About Kenneth Rogoff
I am a Professor of Economics at Harvard University, and former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund. As an unapologetic globalist, I believe it is incredibly narrow-minded and short-sighted of Americans to think they should not care much about how the rest of the world is faring; in fact it is very much in our long-run self-interest to do so. This critique applies equally to both the left and the right in the current political debate, albeit in different ways.
The material here will reflect my broad-ranging interests in international macroeconomics and finance, where over my five decades as a professional economist – which includes a couple hundred articles and four books – I have worked on topics from inflation to exchange rates to financial crisis (to name just a few), and written extensively on most every region of the world. Methodologically, my work emphasizes the importance of looking at the long sweep of history in trying to gauge what might come next; it also draws heavily on political economy and game theory, the latter being perhaps a legacy of my early life as a professional chess player. I no longer play, but still hold the title of international grandmaster, and on occasion write about chess, for example lessons about AI one can learn from chess. I have long been one of the dozen most cited economists.
Although I am very proud to be an American, and think the United States is the greatest country in the world, I have always been uncomfortable with US arrogance in dealing with the rest of the world, particularly in the economic issues on which I focus. The title of my forthcoming book Our Dollar, Your Problem: An Insider’s View of Seven Turbulent Decades of Global Finance and the Road Ahead owes to a famous quote from Texan John R. Connally, who served as Treasury Secretary under President Richard Nixon. Connally has been sent to Rome in 1971 to deal with foreign finance ministers who were furious at being suddenly told that their governments could no longer trade their dollars for gold. Connally’s remark captures US arrogance but is also ironic because the inflation and dollar debasement his counterparts worried about ultimately hurt Americans more than anyone else. The book, which provides a sweeping history of the rise of the dollar after World War II, provides context for today’s fast-shifting changes, and perspective on what might happen next. Needless to say, the title rings all too true of the current US administration which is many ways a throwback to Nixon.
Although my book often uses anecdotes from my experiences to animate and motivate issues (for example, my meetings with world leaders or top policymakers), I do not anticipate it being made into a movie. For a book that is on that track, I recommend my spouse Natasha’s 2022 memoir Muppets in Moscow about the making of Sesame Street in Russia in the 1990s.
Why subscribe?
I might not post nearly as often as some – I am not a professional journalist or even a part-time one – but perhaps sometimes my writings will on occasion provoke readers to think about a topic differently. In principle, I think its most interesting to write about topics where the entrenched consensus – that is most of what you read – seems wrong. Although this often involves taking a lot of heat from those invested in status quo thinking, over time, I think I have proven right a fair amount of the time, particularly on topics where I have done extensive basic research.
A few ideas…
For example, my research starting a decade ago strongly suggested that China’s housing market was becoming overbuilt in large swathes of the country. This is consensus now, but for years it was dismissed as fringe thinking. Similarly, during the decade when real interest rates were ultra-low, my historical research strongly suggested they would eventually revert to trend, as they always have in the past and appear to have done so again. A unpopular but incontrovertible corollary is that very high public debt is not a free lunch, an illusion that the vast majority of macroeconomic commentators came to embrace on the theory that if the government never has to pay much interest, why should it care. To me, this was always just another example of the This Time is Different phenomena Carmen Reinhart and I wrote about in our 2009 book, which by the way at one point, almost a year after publication, reached #4 on Amazon of all books. Another example is the view that central banks have solved inflation, and it will never come back, something anyone who understands the political economy of monetary policy would never have bought into. As I have been writing for some time, and as my new book explains, the risks of another significant bout of inflation over the next five to seven years is extremely high, it is remarkable how little this risk seems to be priced into markets.
My regular posts will include links to my monthly project syndicate column on global economic issues as well as other op-eds, as well as other op-eds and podcasts, and follow-ups on debates I anticipate that might stem from Our Dollar, Your Problem. Over time, I also expect to post some of my lecture notes.
