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Robert Alexander Mundell CC (born October 24, 1932) is a professor of economics at Columbia University. Mundell was born in Canada and is a graduate of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. He attended MIT, where he obtained his PhD in Economics in 1956. He also attended the London School of Economics and was a top performer in his years there. He went on to win the 1999 Bank of Sweden prize in Economic Sciences, more commonly referred to as the Nobel prize in economics. Since 1974 he has been a professor in the Economics department at Columbia University; since 2001 he has held Columbia's highest academic rank -- University Professor. In 2002 he was made a Companion of the Order of Canada . In June 2005 he was awarded the Global Economics Prize from the World Economics Institute in Kiel, Germany and in September 2005 he was made a Cavaliere di Gran Croce del Reale Ordine del Merito sotto il Titolo di San Ludovico by Principe Don Carlo Ugo di Borbone Parma. The Mundell International University of Entrepreneurship in the Zhongguancun district of Beijing, China is named in his honor. Among his major contributions are:
Work on international monetary flows Mundell is best known in politics for his support of tax cuts and supply side economics; however, among economists it is his work on currency areas and international exchange rates which caused him to be awarded the Bank of Sweden prize. Nevertheless, supply side economics featured prominently in his Bank of Sweden prize speech. In the 1960s Canada, of which Mundell is a native, floated its exchange - this caused Mundell to begin investigating the results of floating exchange rates, a phenomenon not widely seen since the 1930's "Stockholm School" successfully lobbied Sweden to leave the gold standard. In 1962 he co-authored the Mundell-Fleming model of exchange rates, and noted that it was impossible to have both domestic autonomy, and price stability and free capital flows - that two, and only two, of these objectives could be met. The model is, in effect, an extension of the IS/LM model applied to currency rates. According to Mundell's analysis: His analysis led to his conclusion that it was a disagreement between Europe and the United States over the rate of inflation, partially to finance the Vietnam War, and that Bretton Woods disintegrated because of the undervaluing of gold and the consequent monetary discipline breakdown. There is a famous point/counter-point over this issue between Mundell and Milton Friedman (See Mundell-Friedman debate) This work would later lead to the creation of the Euro, and his prediction that leaving the Bretton Woods system would lead to "stagflation" so long as highly progressive income tax rates applied. In 1974 he advocated a drastic tax reduction and a flattening of income tax rates. Mundell, though lionized by some conservatives, has many of his harshest critics from the right: he denies the need for a fixed gold based currency or currency board - though he often recommends this as a policy in hyper-inflationary environments - and he is both a fiscal and balance of payments deficit hawk. He is well known for stating that in a floating exchange rate system, expansion of the money supply can only come about through a positive balance of payments. The TV personality
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