Thomas M. Humphrey

Thomas M. Humphrey
Nationality American
Occupation Economist (retired), Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, author

Thomas MacGillivray Humphrey (born 1935) is an American economist. Until 2005 he was a research advisor and senior economist in the research department of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond and editor of the Bank's scholarly journal, the Economic Quarterly.[1] His publications cover macroeconomics, monetary economics, and the history of economic thought.[1][2] Mark Blaug called him the "undisputed master" of the history of monetary economics.[3]

Publications

Humphrey has written many books and journal articles on monetary policy history.[4] He is the author of articles published in journals such as the Cato Institute.,[5] HOPE (History of Political Economy),[6] Southern Economics Journal,[7] and Econ Focus formerly Region Focus. He wrote over 70 articles published in the journals of the Richmond Federal Reserve.[8][9] Various articles such as Rival Notions of Money [10] by Humphrey may be accessed through EconPapers.

His four books on monetary policy history are The Monetary Approach to the Balance of Payments, Exchange Rates, and World Inflation (co-author Robert Keleher), Money, Banking and Inflation: Essays in the History of Monetary Thought, Money, Exchange and Production: Further Essays in the History of Economic Thought, and Essays on Inflation.[11] Charles R. McCann, Jr. stated, in reference to Humphrey's book Money, Banking and Inflation: Essays in the History of Monetary Thought that "monetary economists looking for an accessible introduction to their discipline's past will find few better starting points than this volume."[12](registration required)

His writing on the history of economic thought has been included in An Encyclopedia of Keynesian Economics[13] to which he contributed an article on the Chicago School of Economics, and also in numerous festschriften, book reviews,[14] textbooks, annual reports, and anthologies.[15] For Famous Figures in Diagrams and Economics[16] by Mark Blaug and Peter Lloyd, Humphrey wrote the first chapter, Marshallian Cross Diagrams and Chapter 55, Intertemporal utility maximization – the Fisher diagram.[16]

In 2006, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke at the Fourth ECB Central Banking Conference, Frankfurt, Germany, cited Humphrey's article on the real bills doctrine.[17] In 2008 Humphrey gave the Fourth Annual Ranlett Lecture in Economics at California State University, Sacramento, entitled Lender of Last Resort: The Concept in History. In 2009 Humphrey participated in the Adam Smith Program, Jepson School of Leadership Studies at the University of Richmond, where he presented The Fed's Deviation from Classical Thornton-Bagehot Lender-of-Last-Resort Policy, a paper co-authored with Richard Timberlake.

At the 2010 Annual Meeting of the American Economics Association (AEA) in Atlanta, Georgia, his subject was The Lender of Last Resort in the History of Economic Thought. In February 2013, he wrote Working Paper No. 751 Arresting Financial Crises: The Fed Versus the Classicals[18] for the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College, an essay which was subsequently presented at the 2013 Annual Meeting in Philadelphia of the American Economics Association.

Humphrey became a Vice President in the Research Department of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond and editor of the Federal Reserve of Richmond Economic Quarterly (previously known as the Economic Review).[19] In 1998 his annual report for the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond was Mercantilists and Capitalists: Insights from Doctrinal History.[20]

Major influences

Humphrey's economic thought is allied to the quantity theory, turning to old-fashioned monetarism, and (most recently) to market monetarism. Humphrey's work is in the quantity-theory tradition of David Hume, Henry Thornton, Alfred Marshall, Knut Wicksell, Irving Fisher, Milton Friedman, and David Laidler.[21][22][23][24][25]


In the introduction to his book Money, Exchange, and Production: Further Essays in the History of Economic Thought,[26] Thomas M. Humphrey acknowledged the influence of his professors.

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 "Al Broaddus & Tom Humphrey" (PDF). Region Focus (Fall 2004): 30–34. Retrieved 18 August 2014.
  2. ↑ McCann Jr., Charles R. "Economic Thought since Keynes: A History and Dictionary of Major Economists" (PDF). History of Political Economy. 28(4) (Winter 1996): 710–712. doi:10.1215/00182702-28-4-710. Retrieved 16 August 2014.
  3. ↑ Blaug, Mark (1995). The Quantity Theory of Money: From Locke to Keynes to Friedman. Brookfield, VT: Edward Elgar. p. 45.
  4. ↑ Federal Reserve, Richmond. "FRD Richmond". Federal Reserve of Richmond. Retrieved 10 June 2014.
  5. ↑ Humphrey, Thomas. "Lender of Last Resort" (PDF). Cato Journal. Cato Institute. Retrieved 10 June 2014.
  6. ↑ "History of Political Economy". hope.dukejournals.org. Duke University Press. Retrieved 16 August 2014.
  7. ↑ Southern Economics Journal. 41 (July 1974), 58
  8. ↑ Humphrey, Thomas (Winter 1996). "The Early History of the Box Diagram". FRB Richmond Economic Quarterly 82 (1): 37–75.
  9. ↑ Humphrey, Thomas (2004). "Ricardo versus Wicksell on Job Losses and Technological Change". Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond. Fall 2004 (Fall): 5–24.
  10. ↑ Humphrey, Thomas M. Rival Notions of Money,Economic Review, 1988, issue Sep, pp. 3–9
  11. ↑ Humphrey, Thomas M. (1986). Essays on inflation (Fifth Edition ed.). Richmond, Virginia: Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond. Retrieved 27 June 2014.
  12. ↑ McCann Jr., Charles R. "Economic Thought since Keynes: A History and Dictionary of Major Economists" (PDF). History of Political Economy. 28(4) (Winter 1996): 710–712. doi:10.1215/00182702-28-4-710.
  13. ↑ Cate,, Thomas (1997). An Encyclopedia of Keynesian Economics. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing, Ltd. pp. 95–98. ISBN 1 85898 145 X.
  14. ↑ Humphrey, Thomas M. (2012). "Economic Thinking in a Age of Shared Prosperity, review of "Grand Pursuit: The Story of Economic Genius," by Sylvia Nasar" (PDF). Richmond Federal Reserve Region Focus. First Quarter: 38.
  15. ↑ Humphrey, Thomas M. (2008). "Schumpeter, Joseph (1893–1950)". In Hamowy, Ronald. The Encyclopedia of Libertarianism. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE; Cato Institute. pp. 452–5. ISBN 978-1-4129-6580-4. LCCN 2008009151. OCLC 750831024.
  16. ↑ 16.0 16.1 Blaug, Mark (2010). Famous Figures and Diagrams in Economics (Cased). Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar. pp. 29–37. ISBN 978-1-84844-160-6.
  17. ↑ Bernanke, Benjamin (November 10, 2006). "Monetary Aggregates and Monetary Policy at the Federal Reserve: A Historical Perspective". Federal Reserve Bank. ECB Central Banking Conference. Retrieved 16 August 2014.
  18. ↑ Humphrey, Thomas M. (2013). "Arresting financial crises: The fed versus the classicals". Working Paper, Levy Economics Institute 751 (Bard College, Annandale on the Hudson, NY: Levy Economics Institute of Bard College). Retrieved 16 August 2014.
  19. ↑ "Economic Review". http://econpapers.repec.org/article/fipfedrer/''. Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond. Retrieved 16 August 2014.
  20. ↑ Humphrey, Thomas M. "Mercantilists and Capitalists: Insights from Doctrinal History" (PDF). www.richmondfed.org. Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond. Retrieved 16 August 2014.
  21. ↑ David Laidler (1987). "Thornton, Henry (1760–1815)," The New Palgrave: A Dictionary of Economics, v. 4, pp. 633–636
  22. ↑ http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/scottishhistory/enlightenment/features_enlightenment_enlightenment.shtml.
  23. ↑ Backhouse, Roger E. "Sidgwick, Marshall, and the Cambridge School of Economics." History of Political Economy 2006 38(1): 15–44. ISSN 0018-2702 Fulltext: Ebsco
  24. ↑ https://archive.org/search.php?query=creator%3A%22Alfred+Marshall%22
  25. ↑ Gardlund, Torsten.The Life of Knut Wicksell, 1958. Almqvist & Wicksells, Uppsala, Sweden.Trans. from the Swedish by Nancy Adler.
  26. ↑ Humphrey, Thomas M. (1998). Money, Exchange, and Production: Further Essays in the History of Economic Thought (First ed.). Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar. ISBN 1 85898 652 4.