Charles Goodhart

He spent the next two years interpreting English monetary history by cumulating and analysing the monthly reports of the London Joint Stock Banks, which were published after the Barings crisis of 1890.

Charles Albert Eric Goodhart, (born 23 October 1936) is a British economist.

Charles Goodhart was born on 23 October 1936 to an American Jew, Arthur Lehman Goodhart, and his English wife, Cecily Carter, in Oxford, England.

Arthur Lehman Goodhart studied law at Trinity College, Cambridge, eventually becoming a law don at Corpus Christi College.

Following the family's move to Oxford, Charles' father became the Professor of Jurisprudence in 1936 and the Master of University College (1951–1963).

Cecily Carter brought her three sons (Philip Goodhart, William Goodhart and Charles Goodhart) up as members of the Church of England.

During WWII, Arthur Goodhart's outspoken opposition to Nazism led to Charles (aged 2) being evacuated alongside his two elder brothers to the United States.

Upon their return, Charles joined his brother William Goodhart at the St Leonards branch of the (Oxford) Summerfields School.

Charles was then accepted to Eton College where he focused on the study of history and languages.

After he finished school, he completed two years of compulsory national military service (1955–1956) in which he was involved with the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 and the Suez Crisis and earned the title of Second lieutenant in the King's Royal Rifle Corps.

In October 1957, Goodhart started studying economics at Cambridge University, where he was a member of his father's college, Trinity.

In his first year, he came in first in his course.

He learnt under economists such as Nicky Kaldor, Richard Kahn, Joan Robinson, Michael Farrell, Frank Hahn and Robin Matthews.

In his final year of study, he was paired in tutorials with Sir James Mirrlees.

He completed his undergraduate course with First Class Honours.

After completing his undergraduate degree at Cambridge, Charles moved to the United States in 1960 to begin research at Harvard University studying trade cycles.

In June 1962, following the completion of his PhD thesis, which analysed United States monetary history (specifically why the economy rebounded in 1907 but not in 1929), Charles and his new wife travelled back to Cambridge.

Charles took up a Prize Fellowship at Trinity College and became an assistant lecturer in economics (1963–1964).

In 1964, Goodhart briefly joined the Department of Economic Affairs.

During this time, he worked on White Papers, planning the growth of the energy, construction and housing sectors in England.

Goodhart left the Department of Economic Affairs in 1966 when he joined the London School of Economics as a lecturer on monetary policy.

During this time, he contributed to a study on English monetary policy Monetary Policy in Twelve Industrial Countries which was commissioned by the federal Reserve Bank of Boston.

He also co-authored an article in the field of political economy alongside R.J. Bhansali, which featured in the journal 'Political Studies'.

He worked at the Bank of England on its public policy from 1968–1985; and worked at the London School of Economics from 1966–1968 and 1986–2002.

Charles Goodhart's work focuses on central bank governance practices and monetary frameworks.

He also conducted academic research into foreign exchange markets.

He is best known for formulating Goodhart's Law, which states: "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure."

He stayed at the London School of Economics until 1968.

Charles left the London School of Economics to work a temporary two-year assignment at the Bank of England.

He found his expertise in monetary economics and his knowledge of Milton Friedman's ideas to be of high value.

He was allocated to the Economic Intelligence Department which was responsible for calculating and simulating economic statistics as well as writing the Bank of England's Quarterly Bulletin.

His first job at the Bank of England was to explain the concept of domestic credit expansion to individuals within the Bank, whilst conveying the Bank's viewpoints on such issues to outside economists.

In 1970, he was tasked with empirically assessing the predictability of the demand for money, and had the results published in the Bank of England's Quarterly Bulletin in a paper called 'The Importance of Money'.

During this time Goodhart served as the first secretary of the Monetary Review Committee, who provided summarised views of monetary developments to the Chancellor and Treasury of England.

Whilst attending a conference held by the Reserve Bank of Australia in 1975, Goodhart wrote in his footnotes "whenever a government seeks to rely on a previously observed statistical regularity for control purposes, that regularity will collapse".

This quote became known as Goodhart's Law.

Goodhart's Law is commonly expressed as: "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure".

In 1979, Goodhart jointly wrote a paper which was published in the Bank of England's Quarterly Bulletin.

This paper advised the new Thatcher government against implementing monetary base control.

In the early 1980's, Goodhart joined the home finance division of the Bank of England, under John Fford.