Rudi Dornbusch

Rüdiger Dornbusch (June 8, 1942 – July 25, 2002) was a German economist who worked in the United States for most of his career.

Dornbusch was born in Krefeld in 1942.

After completing his secondary education at the Gymnasium am Moltkeplatz, he studied political science at the University of Geneva, and received his undergraduate degree (licence en sciences politiques) from the Graduate Institute of International Studies in 1966.

He went on to graduate study at the University of Chicago, receiving an MA in economics in 1966, and a PhD in economics in 1971.

He lectured briefly at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, before serving as an assistant professor at the University of Rochester for two years; he then returned to Chicago, where he served as a professor of international economics.

In 1975, he moved to MIT, where he was appointed an associate professor in the Department of Economics, and was made a full professor in 1984.

He stayed at MIT until his death in 2002.

Throughout his career his main focus was on international economics, especially monetary policy, macroeconomic development, growth and international trade.

According to some of his students and associates his talent was to extract the heart of a problem and make it understandable in simple terms.

For example, he explained fluctuations in prices and exchange rates with great clarity (notably with his overshooting model).

He succeeded in making a more realistic model than Mundell–Fleming model with regard to a small open economic system, considering exchange rate expectations.

He worked also for the International Monetary Fund, contributing to the development of stabilisation policies, especially for Latin American countries.

Along with Sebastián Edwards he coined the term macroeconomic populism.

For more than 15 years he served as an associate editor of the Quarterly Journal of Economics.

Together with Stanley Fischer he also wrote widely used undergraduate textbooks.

He died, aged sixty, from cancer.