Kemmerer came to Princeton from Cornell in 1912, joining Frank A. Fetter (q.v.), who had come from Ithaca a year earlier. In 1929 he helped establish the International Finance Section, contributed to its endowment, and became its first director as well as first Walker Professor, serving in these positions until his retirement in 1943.
He wrote more than a dozen books. Perhaps the most important for other economists was his Modern Currency Reforms (1916). Best known was The A B C of the Federal Reserve System (1918), which ran to twelve editions.
Among the honors bestowed on him were the presidency of the American Economic Association; election to the American Philosophical Society and to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; decorations by the governments of Belgium, Colombia, Ecuador, and Poland, and honorary degrees from universities in Bolivia and Ecuador as well as from Columbia, Occidental, Oglethorpe, Rutgers, and Wesleyan. One distinction that especially delighted him was the honorary membership the Princeton Class of 1916 voted him because he and they ``were Freshmen together.''
He left bequests to the three universities with which he had been connected -- Wesleyan, Cornell, and Princeton.