Raymond Mikesell, 93; Economist Helped in Postwar Rebuilding

Raymond Mikesell, 93, an economist who was part of the Bretton Woods monetary conference at the end of World War II, died of age-related causes Tuesday at his home in Eugene, Ore.

He was an emeritus professor of economics at the University of Oregon, where he had taught from 1957 to 1993.

Mikesell was the aide to Harry Dexter White, an economist and U.S. Treasury official who led the formation of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank during the historic July 1944 conference at the Mount Washington Hotel in Bretton Woods, N.H.

The IMF and the bank helped fund the European recovery from the war and opened the modern era of global economic expansion.

Mikesell was born in Eaton, Ohio, in 1913. He earned his bachelor’s and doctorate from Ohio State University. He went to work for the federal government in 1941 after several years teaching at the University of Washington.

After the war, Mikesell taught at the University of Virginia and worked as an advisor to the State Department on currency reform in Saudi Arabia and Israel. In the 1950s, he served, among many other posts, as a senior economist at the Council of Economic Advisors and at the Paley Commission, where he designed policies that helped encourage worldwide development and trade in natural resources.

In his later years, Mikesell argued for reform of the IMF and abolition of the World Bank, which he argued had become a useless and expensive bureaucracy.