Farewell to Robert Mundell, Nobel laureate in economics

The Nobel Prize in Economics

, 88, died "in his beloved Italy".

This is how Brian Domitrovic remembers him and at the same time announces him on Forbes.

"I spent the whole weekend thinking about Bob Mundell," writes Domitrovic.

Mundell was "an impossible amalgam of theoretical genius, algebraic and above all geometric clarity, cultural sensitivity and immeasurable practical influence" and defines him as the Zeus of economics.

In 1999 the recognition for '' his analyzes of monetary and fiscal policy under different exchange rate regimes and his analysis of optimal exchange zones ''.

He had chosen Italy in the late 1970s, Tuscany and in particular the Sienese hills as his refuge.

So Canadian but '' almost Italian ''.

His thinking made a fundamental contribution to the birth of the Euro but his practical thesis was that the optimal conditions for a merger of currencies in Europe did not exist.

In those discussions, therefore, he was counted among the 'Eurosceptics'.

A professor of economics at Columbia University in New York, Mundell began his studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he earned his Ph.D. in 1956, before moving on to the London School of Economics.

In addition to his academic career, in 1961 Mundell joined the staff of the International Monetary Fund.

In his career, the new Nobel laureate has also worked for the United Nations, the World Bank, the European Commission, the Federal Reserve, the US Treasury Department, the Canadian government and many other European and South American states.

Author of numerous texts on international economic theories, Mundell prepared one of the first studies for the single European currency and is considered the father of the theory of optimal monetary areas.