The Life of an Economist: An Autobiography Book

This is Kindleberger's account of his life as an economist. Beginning with his student days at Penn and Columbia, he traces his career through the inter-war years at "the Fed" (the Treasury), and the Bank for International Settlements, onto the war when he assisted in the analysis of the effectiveness of bombing, and then to the post-war settlement in which he worked on the Marshall Plan. This is followed by his return to academic life, the rapid growth of economics as a discipline, and his itinerarnt research and teaching at MIT, Oxford, Kiel, Geneva, Paris, and Rome. Throughout this autobiography, there are anecdotes, particularly of battles with bureaucrats and politicians while working in government (he was for a period under McCarthyism blacklisted from involvement in economic policy making) and of conflicts with fellow scholars, with many of whom he disagreed, but never at the expense of friendship.Read More