Barry Eichengreen

Barry Eichengreen

1952– ○ Living

An economist who reads international monetary order through history

He read the Marshall Plan not simply as an aid project, but as a structural adjustment program that changed postwar Europe’s economic order.

Barry Eichengreen is an American economist and economic historian who connects the history of international monetary and financial systems to contemporary policy problems. His work on the gold standard showed how the structure and management of an international monetary regime helped transmit the Great Depression. In his study of the Marshall Plan, he emphasized that the conditions attached to aid, not simply its volume, pushed Western Europe’s postwar mixed economies toward more markets and less control. That argument made him an important reference point in debates over whether reconstruction succeeds through cash, institutional conditions, or their combination.