Kurt Schuler is an economist in the Office of International Affairs at the U.S. Department of the Treasury. In his spare time he pursues an interest in economic history; the Historical Financial Statistics data set elsewhere on this site is one result. Schuler’s affiliation with the Center for Financial Stability centers on the development of the free of charge Historical Financial Statistics and implies no endorsement by the Department of the Treasury.
Before joining the Treasury, Schuler worked as a consultant, then as an economist at the U.S. Congress. As a consultant he undertook projects for aid agencies, central banks, investment firms, and think tanks around the world. He also wrote studies about currency boards with Steve H. Hanke of Johns Hopkins University, which influenced monetary reforms in the 1990s in Bosnia, Bulgaria, Estonia, and Lithuania. At the U.S. Congress he was a senior economist at the Joint Economic Committee. There he wrote staff reports on taxation, spending, and monetary policy, and occasionally assisted with drafting legislation. His research on dollarization had some influence on Ecuador’s dollarization in 2000.
Schuler has a Ph.D. in economics from George Mason University. He has been a postdoctoral fellow at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. He has written more than 100 publications, including books, essays, and newspaper articles. Because of his job, he refrains from commenting on matters of current economic policy and focuses his work for public consumption on matters of economic history.