNew York is the most populous city in the United States, and the center of the New York metropolitan area, which is among the most populous urban areas in the world. A leading global city, New York exerts a powerful influence over worldwide commerce, finance, culture, fashion and entertainment...
on October 12, 1910. He graduated from the
University of PennsylvaniaThe University of Pennsylvania is a private research university located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. Penn is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States, and is one of several institutions that claims to have been the first university in America...
in 1932, and received a
Ph.D.Ph.D. or PHD may stand for:* Doctor of Philosophy, an academic degree* Ph.D. , a 1980s British group* Piled Higher and Deeper, a web comic strip* PhD: Phantasy Degree, a Korean comic series* Parisada Hindu Dharma, an Indonesian organization...
from
Columbia UniversityColumbia University in the City of New York is a private university in the United States and a member of the Ivy League. Columbia's main campus lies in the Morningside Heights neighborhood in the borough of Manhattan, in New York City...
in 1937. He was married to the late Sarah Miles Kindleberger for 59 years, and was survived by four children.
His earliest book was
International Short-Term Capital Movements (1937).
Although mainly an academic at MIT after 1948, Kindleberger during the course of his life worked for several American institutions, such as the
Federal Reserve Bank of New YorkThe Federal Reserve Bank of New York is one of the 12 Federal Reserve Banks of the United States. It is located at 33 Liberty Street, New York, NY. It is responsible for the Second District of the Federal Reserve System, which encompasses New York state, the 12 northern counties of New Jersey,...
(1936-1939), the Bank of International Settlements in
SwitzerlandSwitzerland , officially the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 states named cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities...
(1939-1940), and the Board of Governors of the
Federal Reserve SystemThe Federal Reserve System is the central banking system of the United States. It was created in 1913 by the enactment of the Federal Reserve Act, largely as a response to a series of financial panics or bank runs, particularly a severe panic in 1907...
(1940-1942).
Kindleberger was a leading architect of the
Marshall PlanThe Marshall Plan was the primary plan of the United States for rebuilding and creating a stronger foundation for the countries of Western Europe, and repelling communism after World War II...
.
Charles Poor "Charlie" Kindleberger (October 12, 1910 – July 7, 2003) was a
historical economistEconomic history is the study of how economic phenomena evolved from a historical perspective. Analysis in economic history is undertaken using a combination of historical methods, statistical methods and by applying economic theory to historical situations. The topic includes business history and...
and
authorAn author is defined both as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created...
of over 30 books. His 1978 book
Manias, Panics, and Crashes, about speculative
stock market bubbleA stock market bubble is a type of economic bubble taking place in stock markets when market participants drive stock prices above their value in relation to some system of stock valuation....
s, was reprinted in 2000 after the
dot-com bubbleThe "dot-com bubble" was a speculative bubble covering roughly 1998–2001 during which stock markets in Western nations saw their equity value rise rapidly from growth in the more recent Internet sector and related fields...
. He is well known for
hegemonic stability theoryHegemonic Stability Theory is a theory of economics and political science which argues that the international financial system is more likely to be stable when a single country is the dominant economic power. The theory is most closely associated with Charles P...
.
Life
Kindleberger was born in
New York CityNew York is the most populous city in the United States, and the center of the New York metropolitan area, which is among the most populous urban areas in the world. A leading global city, New York exerts a powerful influence over worldwide commerce, finance, culture, fashion and entertainment...
on October 12, 1910. He graduated from the
University of PennsylvaniaThe University of Pennsylvania is a private research university located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. Penn is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States, and is one of several institutions that claims to have been the first university in America...
in 1932, and received a
Ph.D.Ph.D. or PHD may stand for:* Doctor of Philosophy, an academic degree* Ph.D. , a 1980s British group* Piled Higher and Deeper, a web comic strip* PhD: Phantasy Degree, a Korean comic series* Parisada Hindu Dharma, an Indonesian organization...
from
Columbia UniversityColumbia University in the City of New York is a private university in the United States and a member of the Ivy League. Columbia's main campus lies in the Morningside Heights neighborhood in the borough of Manhattan, in New York City...
in 1937. He was married to the late Sarah Miles Kindleberger for 59 years, and was survived by four children.
Work
His earliest book was
International Short-Term Capital Movements (1937).
Although mainly an academic at MIT after 1948, Kindleberger during the course of his life worked for several American institutions, such as the
Federal Reserve Bank of New YorkThe Federal Reserve Bank of New York is one of the 12 Federal Reserve Banks of the United States. It is located at 33 Liberty Street, New York, NY. It is responsible for the Second District of the Federal Reserve System, which encompasses New York state, the 12 northern counties of New Jersey,...
(1936-1939), the Bank of International Settlements in
SwitzerlandSwitzerland , officially the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 states named cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities...
(1939-1940), and the Board of Governors of the
Federal Reserve SystemThe Federal Reserve System is the central banking system of the United States. It was created in 1913 by the enactment of the Federal Reserve Act, largely as a response to a series of financial panics or bank runs, particularly a severe panic in 1907...
(1940-1942).
Kindleberger was a leading architect of the
Marshall PlanThe Marshall Plan was the primary plan of the United States for rebuilding and creating a stronger foundation for the countries of Western Europe, and repelling communism after World War II...
. In 1945-1947 he served at the Department of State (Acting Director, Office of Economic Security Policy), and shortly (1947-1948) as counselor for the European Recovery Program.
As a 'historical' economist (or economic historian), Kindleberger relied on
narrativeA narrative is a story that is created in a constructive format that describes a sequence of fictional or non-fictional events...
exposition and knowledge of
historyHistory is the study of the human past, with special attention to the written record. Scholars who write about history are called historians. It is a field of research which uses a narrative to examine and analyse the sequence of events, and it often attempts to investigate objectively the patterns...
rather than mathematical models to prove his point. His book,
Manias, Panics, and Crashes is still required reading at many Masters of Business Administration (MBA) programs in the United States.
Kindleberger described his around-the-clock work to develop and launch the
Marshall PlanThe Marshall Plan was the primary plan of the United States for rebuilding and creating a stronger foundation for the countries of Western Europe, and repelling communism after World War II...
with singular passion in a 1973 interview.
'We were conscious of a great sense of excitement about the plan.
MarshallGeneral of the Army George Catlett Marshall was an American military leader, Chief of Staff of the Army, Secretary of State, and the third Secretary of Defense. Once noted as the "organizer of victory" by Winston Churchill for his leadership of the Allied victory in World War II, Marshall served...
himself was a great, great man—funny, odd but great—Olympian in his moral quality. We'd stay up all night, night after night. The first work ever done that I know about in economics on computers used the Pentagon's computers at night for the Marshall Plan. I had a tremendous sense of gratification from working so hard on it,' Kindleberger said.
Kindleberger was on familiar terms with noted economists and was a graduate of the
University of PennsylvaniaThe University of Pennsylvania is a private research university located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. Penn is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States, and is one of several institutions that claims to have been the first university in America...
and
Columbia UniversityColumbia University in the City of New York is a private university in the United States and a member of the Ivy League. Columbia's main campus lies in the Morningside Heights neighborhood in the borough of Manhattan, in New York City...
(A.M., Ph. D.), later rising to the eminent position of Ford International Professor of Economics at MIT.
He attended
Kent SchoolKent School is a private, co-educational college preparatory school in Kent, Connecticut, USA. It was established in 1906 by The Reverend Frederick Herbert Sill, order of the Holy Cross, and it retains its affiliation with the Episcopal Church....
in Kent, Connecticut.
Born in
New York CityNew York is the most populous city in the United States, and the center of the New York metropolitan area, which is among the most populous urban areas in the world. A leading global city, New York exerts a powerful influence over worldwide commerce, finance, culture, fashion and entertainment...
Kindleberger was married to the late Sarah Kindleberger, and had four children: Charles P. Kindleberger III of
St. LouisSt. Louis is an independent city in the U.S. state of Missouri. With an estimated population of 354,361 in 2008, it is the principal municipality of Greater St. Louis, population 2,866,517, the largest urban area in Missouri and sixteenth largest in the United States...
, MO; Richard S. Kindleberger of Cambridge, MA; Sarah Kindleberger of Lincoln, MA; and E. Randall Kindleberger of Machias, ME.
The World in Depression
His 1973 and 1986 book
The World in Depression 1929-1939 (University of California Press, 1986 [Revised and Enlarged Edition]) advances an idiosyncratic, internationalist view of the causes and nature of the
Great DepressionThe Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
. Blaming the peculiar length and depth of the Depression on the hesitancy of the US in taking over leadership of the world economy when Britain was no longer up to the role after WWI, he concludes that 'for the world economy to be stabilized, there has to be a stabilizer—one stabilizer', by which, in the context of the interwar years at least, he means the United States. In the last chapter 'An Explanation of the 1929 Depression' Kindleberger lists the five responsibilities the US would have had to assume in order to stabilize the world economy:
- maintaining a relatively open market for distress goods;
- providing countercyclical
Countercyclical is a term used in economics to describe how an economic quantity is related to economic fluctuations. It is the opposite of procyclical. However, it has more than one meaning.-Meaning in policy making:...
, or at least stable, long-term lending;
- policing a relatively stable system of exchange rates;
- ensuring the coordination of macroeconomic policies;
- acting as a lender of last resort
A lender of last resort is an institution willing to extend credit when no one else will.-Origin:Originally the term referred to a reserve financial institution that secured other banks or eligible institutions, as a last resort; most often the central bank of a country...
by discounting or otherwise providing liquidity in a financial crisis.
Kindleberger is highly sceptical of Friedman and Schwartz's monetarist view of the causes of the Depression, seeing it as too narrow and perhaps dogmatic, and dismisses what he characterises as Samuelson's 'accidental' or 'fortuitous' interpretation out of hand.
The World in Depression was praised by
John Kenneth GalbraithJohn Kenneth "Ken" Galbraith, OC was a Canadian-American economist. He was a Keynesian and an institutionalist, a leading proponent of 20th-century American liberalism and progressivism...
as 'the best book on the subject'.
Works
- Manias, Panics, and Crashes: A History of Financial Crises (Wiley, 2005, 5th edition)
- World Economic Primacy: 1500 - 1990 (Oxford University Press, 1996)
- The World in Depression: 1929-1939 (University of California Press, 1973)
- "The Benefits of International Money." Journal of International Economics 2 (Nov. 1972): 425-442.
- American Business Abroad (New Haven, London, 1969)
- Europe's Postwar Growth. The Role of Labor Supply (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1967)
- Europa and the Dollar (Cambridge, Massachusetts, London, 1966)
- Foreign Trade and the National Economy (Yale, 1962)
- International Economics (Irwin, 1958)
- Economic Development (New York, 1958)
Further information