Typically one encounters the work of senior scholars without having much of a clue about what they might have been like when they were young. While there is the occasional Peter Pan among us who have lived long lives as Wunderkinder (e.g. Paul Samuelson), the overwhelming majority of academic economists have developed, some even in a positive sense, so it is useful to have material from different points in their individual life cycles. This post provides a small window into the academic life of a young economist who was to go on to become a member of Ronald Reagan’s Council of Economic Advisers and the eleventh president of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, Professor William Poole. The reading list for monetary theory transcribed below comes from his second year at the Johns Hopkins University.
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William Poole’s Fed Biography
William Poole became the eleventh president of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis on March 23, 1998, and retired March 31, 2008.
Poole was born in Wilmington, Delaware. He received a bachelor’s degree from Swarthmore College in 1959 and a master’s degree and a doctorate in economics from the University of Chicago in 1963 and 1966, respectively. Before joining the St. Louis Fed, Poole was Herbert H. Goldberger Professor of Economics at Brown University. He served on the Brown faculty from 1974 to 1998 and the faculty of Johns Hopkins University from 1963 to 1969. Between these two university positions, he was senior economist at the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. He was also a member of the Council of Economic Advisers in the first Reagan administration from 1982 to 1985.
Poole has published numerous papers in professional journals and engaged in a wide range of professional activities. He has published two books: Money and the Economy: A Monetarist View in 1978 and Principles of Economics in 1991 (coauthored with J. Vernon Henderson). During his ten years at the St. Louis Fed, he delivered over 150 speeches on a wide variety of economic and finance topics.
In 1980 and 1981, Poole was a visiting economist at the Reserve Bank of Australia; in 1991, he was the Bank Mees and Hope Visiting Professor of Economics at Erasmus University in Rotterdam. He has served on various advisory boards of the Federal Reserve Banks of Boston and New York and the Congressional Budget Office. He is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, distinguished scholar in residence at the University of Delaware, senior economic adviser to Merk Investments, and a special adviser to Market News International.
Swarthmore honored Poole with a doctor of laws degree in 1989. He was inducted into the Johns Hopkins Society of Scholars in 2005 and presented with the Adam Smith Award by the National Association for Business Economics in 2006. In 2007, the Global Interdependence Center presented him its Frederick Heldring Award.
Source: William Poole page at the Federal Reserve History Website.
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THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY
Monetary Theory—361
Fall 1964
W. Poole
READING LIST
TEXT: A.G. Hart and P.B. Kenen, Money, Debt and Economic Activity (3rd. ed.)
I The Nature of Money
Hart & Kenen, “Introduction”
D.H. Robertson, Money, Ch. 1, pp. 41-50
II The Supply of Money
Hart & Kenen, Chs. 1-7
E.S. Shaw, Money, Income and Monetary Policy, Chs. 2, 3, 6, 10
A. Hansen, Monetary Theory and Fiscal Policy, Ch. 2
B. Kragh, ”Two Liquidity Functions and the Rate of Interest,” R.E. Stud. 17 (2) (1949-50) pp. 98-106
M. Friedman, “Commodity-Reserve Currency,” JPE 59 (June, 1951) pp. 203-32; reprinted in M. Friedman, Essays in Positive Economics, pp. 204-50
III Classical Quantity Theory
Hart & Kenen, Ch. 11
I. Fisher, The Purchasing Power of Money, Chs. 1-5, 8
A.C. Pigou, “The Value of Money,” QJE 32 (1917-18) pp. 38-65; reprinted in RMT, pp. 162-83
A. Hansen, Ch. 3
IV The Demand for Money and the Rate of Interest
Hart & Kenen, Ch. 14
J.M. Keynes, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, Chs. 13-15, 17
A. Hansen, Ch. 4
W.J. Baumol, ”The Transactions Demand for Cash: An Inventory Theoretic Approach,” QJE 66 (Nov. 1952), pp. 545-56
J. Tobin, “The Interest-Elasticity of Transactions Demand for Cash,” R.E.Stat. 38 (Aug. 1956), pp. 241-47
_________, “Liquidity Preference as Behavior Towards Risk,” R.E.Stud. 25 (2) (Feb. 1958), pp. 65-86
M. Friedman, “The Quantity Theory of Money—A Restatement,” in M. Friedman (ed.) Studies in the Quantity Theory of Money
V Money and Economic Activity
Hart & Kenen, Chs. 12, 13
J.M. Keynes, Chs. 7-12, 18
M. Bailey, National Income and the Price Level, Chs. 1,2
A. Hansen, Ch. 5
J.R. Hicks, “Mr. Keynes and the ‘Classics’: A Suggested Interpretation,” Econometrica 5 (April 1937), pp. 147-59
Source: Johns Hopkins University. The Ferdinand Hamburger, Jr. Archives. Department of Political Economy Series 6, Box 1, Folder “Course Outlines and Reading Lists, ca. 1950, 1963-68”.
Image Source: William Poole at the Federal Reserve Centennial, 2014.