Robert Yee

Assistant Professor of Humanities

Office: UTA 6.338

Biography

Robert Yee is an Assistant Professor of Humanities in the Center for Humanities.

Yee is an economic historian of modern Europe. He works on the history of political economy, finance, and the international order, with a focus on Britain and Germany in the twentieth century. His first book, The City’s Defense: The Bank of England and the Remaking of Economic Governance, 1914–1939, was published with Cambridge University Press in 2025. The book was awarded the Economic History Society’s First Monograph Prize and the European Society for the History of Economic Thought’s Best Book Award. He has also written articles in the Business History Review, Central European History, Contemporary British History, Contemporary European History, and the Financial History Review.

Prior to joining the Center for Humanities, Yee taught at Yale University and the University of Oxford. He received his PhD and MA in History from Princeton University and his BA in History and Economics from Vanderbilt University. In 2026, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.

Current Projects

Yee is currently working on two book projects: a financial history of Germany, and a history of austerity and budgetary politics in twentieth-century Europe.

Publications

Books

The City’s Defense: The Bank of England and the Remaking of Economic Governance, 1914–1939 (Cambridge University Press, 2025).

Articles & Book Chapters

“The Nazi Financial Order: Banking Law and the Credit Supervisory Office in Germany and Austria,” Central European History 58, no. 4 (2025): 375–401.

“Chancellor Churchill: The Treasury, Party Politics and the Making of Budget Day, 1924–1929,” Contemporary British History 39, no. 1 (2025): 23–54.

“Stability in Numbers: Central Banks, Expertise and the Use of Statistics in Interwar Europe,” Contemporary European History 33, no. 3 (2024): 1038–1059.

“A State of Supervision: The Political Economy of Banking Regulation in Germany, 1900s–1930s,” Business History Review 97, no. 1 (2023): 93–125.

“Reparations Revisited: The Role of Economic Advisers in Reforming German Central Banking and Public Finance,” Financial History Review 27, no. 1 (2020): 45–72.

“The Bank of France and the Gold Dependency: Observations on the Bank’s Weekly Balance Sheets and Reserves, 1898–1940,” Studies in Applied Economics, no. 128 (2018): 1–20.