Monetary regimes and policy on a global scale: The oeuvre of Michael D. Bordo

TY - CHAP

T1 - Monetary regimes and policy on a global scale

T2 - The oeuvre of Michael D. Bordo

AU - Rockoff, Hugh

AU - White, Eugene Nelson

N1 - Publisher Copyright: © Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland 2015.

PY - 2015/1/1

Y1 - 2015/1/1

N2 - If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants. - Sir Isaac Newton In the field of economics, Michael David Bordo (MDB) stands out as one of the leading financial and monetary historians of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. He is known around the globe for giving us a clearer vision of the central issues of monetary policy and choice of exchange rate regimes through the lens of economic history. His energy and enthusiasm make him a favorite collaborator with graduate students and senior scholars alike. One imagines there is scarcely a central bank he has not visited to present his work, advise policymakers, and consult with the research staff. In this chapter, we attempt to survey Bordo’s immense oeuvre, of 244 published articles, chapters, surveys, and reviews and 12 books and edited volumes at last count. Given his vast range of interests there is no easy summary of the topics to which he has contributed. We think his work is best understood in terms of the role that it has played in the development of macroeconomics. In a 1994 article in the Journal of Monetary Economics, Jeffrey Miron lamented the yawning gap between Milton Friedman and Anna J. Schwartz’s 1963 A Monetary History of the United States, 1867–1960 and contemporary macroeconomics. He wrote: The difference between the kind of empirical work presented by Friedman and Schwartz in A Monetary History and the kind of empirical work taught in graduate schools and practiced as ‘state-of-the-art’ is just as striking now as in the early 1980s. [when he was in graduate school] Even more striking is the dramatic difference between the lasting impact of A Monetary History and the ephemeral impact achieved by the bulk of more technically endowed research. (p. 18) Praising the narrative approach employed by Friedman and Schwartz, Miron identified its four main components: a method of identification (by way of natural experiments), the treatment of economic theory, the style of presenting empirical results, and the construction of new data.

AB - If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants. - Sir Isaac Newton In the field of economics, Michael David Bordo (MDB) stands out as one of the leading financial and monetary historians of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. He is known around the globe for giving us a clearer vision of the central issues of monetary policy and choice of exchange rate regimes through the lens of economic history. His energy and enthusiasm make him a favorite collaborator with graduate students and senior scholars alike. One imagines there is scarcely a central bank he has not visited to present his work, advise policymakers, and consult with the research staff. In this chapter, we attempt to survey Bordo’s immense oeuvre, of 244 published articles, chapters, surveys, and reviews and 12 books and edited volumes at last count. Given his vast range of interests there is no easy summary of the topics to which he has contributed. We think his work is best understood in terms of the role that it has played in the development of macroeconomics. In a 1994 article in the Journal of Monetary Economics, Jeffrey Miron lamented the yawning gap between Milton Friedman and Anna J. Schwartz’s 1963 A Monetary History of the United States, 1867–1960 and contemporary macroeconomics. He wrote: The difference between the kind of empirical work presented by Friedman and Schwartz in A Monetary History and the kind of empirical work taught in graduate schools and practiced as ‘state-of-the-art’ is just as striking now as in the early 1980s. [when he was in graduate school] Even more striking is the dramatic difference between the lasting impact of A Monetary History and the ephemeral impact achieved by the bulk of more technically endowed research. (p. 18) Praising the narrative approach employed by Friedman and Schwartz, Miron identified its four main components: a method of identification (by way of natural experiments), the treatment of economic theory, the style of presenting empirical results, and the construction of new data.

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U2 - 10.1017/CBO9781316162774.017

DO - 10.1017/CBO9781316162774.017

M3 - Chapter

SN - 9781107099098

SP - 318

EP - 363

BT - Current Federal Reserve Policy Under the Lens of Economic History

PB - Cambridge University Press

ER -