User:Sdtims07/Robert E. Wright

Robert E. Wright (b. 1969 in Rochester, N.Y.) is a business, economic, financial, and monetary historian who recently became the inaugural Rudy and Marilyn Nef Family Chair of Political Economy at Augustana College in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. He is also a research economist at the National Bureau of Economic Research, an editor of Pickering & Chatto of London’s financial history and perspectives in economic and social history series, and a guest curator for the newly revamped Museum of American Finance.

Education and Research

Wright took degrees in History from Buffalo State College, where he was a member of the All-College Honors Program, and the State University of New York at Buffalo (Ph.D., 1997). Since 2001 he has authored or co-authored six books on early U.S. financial and political history, two tomes about major corporations (Guardian Life and publisher John Wiley & Sons), a popular exposé of the economic and contractual problems plaguing the U.S. construction industry, and an open Money and Banking textbook available for free on the website of innovative new textbook publisher Flat World Knowledge. New England Publishing Associates agents his work.

Publicity and Impact

Wright’s most recent book, One Nation Under Debt (formerly “Born in Debt”), was published by McGraw Hill in early 2008 and generated substantial media attention, including interviews on The Joey Reynolds Show, The Dr. Pat Show, Lou Dobb’s radio show (twice), Larry Kane’s Voice of Reason, and other outlets. Choice named the book one of the best economics titles of 2008. His earlier research also won some minor awards. Wright has several highly anticipated books forthcoming, including an edited volume called Bailouts: Public Money, Private Profit for the Social Science Research Council, and a book on the role the real estate mortgage crisis of the 1760s played in the coming of the American Revolution discussed at length in the New York Times.

Publicity and Impact

Although considered “much underrated” by some and not yet as widely known as Harvard financial and diplomatic historian Niall Ferguson, Wright is increasingly attracting the attention of mainstream media outlets as well as the blogosphere due to the unusual combination of detailed scholarship and interesting prose stylings that characterize much of his work. The financial crisis of 2008 greatly raised Wright’s profile by highlighting the importance of his research agenda, which he often summarizes in his “finance: history and policy” blog. Within a few months of the failure of Lehman Brothers, Wright appeared on David Asman’s Fox News special “Saving Our Economy: What’$ Next?,” On Point with Tom Ashbrook on NPR, and several other television and radio programs. He was also quoted in the Chicago Tribune, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Times, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and several other major newspapers. He also published opinion editorials in the Los Angeles Times, Reason, McKinsey Quarterly, DismalScientist, and other publications and websites.

Wright frequently collaborates with other leading scholars, including Richard E. Sylla of New York University’s Stern School of Business, where Wright taught from 2003 until 2009. Before that, Wright taught economics at the University of Virginia, where he teamed up with Virginia economist Ron Michener in a major dispute against Farley Grubb, an economist at the University of Delaware, over the nature of colonial and early U.S. money and monetary systems.

Personal Views

Wright is a libertarian, a Deist, and such a fan of Alexander Hamilton that according to the Wall Street Journal he named one of his sons “Alexander Hamilton Was Wright,” a revelation that spurred commentary on the web. His review of Ron Chernow’s biography of Hamilton was written in a faux eighteenth century style and hints at Wright’s dry sense of humor.

Bibliography

One Nation Under Debt: Hamilton, Jefferson, and the History of What We Owe (2008). ISBN: 978-0071543934

• Knowledge for Generations: Wiley and the Global Publishing Industry, 1807-2007 (2007). ISBN: 978-0471757214

• Broken Buildings, Busted Budgets: How to Fix America’s Trillion-Dollar Construction Industry (2007). ISBN: 978-0226472676

• Financial Founding Fathers: The Men Who Made America Rich (2006). ISBN: 978-0226910680

The U.S. National Debt, 1787-1900 4 vols. (2005). ISBN: 978-1851968169

The First Wall Street: Chestnut Street, Philadelphia, and the Birth of American Finance (2005). ISBN: 978-0226910260

• History of Corporate Governance: The Importance of Stakeholder Activism 6 vols. (2004). ISBN: 978-1851967698

• Mutually Beneficial: The Guardian and Life Insurance in America (2004). ISBN: 978-0814793978

• The History of Corporate Finance: Development of Anglo-American Securities Markets, Financial Practices, Theories and Laws 6 vols. (2003). ISBN: 978-1851967490

Hamilton Unbound: Finance and the Creation of the American Republic (2002). ISBN: 978-0275978167

The Wealth of Nations Rediscovered: Integration and Expansion in American Financial Markets, 1780-1850 (2002). ISBN: 978-0521812375

Origins of Commercial Banking in America, 1750-1800 (2001). ISBN: 978-0742520875

• Co-authored or co-edited