I specialize in the economic and financial history of modern Europe. My dissertation examines the role of economic advisers in shaping economic policy in interwar Britain. Using archives from central banks, government ministries, international organizations, and private corporations, I focus on the shifting priorities of monetary and fiscal policy after the First World War, when countries began to grapple with the consequences of high wartime debts and exchange-rate volatility. The research ultimately details and the evolution of modern economic governance based on expertise.
My second book project explores the history of banking regulation in twentieth-century Germany. Beginning with the Reich Banking Law of 1934 and continuing to the reunification of Germany, this research details the shifting regulatory priorities of government officials and central bankers. It shows how banking supervision arose as a tool of economic security, aimed at protecting the national economy from foreign speculation and international crises. One chapter from this project was recently published in the Business History Review.
Past research has dealt with a wide range of topics, including: the importance of gold reserves to the Bank of France’s monetary policies; the influence of interwar experts in negotiating post-WW1 monetary reform in Germany; and the development of economic statistics at the central banks of interwar Europe.
Banking Regulation
The 1934 Reich Banking Law was the first comprehensive regulation over the entire German banking system. It imposed new reporting guidelines, set liquidity standards, and managed the distribution of licenses. This article traces the development of banking regulation as a matter of national security. By enacting new statutory requirements over liquidity and lending, state officials and central bankers sought to protect the German economy from foreign crises.
Economic Statistics
After the First World War, European central banks turned to experts for standardizing economic statistics. My article in Contemporary European History explores how the work of national central banks became compatible with the broader goals of interwar internationalism. Using archives from Belgium, France, Germany, the UK and the US, the research describes the efforts to align statistical terminology through in-house research departments.
Monetary Policy
Using the Bank of France’s recently compiled weekly balance sheets, this project, published in Studies in Applied Economics, investigates the importance of gold and foreign-exchange reserves to monetary policies. It shows how frequent changes in the central bank’s holdings, coupled with adjustments to the discount rate and the procurement of foreign loans, reflected the changing priorities of the central bank in times of crisis.
Finance and Geopolitics
Economic advisers played a vital role in the debates over Germany’s post-World War I reparations and subsequent reforms. In an advisory capacity, they offered policy recommendations to the members of the Dawes Committee in 1924 to address escalating geopolitical conflict. My research published in the Financial History Review shows how economists simultaneously aimed to resolve the fiscal problem of inflation and the geopolitical crisis of the 1923 Franco-Belgian invasion of the Ruhr.
Robert Yee 