Education
Ph.D., New York University, 1968 (economics). Dissertation on American economic and technological thought in the nineteenth century.
M.A., New York University, 1963 (economics). Thesis on the World Bank’s philosophy of development, with special reference to lending policies in the agricultural sector.
B.A., University of Chicago, 1959 (philology, minor in history).
High school and grade school completed at the University of Chicago’s Laboratory School.
Work History
Most of my professional life since 1962 has been spent in applying flow-of-funds and balance-of-payments statistics to forecast interest rates, capital and real estate markets. Academically, my focus has been on financial history and, since 1980, on writing a history of debt, land tenure and related economic institutions from Sumerian times through antiquity and feudal Europe to the present.
1996-present: President, Institute for the Study of Long Term Economic Trends (ISLET). Since 1998 my reports on dollar-yen relations and Japan’s financial bubble have been published monthly in Japan. These, along with my major books, have been translated and published in Japanese. In Russia I wrote a series of reports and testified on numerous occasions before the Duma with regard to its land policy and financial reforms. For the Norwegian Shipowners’ Association I produced a series of reports on the financial dimension of technology assessment, and for U.S. clients I traced the recycling of savings into mortgage credit and other financial markets.
My second duty at ISLET has been to organize and co-edit a series of conferences on the evolution of property and credit since the Bronze Age. I chaired conferences on the Mesopotamian roots of urbanization, interest-bearing debt and land redistribution, the origins of account-keeping and money, at New York University, the Oriental Institute (St. Petersburg, Russia), Columbia University, and the British Museum. The first conference, held in November 1994, was on Privatization in the Ancient Near East and Classical World (published by Harvard University, Peabody Museum, 1996), followed by Urbanization and Land Ownership in the Ancient Near East (Peabody Museum, 1999), Debt and Economic Renewal in the Ancient Near East (CDL Press, 2002), and Origins of Account-Keeping and Money in the Ancient Near East (CDL Press, in press).
1994-95: Research Director, Henry George School, preparing a statistical chart book tracing real estate’s role in the U.S. economy, its declining fiscal role and the role of land-price inflation in the economy’s overall capital gains. This work entailed reworking the Federal Reserve’s balance-sheet estimates for the U.S. economy to improve its land value estimates. I have since continued this work for the school’s sister institution, the Robert E. Schalkenbach Foundation.
1984‑present: Consultant to institutional investors on balance -of-payments and flow-of-funds analysis.
In 1989 I used my balance‑of‑payments country‑risk model to advise Scudder, Stevens & Clark on setting up its Sovereign High Yield Investment Co. N.V., an offshore fund traded on the London Stock Exchange. Starting business in November, by 1990 this fund ranked second worldwide in rate of return and capital apprecia tion. In the process of marketing this fund, I wrote a special report for Scudder on Sovereign High‑Yield Bonds: A Major New Investment Vehicle for the 1990s (published in Russian in 1993 by the state Economic Institute).
During the 1980s, when the trade deficit was the single major influence on 30‑year Treasury bond movements, my quarterly financial reports on the direction of long‑ and short‑term interest rates (and, as a derivative, the stock market) forecast within‑month movements on these bonds as well as medium-term trends.
1978‑83: Consultant to the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) defining instability mechanisms inherent in the world economy and evaluating Third World strategies and U.S. responses to the proposed New International Economic Order.
1976‑80: Consultant to Canadian government agencies. My main reports were to the Science Council on the implications of the New International Economic Order for Canadian industrial and trade prospects; to the Institute for Research on Public Policy on the adverse long‑term consequences of Canada’s foreign borrow ing, high interest rates and its commercial banking structure; and to the Secretary of State on the implications of information- transfer technology for national communications policy, and to the Cultural Policy Task Force on the prospective impact on Canada of foreign domination of its television and film programming.
1976: Consultant to The Futures Group (Glastonbury, Conn.) for the National Science Foundation analyzing the economic and finan cial conseqences of life‑extending technology in two reports: When We Live Longer: Prospects for America (with Herb Gurjuoy et al., 1977) and A Technology Assessment of Life‑Extend ing Technologies (Vol. 5: Demography, Economics and Aging, 1977). I believe these were the first reports to pinpoint the implications for the Social Security system of an aging population and its inter-generational financial tensions.
1973‑76: Consulting economist for the Montreal brokerage house Molson‑Rousseau, writing a bimonthly market report on U.S. economic conditions and inter national financial developments, and making oral reports to clients.
1972‑76: Professional Staff, Hudson Institute. Published studies on world monetary reform (with Herman Kahn), the balance‑of‑payments implications of the energy crisis, Project Independence (coal liquefaction), technology transfer between the United States and Soviet Union, and related topics for the Dept. of Energy, Energy Research Development Agency (ERDA), NEH, White House Staff, Dept. of Defense and other U.S. agencies. In addition, undertook personal consulting for clients of the Institute’s Corporate Environment Study, including Ciba‑Geigy (Basel) and the Bank of Mexico.
1970‑71: Senior economist, Continental Oil Company (Coordinating and Planning Dept), where I wrote the company’s domestic and international economic environment studies, and special reports on U.S. trade policy, and evaluations of the copper and real estate industries.
1968‑69: Balance‑of‑payments specialist, Arthur Andersen and Company. Employed specifically to write a monograph on A Financial Payments‑Flow Analysis of U.S. International Transactions: 1960‑1968, published by NYU’s Institute of Finance as a triple issue of its Bulletin in March 1970. This report was the first study to pinpoint that the entire U.S. payments deficit derived from government account, specifically the military sector (i.e., the Vietnam War), not foreign aid or private investment abroad.
1967‑68: Consulting editor for the publisher Augustus M. Kelley in the history of economic thought, consultant on statistical model building for banks (in financial accounting techniques), and for New Mexico’s Home Education Livelihood Program (HELP) in the economics of rural economic development.
1964‑67: Balance‑of‑payments economist, Chase Manhattan Bank (economic research division). Prepared country‑risk analyses, wrote the bank’s studies on The Balance of Payments of the Petroleum Industry (1966), and prepared speeches for bank officers on balance‑of‑payments topics. I left the bank to complete my doctoral dissertation.
1962‑64: Economist, Savings Banks Trust Company. Wrote the quarterly Deposit Statistics, the annual Income and Expense Analysis and the Summary of Mortgage Statistics covering New York’s 126 savings banks.
Academic career
2002-present: Distinguished Research Professor, Dept. of Economics, University of Missouri (Kansas City).
1985‑1998: Research Associate, Peabody Museum (Harvard), and Visiting Scholar, New York University (during 1988-89 in its Economics and Classics Departments, from 1990-94 at its Institute of Fine Arts) specializing in the econo mic archaeology. At the IFA I co‑taught the 1989 course on Mycenaean archaeology. At both Harvard and NYU my role was to organize the above-mentioned assyriological colloquia, which were held at NYU’s Skirball Dept. of Hebrew Studies and published by the Peabody Museum.
1969‑72: Assistant Professor of Economics, The New School for Social Research, Graduate Faculty. Taught international trade and investment; money and banking; and balance-of-payments analysis, as well as theories of national accounting and seminars in the balance of payments and theories of inflation.
Background of Dr. Michael Hudson
President, Institute for the Study of Long-Term Economic Trends
119-49 Union Turnpike
Forest Hills, N.Y. 11375
Michael Hudson’s 1972 book Super-Imperialism: The Economic Strategy of American Empire (translated into Spanish and Japanese) is a critique of how the United States exploited foreign economies through IMF and World Bank. Other books by Dr. Hudson include The Myth of Aid (1971, Orbis Books); Global Fracture: The New International Economic Order (1979, Harper & Row)
As an advisor to the White House, State Dept. and Defense Department at the Hudson Institute, and subsequently to the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR), he became one of the best known specialists in international finance. He also has consulted for the governments of Canada, Mexico and Russia, most recently for the Duma opposition to the Yeltsin regime. He writes for the Japanese e-mail newsletter “Our World.”
Dr. Hudson has published a textbook reviewing the historical development of international trade and investment theory, Trade, Development and Foreign Debt (Pluto Press, 1993, two volumes). This history is based on the courses in international economics he taught at the New School for Social Research, Graduate Faculty in 1969-72.
In conjunction with the Peabody Museum at Harvard, Dr. Hudson has headed an archaeological research team on the origins of private property, debt and real estate. His ISLET group has published
Dr. Hudson is former balance-of-payments economist for the Chase Manhattan Bank and Arthur Anderson. In 1989 he organized the world’s first third world debt fund for Scudder Stevens & Clark (an offshore fund). He continues to conduct statistical research for financial and non-profit institutions, most recently for the Robert Schalkenbach Foundation and the Levy Economics Institute.
Michael Hudson is president of the Institute for the Study of Long-term Economic Trends (ISLET) in New York and London. Among his books on the politics of international finance are Super-Imperialism: The Economic Strategy of American Empire (Holt Rinehart, 1972), and Global Fracture: The New International Economic Order (Harper & Row, 1979). He formerly taught international economics at the New School for Social Research, Graduate Faculty (1969-72), and has traced the development of international trade and financial theory in Trade, Development and Foreign Debt (Pluto Press, 1993. He is editor of the ISLET assyriological colloquia on Debt and Economic Renewal in the Ancient Near East (CDL Press, 2002), Urbanization and Land Use in the Ancient Near East ((Harvard: Peabody Museum, 1999), and Privatization in the Ancient Near East and Classical Antiquity (Harvard 1996).
In 1984 Dr. Hudson joined Harvard’s Peabody Museum to design a program in the financial origins of civilization. He has edited three colloquia in this program: Privatization in the Ancient Near East and Classical Antiquity (1996), Urbanization and Land Ownership in the Ancient Near East (1999) and Debt and Economic Renewal in the Ancient Near East (2002). A fourth volume on the Origins of Money and Account-Keeping in the Ancient Near East is in preparation.
Michael Hudson is a Wall Street financial analyst and Distinguished Research Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri (Kansas City). He has written or edited over ten books on international finance, economic history and the history of economic thought, and has been an economic advisor to the U.S., Canadian, Mexican and other governments and United Nations agencies, as well as to international corporations and money managers. He is president of the Institute for the Study of Long-term Economic Trends (ISLET). His books have been translated into Japanese, Spanish and Russian.
