Re: Charles Kindleberger

["Barkley Rosser" <rosserjb@xxxxxxx>]

     This is a loss, although not unexpected given his age.
Kindleberger's book in its various editions, _Manias, Panics,
and Crashes_, is still the best there is on this subject in my view.
He will be missed.
Barkley Rosser
----- Original Message -----
From: "Ric Holt" <rholt@xxxxxxx>
To: <pkt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Tuesday, July 08, 2003 10:54 AM
Subject: Charles Kindleberger


> Charles Kindleberger; economist probed mayhem in markets
>
>
> By Charles Stein, Globe Staff, 7/8/2003
>
> harles Kindleberger of Lexington, a longtime economics professor at the
> Massachusetts Institute of Technology who wrote a classic book on
> financial meltdowns, died of a stroke yesterday at Mount Auburn Hospital
> in Cambridge. He was 92.
>
>
> Dr. Kindleberger's 1978 book, ''Manias, Panics and Crashes: A History of
> Financial Crises,'' traced the history of financial bubbles from the
> Dutch tulip mania of the 17th century through the Great Depression. Dr.
> Kindleberger argued that although the facts change over time, the basic
> story remains the same: Investors get overly excited about some new
> development and in a speculative orgy, bid prices up to levels that
> don't make sense. When reality eventually intervenes, investors panic,
> prices plummet, and disaster ensues.
>
> ''His point was that what goes on in people's heads has important
> economic effects on life,'' said Robert Solow, professor emeritus of
> economics at MIT and a colleague of Dr. Kindleberger.
>
> ''Manias, Panics and Crashes'' was regularly reissued after financial
> disasters. It was reprinted most recently in 2000 after the rise and
> fall of dot-com stocks, a development that could have come straight from
> the pages of Dr. Kindleberger's book. A reader of the book would not
> have been surprised, for instance, by the Enron and WorldCom scandals.
> Such swindles, Dr. Kindleberger wrote, were a staple of all financial
> bubbles.
>
> Dr. Kindleberger wrote ''Manias'' at age 67, only part way through a
> career that lasted 65 years and produced about 30 books. ''He had a
> marvelously long and productive run,'' said Paul Samuelson, also
> professor emeritus of economics at MIT.
>
> Dr. Kindleberger was writing articles, reviewing manuscripts, and
> revising books until very recently, according to his colleagues. At the
> age of 90, he wrote a piece about investing. His advice: Don't put too
> much money in the stock market. Just last year he was clipping articles
> on home prices for a possible study on whether a bubble had developed in
> the housing market, and was still driving a 1989 Ford Escort.
>
> Dr. Kindleberger was born in New York in 1910. He he received his
> bachelor's degree from the University of Pennsylvania and a doctorate
> from Columbia University. For 10 years he worked in a variety of
> government positions, including a stint at the Federal Reserve Board.
> During the war he worked for the Office of Strategic Services, the
> forerunner of the Central Intelligence Agency.
>
> After the war, according to Samuelson, Dr. Kindleberger was ''one of the
> backroom creators'' of the Marshall Plan, a massive aid package that
> allowed Europe to rebuild its economy. ''I had a tremendous sense of
> gratification from working on it so hard,'' Dr. Kindleberger once told
> an interviewer about his contribution to policy.
>
> Dr. Kindleberger taught at MIT for 33 years. Initially his specialty was
> international trade. He later switched to growth economics and still
> later to economic and financial history.
>
> ''It was in economic history that he really found his comparative
> advantage,'' said Jagdish Baghwati, an international trade specialist at
> Columbia University and one of a number of well-known economists who
> trained under Mr. Kindleberger.
>
> Mr. Kindleberger had little interest in the math-heavy approach to
> economics that eventually came to dominate the field. ''You learned
> technique from others. What you learned from Charlie were ideas,'' said
> Baghwati.
>
> Married for 59 years to the late Sarah Miles Kindleberger, he leaves
> four children: Charles P. III of St. Louis, Richard S. of Cambridge,
> Sarah of Lincoln, and E. Randall of Machias, Maine; and five
> grandchildren.
>
> A reception will be held in his memory for family and friends from 3 to
> 5 p.m. Saturday at the Brookhaven retirement community in Lexington.
>
>
>