Joel Kaye specializes in intellectual history, the history of economic thought, and the history of science of the medieval period. He received his B.A. from the University of Wisconsin (1968) and his Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania (1991). He is the author of Economy and Nature in the Fourteenth Century: Money, Market Exchange, and the Emergence of Scientific Thought (1998). He is currently researching changes in the concept of balance and equilibrium c. 1225–1375.