In Memoriam: Robert Mundell

Robert Mundell passed away earlier this week. Most macroeconomics students will know of the Mundell-Fleming model, of course, while a lesser number may have heard of his work on optimum currency areas.

Here is a relatively old article about him from the New York Times:

”In the very short run, I’m a Keynesian,” he said. ”In the intermediate run, I’m a supply-sider, and in the long run I’m a monetarist.”

https://www.nytimes.com/1986/01/12/business/eccentric-economist-robert-a-mundell-supply-side-s-intellectual-guru.html

And here is a summary by The Economist on the impossible trilemma:

HILLEL THE ELDER, a first-century religious leader, was asked to summarise the Torah while standing on one leg. “That which is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow. That is the whole Torah; the rest is commentary,” he replied. Michael Klein, of Tufts University, has written that the insights of [[international macroeconomics]] (the study of trade, the balance-of-payments, exchange rates and so on) might be similarly distilled: “Governments face the policy trilemma; the rest is commentary.”

https://www.economist.com/schools-brief/2016/08/27/two-out-of-three-aint-bad)

Here is Paul Krugman, first rhapsodizing about the Optimum Currency Area((This essay, along with the tables, used to be freely available on the NBER website. No longer, and I don’t know why. My apologies)):

First up, Mundell, whose classic 1961 paper argued that a single currency was more likely to be workable if the regions sharing that currency were characterized by high mutual labor mobility. (He actually said factor mobility, but labor is almost surely the one that matters). How so?

https://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/24/revenge-of-the-optimum-currency-area/

.. and then rhapsodizing about Robert Mundell and his early theoretical work:

Those of us who work on international monetary theory have been wondering for a decade when Robert Mundell would get his richly deserved Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. Mundell’s work is so central to that field, so “seminal”–an overused term that really applies here–that on many disputed issues his ideas are the basis for both sides of the debate. But a layperson might be confused about exactly what Mundell and his prize are really about.

https://slate.com/business/1999/10/o-canada.html

This is the NYT obituary:

In his 2006 interview, he said that winning the Nobel “was particularly pleasing to me as my work has been quite controversial and no doubt stepped on a lot of intellectual toes.”
He added: “Even more than that, when I say something, people listen. Maybe they shouldn’t, but they do.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/05/business/economy/robert-mundell-dead.html

And finally, the Washington Post’s obit:

Dr. Mundell gave one of the more unusual — and crowd-pleasing — acceptance speeches in the history of the Nobel Prize. He ended his remarks by singing a few bars of the hit Frank Sinatra song “My Way,” an allusion to the independent-minded approach that he brought to his life and work.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/robert-mundell-dead/2021/04/06/36793d92-96d4-11eb-b28d-bfa7bb5cb2a5_story.html

RIP.