MInsky and Kindleberger - Kindred spirits concerning bubbles and credit instability

 

Charles Kindleberger set the tone for any discussion of bubbles in his book, Manias, Panics, and Crashes, through his deep narrative and useful framework which is similar to the pioneering work of Minsky. Normally, these two are separated as different thinker about bubbles, yet there are closer similarities than many may suspect, and many refer to their general explanation of bubbles as the Minksy-Kindleberger model although there is no formal mathematical approach.

This alignment of Minksy and Kindleberger is well described in a new article by Perry Mehrling called, "The Minsky-Kindleberger Connection and the Making of Manias, Panics, and Crashes". These two are kindred spirits and Kindleberger may have been influenced by the early work of Minsky on the instability of credit. He may not have been a believer of Minksy's views on the business cycle, but they are economic brothers with respect to their view that credit can be unstable those create extremes that can generate crashes. The inherent instability of credit requires superior monetary institutions that can control credit and serve as the lender of last resort if there is a crisis after a bubble.

Bubbles are all about credit extremes and Kindleberger used his strong knowledge of economics history and institutions to provide extensive analysis on how panics and bubbles may take root and create the vexing problems that continue into the 21st century.

Both economists come out of a pre-WWII institutionalist background which was forsaken in the post-WWII move to high theory in economics. Institutions matter and the credit frameworks that are created in the modern economy can lead to financial instability that is not directly modeled in most presentations of monetary economics.