Richard Sylla

Richard Sylla is Professor Emeritus of Economics at the Stern School of Business, New York University, where from 1990 to 2015 he was Henry Kaufman Professor of the History of Financial Institutions and Markets. He has also held positions at North Carolina State University, and visiting positions at the University of Pennsylvania, the University of North Carolina, and Harvard University. He is also a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, a Fellow of the Cliometric Society, a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, and a Senior Associate Member, St. Antony’s College, Oxford.

Professor Sylla received the B.A., the M.A., and the Ph.D. from Harvard University, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. His research focus is on the financial history of the United States in comparative contexts.  He is the author of eleven books and dozens of articles and book chapters. In 1970 his article “Federal Policy, Banking Market Structure, and Capital Mobilization in the United States, 1863‑1913,” received the Arthur H. Cole Prize for best article published in the Journal of Economic History.  He has received grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the NBER, the National Science Foundation, and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, and is a recipient of the Citibank Award for Excellence in Teaching at NYU.

Sylla has served as editor of The Journal of Economic History, chairman of the board of trustees of the Cliometric Society, president of the Economic History Association, and president of the Business History Conference,  which presented its Lifetime Achievement Award to him in 2011.  He has also served as chairman of the board of trustees of the Museum of American Finance in New York.