About

Perry G. Mehrling is a professor associated with the Boston University Global Development Policy Center. His work centers on the 'money view,' a perspective on monetary economics and finance. Mehrling has contributed to discussions on credit channels, as evidenced by his engagement with the 1983 paper cited in connection with Bernanke's Nobel award. He has written forewords for translations of his work, such as the Japanese edition of New Lombard Street, indicating his influence in the field of financial economics. Mehrling's recent blog posts address contemporary economic issues including the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on liquidity and cash flow management, as well as changes in the institutional organization of money markets since 2012. His research interests encompass topics such as banking, central banking, credit creation, financial globalization, monetary policy, and the international monetary system, reflecting a broad engagement with the dynamics of money and finance.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Economics
• Monetary economics
• Finance
• Computer Science
• Economic history
• Keynesian economics
• Business
• Mathematics
• Market economy
• History
• Law
• Financial system

Selected publications

• Charles P. Kindleberger (1910–2003)

  2025-01-01

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Challenging the dance of bailout and austerity - Martijn Konings, The Bailout State: Why Governments Rescue Banks, Not People, Polity Books, 2024.

  Finance and Society · 2025-03-18

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Edward Chancellor, The Price of Time: The Real Story of Interest

  Society · 2024-06-20

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Alvin Hansen: seeking a suitable stabilisation – an academic biography

  European Journal of the History of Economic Thought · 2024-09-02

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Bagehot’s classical money view: a reconstruction

  European Journal of the History of Economic Thought · 2024-04-11

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Bagehot is difficult for modern economists to read with understanding, for three reasons. He was a classical economist not neoclassical, his orientation was global not national, and most importantly his intellectual formation was as a practicing country banker not an academic. This paper adopts all three perspectives, and uses this frame to reinterpret his mature work, both Lombard Street and the unfinished Economic Studies, as the origin of the key currency tradition which continues as a minority view in modern economics.

  PublisherDOI

• Review of “Debates in Macroeconomics from the Great Depression to the Long Recession: Cycles, Crises and Policy Responses” by Arie Arnon

  2024-01-26

  preprintOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Review of “Debates in Macroeconomics from the Great Depression to the Long Recession: Cycles, Crises and Policy Responses” by Arie Arnon.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Bagehot’s Classical Money View: A Reconstruction

  2024-01-04

  reportOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Bagehot is difficult for modern economists to read with understanding, for three reasons. He was a classical economist not neoclassical, his orientation was global not national, and, most importantly, his intellectual formation was as a practicing country banker not an academic. This paper adopts all three perspectives, and uses this frame to reinterpret his mature work, both Lombard Street and the unfinished Economic Studies, as the origin of the key currency tradition which continues as a minority view in modern economics.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Arie Arnon, Debates in Macroeconomics from the Great Depression to the Long Recession: Cycles, Crises and Policy Responses (Cham: Springer Nature, 2022), pp. xxvi + 318, $109.99 (hardcover). ISBN: 9783030977023.

  Journal of the History of Economic Thought · 2023-08-08

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Arie Arnon, Debates in Macroeconomics from the Great Depression to the Long Recession: Cycles, Crises and Policy Responses (Cham: Springer Nature, 2022), pp. xxvi + 318, $109.99 (hardcover). ISBN: 9783030977023. - Volume 46 Issue 1

  PublisherDOI

• Exorbitant privilege? On the rise (and rise) of the global dollar system

  2023-01-09 · 5 citations

  reportOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  The global dollar system, though repeatedly reported to be on its last legs—most recently in the Global Financial Crisis of 2008, but most famously in the Nixon devaluation of 1971—has repeatedly instead consolidated and gone on to further geographical expansion (McCauley 2021). The key currency approach to international monetary economics, first put forward by John H. Williams in the aftermath of the 1931 devaluation of sterling, suggests that such resilience arises from the actions of market practitioners who appreciate the convenience of a global means of payment. So the question arises, why has the key currency approach remained a minority view, if not among practicing bankers then certainly among practicing academics? This paper proposes two main reasons—the discredit of monetary optimism during the depression, and the subsequent fateful adoption of Walrasian equilibrium as the frame for academic discussion after WWII.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The Minsky-Kindleberger Connection and the Making of Manias, Panics, and Crashes

  OEconomia · 2023-01-01 · 5 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  This article traces the evolution of what has come to be called the Kindleberger-Minsky model, starting with Kindleberger’s 1978 publication of Manias, Panics, and Crashes and continuing thereafter. The key to understand the affinity of the two men, it is argued, is a shared intellectual ancestry in pre-war American institutionalism, which led to shared outsider status in the post-World War II economics academy. Both also identified with the longer tradition of monetary thought that emphasizes the inherent instability of credit, and hence the necessity for central bank management.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• David Colander

  18 shared

• Maria Cristina Marcuzzo

  15 shared

• Toshiaki Hirai

  Sophia University

  14 shared

• Peter Howitt

  John Brown University

  10 shared

• Axel Leijonhufvud

  John Brown University

  9 shared

• Alan Kirman

  8 shared

• Christopher Howe

  6 shared

• Daniel H. Neilson

  Bard College at Simon's Rock

  4 shared

Education

• Ph.D.

  Harvard University

• M.S.

  London School of Economics

  1983

• B.A.

  Harvard College