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Toward Free Exchange Rather Than Capital Controls
In Capital Controls: Against the Tide, the Economist’s Free Exchange (R.A.) described this week how macroeconomists are getting more and more comfortable with the idea of capital controls....
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Four Posts Within a Post Remembering 9/11
Here are four posts recalling life in the U.S. Treasury on 9/11 and afterwards Flying Back to Treasury on 9/11: I was in a hotel room in Tokyo when the first plane hit the World Trade Center, recently...
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Big Question at Fund-Bank Meetings: What’s With QE3?
While the shutdown-debt limit talks continue in Washington, thousands of financial people from the private and the public sectors throughout the world (including me) crowded into town this weekend for...
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The Great Global Unwinding
If there is a common factor in the recent global market turbulence it is the inevitable unwinding of unconventional US monetary policy. Evidence for this connection appeared last May and June when the...
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A Small Step Toward Monetary “Coordination” at the G-20?
This weekend’s G-20 statement reiterated the concerns—largely coming from emerging market countries—about unconventional monetary policies (UMP). But the language of the central bankers and finance...
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The 2014 G20 Growth Agenda and the 2003 G7 Agenda for Growth
At their meeting in Sydney last month the G20 announced a promising new “G20 Growth Agenda.” They centered the initiative on a goal of raising real GDP by over $2 trillion (see communique paragraph 3)...
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Why the IMF’s Exceptional Access Framework is So Important
In today’s editorial on the IMF legislation before Congress the Wall Street Journal refers to my oped of several weeks ago in which I strongly criticized the IMF for breaking its own rules in its...
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NICE-Squared (Or TWICE NICE)
Due to previous commitments in Hong Kong I could not attend today’s Bretton Woods: The Founders and the Future conference in New Hampshire, but I was invited to speak via video. Here is the text of my...
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Surprising Findings at the Macro Handbook Conferences
In order to further progress on the new Handbook of Macroeconomics, which will be published next year, Harald Uhlig and I, the co-editors of the Handbook, hosted two conferences at Stanford and Chicago...
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Too Low For Too Long Or Global Saving Glut? Both!
In an interesting new paper, “The U.S. Housing Price Bubble: Bernanke versus Taylor,” forthcoming in Journal of Economics and Business, Abrar Fitwi, Scott Hein, and Jeffrey Mercer examine two possible...
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A Deal and a Step to International Monetary Reform
I make the case in this Wall Street Journal piece and in more detail in Congressional testimony that there’s an opportunity for a deal between the Congress and the Administration on international...
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Seeking a Way through the Fog of a Currency War
Many have speculated on the nature of, and the reasons for, the exchange rate regime change in China last week. While the central bank has issued press statements and answered questions about it...
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Lessons Learned on the 30th Anniversary of the Plaza Accord
The Plaza Accord, which took place 30 years ago this month, provides two important (and fascinating) economic lessons essential for anyone interested in reforming, or simply teaching, the international...
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Doing Away with Evils in the International Financial System, Again
Seventy years ago President Harry Truman signed the Bretton Woods Agreements Act of 1945, officially creating the IMF and the World Bank. As Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau put it, the Bretton...
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Learning from Experiences in International Economic Policy
Last week we had a wonderful symposium in celebration of George Shultz’s 95th birthday. Many of George’s friends and colleagues spoke on the theme “Learning from Experience” in economic policy,...
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Ideas and Action: A Rules-Based Deal for the IMF
Several months ago in Congressional testimony, in a Wall Street Journal article, in meetings with public officials, and in a post on Economics One, I suggested the idea that “There is room for a deal”...
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A Reawakening of International Monetary Policy Research
International Monetary Stability: Past Present and Future was the topic of this year’s monetary policy conference held last week at Stanford’s Hoover Institution. With highly volatile exchange rates,...
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New Test Finds No Impact of QE on Long-Term Interest Rate
The Fed’s stated purpose of quantitative easing (QE) was to lower long-term interest rates, and many papers have endeavored to test empirically whether it achieved that purpose. Some, such as the paper...
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Rules Are Green and Discretion Is Red in the Monetary Game
Raghuram Rajan, Governor of the Reserve Bank of India, is calling for a reform of the international monetary system. He has been calling attention to problems in the system for a while, and now he is...
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Whither Economic Freedom Post-Brexit?
As events are turning out, the Brexit decision is providing an opening to revive a trend toward economic freedom and thus stronger economic growth. But will the UK leadership and their counterparts in...
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