Allan Meltzer

Allan H. Meltzer is an American economist and professor of Political Economy at Carnegie Mellon University's Tepper School of Business in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania [cite web |url=http://business.tepper.cmu.edu/display_faculty.aspx?id=98 |title=Faculty Information |accessdate=2007-06-11] . He was born February 6, 1928, in Boston, Massachusetts. He is the author of dozens of academic papers and books on monetary policy and the Federal Reserve Bank, and is considered one of the world's foremost experts on the development and applications of monetary policy [cite web |title=A History of the Federal Reserve |url=http://www.historycooperative.org/cgi-bin/justtop.cgi?act=justtop&url=http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/jah/91.1/br_93.html (subscription required)] . He is currently at work on Volume II of his History of the Federal Reserve Bank, which covers the years since the Federal Reserve accord in 1951 to the present day.

Career

Allan Meltzer received his A.B. and M.A. degrees from Duke University in 1948 and 1955, respectively. He earned his Ph.D. degree from UCLA in 1958.

Dr. Meltzer served, from 1973 to 1999, as the Chair of the Shadow Open Market Committee, a group of economists, academics, and bankers that met to critique the actions of the Federal Reserve's Federal Open Market Committee. He served on the Council of Economic Advisors for both Presidents Kennedy and Reagan. He is currently a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.

Dr. Meltzer was the Chairman of the International Financial Institution Advisory Commission [cite web |url=http://www.house.gov/jec/imf/ifiac.htm |title=International Financial Instiutions Advisory Commission |accessdate=2007-06-11] , known as the Meltzer Commission. The Commission's majority report proposed changes to the operations of the International Monetary Fund and especially to those of the World Bank, which the majority recommended should withdraw from lending to "middle income countries". Four (out of 5) Commission members nominated by the then-minority Congressional Democrats filed a dissent from the majority's recommendations (Bergsten, Huber, Levinson and Torres), though one of the four (Huber) both voted for the majority report and joined the dissent. The official vote tally in favor was thus recorded as 8 to 3. Controversy over the majority's arguments and recommendations continued after the report's publication: the majority's core recommendations are defended by Chairman Meltzer's chief advisor Adam Lerrick, and challenged by one of the Commission's critics (David de Ferranti), in their respective chapters in an edited volume published by the Center for Global Development and fully accessible on the web [http://www.cgdev.org/content/publications/detail/9957] . Dr. Meltzer was the first ever recipient of the AEI's Irving Kristol award in 2003 [cite web |url=http://www.aei.org/events/seriesID.8/series_detail.asp |title=Annual Dinner and Lecture |accessdate=2007-06-11] . Dr. Meltzer was honored at the award dinner by President George W. Bush, who remarked "I know I'm not the featured speaker; I'm just a warm-up act for Allan Meltzer." [cite web |url=http://business.tepper.cmu.edu/default.aspx?id=142333 |title=President Bush Attends Dinner Honoring Professor Allan Meltzer |accessdate=2007-06-11]

Dr. Meltzer was highly critical of the Federal Reserve's September 2008 decision to rescue the leading bond-insurer AIG.

= Publications =

* [http://www.aei.org/publications/filter.all,pubID.25218/pub_detail.asp An Appreciation: Milton Friedman, 1912-2006] (November 2006)
* [http://www.house.gov/jec/imf/07-18-03.pdf What Future for the IMF and the World Bank?] (July 2003)
* [http://www.aei.org/books/filter.all,bookID.120/book_detail.asp A History of the Federal Reserve, Vol. I] (January 2001)
* [http://www.imfsite.org/reform/meltzer.html What's Wrong with the IMF? What would be Better?] (Fall 1999)
* [http://cepa.newschool.edu/het/profiles/ahmeltzer.htm A list of Dr. Meltzer's major publications before 1997] , including his work with Swiss economist Karl Brunner.

References

External links

* [http://business.tepper.cmu.edu/display_faculty.aspx?id=98 Allan Meltzer's home page] at Carnegie-Mellon
* [http://www.tepper.cmu.edu/afs/andrew/gsia/meltzer/ Research of Allan Meltzer] compiled at Carnegie-Mellon
* [http://www.aei.org/scholars/scholarID.41,filter.all/scholar.asp Dr. Meltzer's homepage] at the American Enterprise Institute
* [http://www.econlib.org/LIBRARY/Enc/Monetarism.html Article on monetarism] by Dr. Meltzer from the Concise Encyclopedia of Economics
* [http://www.minneapolisfed.org/pubs/region/03-09/meltzer.cfm Interview] with Dr. Meltzer from the Minnesota Fed's webpage
* [http://business.tepper.cmu.edu/default.aspx?id=142333 Press release from Carnegie-Mellon] on Dr. Meltzer's speech upon receipt of the Irving Kristol award
* [http://www.aei.org/publications/pubID.23227/pub_detail.asp Text of Dr. Meltzer's acceptance speech] for the Irving Kristol award
* [http://www.pbs.org/thinktank/transcript1109.html Transcript of Dr. Meltzer's appearance] on PBS's Think Tank program
* [http://fraser.stlouisfed.org/meltzer/ Source documents] for Dr. Meltzer's A History of the Federal Reserve, Vol. I from the FRASER historical documents site of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis
* [http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=95076180/ interview on National Public Radio's broadcast of September 26. 2008] ] .