Kenneth Rogoff

{{Short description|American economist and chess grandmaster (born 1953)}}

{{Infobox officeholder

|name = Ken Rogoff

|image = Kenneth Rogoff.jpg

|office = Chief Economist of the International Monetary Fund

|president = Horst Köhler

|term_start = August 2001

|term_end = September 2003

|predecessor = Michael Mussa

|successor = Raghuram Rajan

|birth_date = {{birth date and age|1953|3|22}}

|birth_place = Rochester, New York, U.S.

|death_date =

|death_place =

|spouse = {{plainlist|

{{marriage|Evelyn Brody|1979|1989}}
{{marriage|Natasha Lance|1995}}{{cite news |url=https://www.proquest.com/docview/109511315 |title=Weddings; Natasha S. Lance, Kenneth S. Rogoff|newspaper=The New York Times|date=1995-06-25|id={{ProQuest|109511315}}}}

}}

|education = Yale University {{small|(BA, MA)}}
Massachusetts Institute of Technology {{small|(PhD)}}

|website = {{url|rogoff.scholars.harvard.edu|University website}}

|module = {{Infobox economist

|child = yes

|institution = Harvard University

|field = Financial economics

|doctoral_advisor = Rudi Dornbusch{{Cite web|url=https://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/15970/07027399-MIT.pdf?sequence=2#page=3|title=Essays on expectations and exchange rate volatility}}

|doctoral_students = Gita Gopinath{{Cite web|url=http://scholar.harvard.edu/files/gopinath/files/cv_gopinath_2016-01.pdf?m=1448635796|title=Gita Gopinath's Curriculum Vitae}}

|repec_prefix = e

|repec_id = pro164}}

| module2 = Chess career

{{Infobox chess player

| child = yes

|title = Grandmaster (1978)

|peakrating = 2520 (January 1977)

|peakranking = No. 61 (January 1980)

|country = United States

}}

Kenneth Saul Rogoff (born March 22, 1953) is an American economist and chess Grandmaster.

He is the Maurits C. Boas Chair of International Economics at Harvard University.{{cite news |last=Dhawan |first=Sunil |title=Federal Reserve Chairman Powell to Speak at IMF Conference Today |newspaper=Financial Express |date=2023-11-09 |url=https://www.proquest.com/docview/2887496723 |id={{ProQuest|2887496723}}}} During the Great Recession, Rogoff was an influential proponent of austerity.

Early life and education

Rogoff grew up in Rochester, New York. His father was a professor of radiology at the University of Rochester.

Rogoff received a B.A. and M.A. from Yale University summa cum laude in 1975,{{Cite web|date=28 October 2005|title=Kenneth Rogoff – Biographical Information|url=https://www.imf.org/external/np/bio/eng/kr.htm|access-date=28 December 2020|website=International Monetary Fund}} and a PhD in Economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1980.

Chess

At sixteen Rogoff dropped out of high school to concentrate on chess. At that time he met Bobby Fischer, who was impressed by Rogoff's "self-assured style and his knowing exactly what he wanted over the chessboard".{{Cite book |last=Soltis |first=Andrew |title=What it takes to become a chess master |publisher=Batsford |year=2012 |isbn=9781849940269 |location=London |pages=13}} He won the United States Junior Championship in 1969 and spent the next several years living primarily in Europe and playing in tournaments there. However, at eighteen he made the decision to go to college and pursue a career in economics rather than to become a professional player, although he continued to play and improve for several years afterward. Rogoff was awarded the IM title in 1974, and the GM title in 1978. He was 3rd in the World Junior Championship of 1971 and finished 2nd in the US Championship of 1975, which doubled as a Zonal competition, a half point behind Walter Browne; this result qualified him for the 1976 Interzonal at Biel where he finished 13–15th. In other tournaments, he drew for first at Norristown in 1973 and at Orense in 1976.{{cite web |url=http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessplayer?pid=44815 |title=Kenneth Rogoff |publisher=Chessgames.com |access-date=April 18, 2013 |archive-date=April 7, 2013 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130407021558/http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessplayer?pid=44815 |url-status=dead }} He has also drawn individual games against former world champions Mikhail Tal{{cite web |url=http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1140303 |title=Mikhail Tal vs Kenneth Rogoff |publisher=Chessgames.com |access-date=April 18, 2013}} and Tigran V. Petrosian.{{cite web |url=http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1107116 |title=Tigran Vartanovich Petrosian vs Kenneth Rogoff |publisher=Chessgames.com |access-date=April 18, 2013}} In 2012 he drew a blitz game with the world's highest rated player Magnus Carlsen.{{cite news |url=https://www.huffingtonpost.com/lubomir-kavalek/magnus-carlsen-storms-new_b_1855241.html |title=Magnus Carlsen Storms New York's Chess Scene |first=Lubomir |last=Kavalek |date=September 5, 2012|work=The Huffington Post |access-date=April 18, 2013}}

Career

Early in his career, Rogoff served as an economist at the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and at the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System.

Rogoff was the Charles and Marie Robertson Professor of International Affairs at Princeton University.{{cite web|url=http://ineteconomics.org/people/kenneth-rogoff |title=Kenneth Rogoff |publisher=Institute for New Economic Thinking |access-date=April 18, 2013 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130627143311/http://ineteconomics.org/people/kenneth-rogoff |archive-date=June 27, 2013 }} In 1998 he joined the faculty at Harvard University,{{cite news |last=Nasar |first=Sylvia |title=Columbia Pays Top Dollar for Economics Heavy Hitter |newspaper=The New York Times |date=1998-04-08 |url=https://www.proquest.com/docview/430961826 |id={{ProQuest|430961826}}}} and later was appointed as the Thomas D. Cabot Professor of Public Policy and Professor of Economics at Harvard.{{cite news |last=Keene |first=Raymond |title=Rogoff |newspaper=The Spectator |date=2011-11-19 |url=https://www.proquest.com/docview/904185695 |id={{ProQuest|904185695}}}} He also served as Chief Economist of the International Monetary Fund from 2001–2003.{{cite news |last=Thorpe |first=Jacqueline |title=IMF Chief Stumbles at Economic Hurdle: Says U.S. Recession 'a Done Deal,' Then Changes His Mind |newspaper=National Post |date=2001-09-27 |url=https://www.proquest.com/docview/329708206 |id={{ProQuest|329708206}}}}{{cite news |last=Schmid |first=John |title=U.S. Reliance on Chinese Lending Has Two Economies Deeply Linked |newspaper=Knight Ridder Tribune Business News |date=2003-12-28 |url=https://www.proquest.com/docview/463779924 |id={{ProQuest|463779924}}}}{{cite news |last=Beattie |first=Alan |title=Rogoff to Leave IMF to Return to Harvard: Fund's Chief Economist |newspaper=Financial Times |date=2003-04-30 |page=12 |url=https://www.proquest.com/docview/249480195 |id={{ProQuest|249480195}}}}

He currently is the Maurits C. Boas Chair of International Economics at Harvard.

In 2002, Rogoff was in the spotlight because of a dispute with Joseph Stiglitz, former chief economist of the World Bank and 2001 Nobel Prize winner. After Stiglitz criticized the IMF in his book, Globalization and Its Discontents, Rogoff replied in an open letter.{{Cite web

|url=http://www.imf.org/external/np/vc/2002/070202.htm

|title=An Open Letter

|last=Rogoff

|first=Kenneth

|date=July 2, 2002

|publisher=IMF

|access-date=May 4, 2013}} He is also a regular contributor to the non-profit media organization Project Syndicate since 2002.

2008 financial crisis

Fellow economist Alan Blinder credits both Rogoff and Carmen Reinhart with describing highly relevant aspects of the 2008 financial crisis and Great Recession.{{Cite journal |last=Blinder |first=Alan S. |date=2015-04-03 |title=What Did We Learn from the Financial Crisis, the Great Recession, and the Pathetic Recovery?|url=https://www.princeton.edu/ceps/workingpapers/243blinder.pdf|journal=The Journal of Economic Education |language=en |publisher=Princeton University Griswold Center for Economic Policy|volume=46 |issue=2 |pages=135–149 |doi=10.1080/00220485.2015.1015190|s2cid=144314357|issn=0022-0485}}

In a normal recession such as 1991 or 2000, the Keynesian tools of tax cuts and infrastructure spending (fiscal stimulus), as well as lowered interest rates (monetary stimulus), will usually right the economic ship in a matter of months and lead to recovery and economic expansion. Even the serious recession of 1982, which Blinder states "was called the Great Recession in its day," fits comfortably within this category of a normal recession which will respond to the standard tools.

By contrast, the 2008 near-meltdown destroyed parts of the financial system and left other parts reeling and in serious need of de-leveraging. Large amounts of governmental debt, household debt, corporate debt, and financial institution debt were left in its wake. And because of this debt, the normal tools of tax cuts and increased infrastructure spending were somewhat less available and/or politically difficult to achieve. (Fiscal policy at times even ended up becoming pro-cyclical, which it was in some European countries under austerity policies.) In the United States, economist Paul Krugman argued that even the combination of the Oct. 2008 bailout plus the Feb. 2009 bailout was not big enough, although Blinder states that they were large compared to previous bailouts. And, since interest rates were already near zero, the standard monetary tool of lowering rates was not going to provide much help.

Recovery from what Blinder terms a Reinhart-Rogoff recession may require debt forgiveness, either directly, or implicitly through encouraging somewhat higher than normal rates of inflation. "Not your father's recovery policies," writes Blinder.

During the 2010 United Kingdom general election, Rogoff contributed to an open letter to The Sunday Times endorsing the Conservative Party and Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne's demands for greater austerity during the European debt crisis.{{Cite book|last=Tooze|first=Adam|url=|title=Crashed: How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed the World|date=2018|publisher=Viking Press|isbn=978-0-670-02493-3|location=New York, New York|pages=349|oclc=1039188461}}

Criticism and controversy

In April 2013, Rogoff was at the center of worldwide attention with Carmen Reinhart (coauthor of the book This Time is Different) when their widely cited study "Growth in a Time of Debt" was shown to contain computation errors which critics claim undermine its central thesis that too much debt causes low growth.{{cite news | first = Ruth | last = Alexander | title = Reinhart, Rogoff... and Herndon: The student who caught out the profs | date = April 19, 2013 | url = https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-22223190 | work = BBC News | access-date = April 20, 2013}}{{cite web |url=http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/how-much-unemployment-was-caused-by-reinhart-and-rogoffs-arithmetic-mistake |title=How Much Unemployment Was Caused by Reinhart and Rogoff's Arithmetic Mistake? |publisher=Center for Economic and Policy Research |date=April 16, 2013 |access-date=April 18, 2013 |archive-date=April 19, 2013 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130419112713/http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/how-much-unemployment-was-caused-by-reinhart-and-rogoffs-arithmetic-mistake |url-status=dead }} An analysis by Thomas Herndon, Michael Ash and Robert Pollin argued that "coding errors, selective exclusion of available data, and unconventional weighting of summary statistics led to serious errors that inaccurately represent the relationship between public debt and GDP growth among 20 advanced economies in the post-war period."{{cite web|url=http://www.peri.umass.edu/fileadmin/pdf/working_papers/working_papers_301-350/WP322.pdf |title=Does High Public Debt Consistently Stifle Economic Growth? A Critique of Reinhart and Rogoff |first1=Thomas |last1=Herndon |first2=Michael |last2=Ash |first3=Robert |last3=Pollin |date=April 15, 2013 |publisher=Political Economy Research Institute, University of Massachusetts Amherst |access-date=April 18, 2013 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130418125357/http://www.peri.umass.edu/fileadmin/pdf/working_papers/working_papers_301-350/WP322.pdf |archive-date=April 18, 2013 }}{{Cite web|url=http://www.cc.com/video-clips/dcyvro/the-colbert-report-austerity-s-spreadsheet-error|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150826075641/http://www.cc.com/video-clips/dcyvro/the-colbert-report-austerity-s-spreadsheet-error|url-status=dead|archive-date=August 26, 2015|title=Austerity's Spreadsheet Error – The Colbert Report (Video Clip)|website=Comedy Central|date=24 April 2013 |access-date=2019-05-18}} Their calculations demonstrated that some high-debt countries grew at 2.2 percent rather than the {{val|-0.1}} percent figure initially cited by Reinhart and Rogoff. Rogoff and Reinhart claimed that their fundamental conclusions were accurate after correcting the coding errors detected by their critics.{{Cite web|title=Reinhart "Reinhart–Rogoff Initial Response|url=http://blogs.ft.com/money-supply/2013/04/16/reinhart-rogoff-initial-response/|date=April 16, 2013|access-date=2020-07-20|work=Financial Times blog|url-access=registration}}{{cite news |url=https://www.theguardian.com/business/economics-blog/2013/apr/17/rogoff-reinhart-defend-debt-study |title=Rogoff and Reinhart defend their numbers |first=Phillip |last=Inman |date=April 17, 2013 |work=The Guardian |access-date=April 18, 2013}} They disavowed their claim that a 90% government debt-to-GDP ratio is a specific tipping point for growth outcomes.{{Cite news|last1=Reinhart|first1=Carmen M.|last2=Rogoff|first2=Kenneth S.|date=April 25, 2013|title=Opinion {{!}} Debt, Growth and the Austerity Debate|language=en-US|work=The New York Times|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/26/opinion/debt-growth-and-the-austerity-debate.html|access-date=2020-07-20|issn=0362-4331}} Op-ed by Carmen M. Reinhart and Kenneth S. Rogoff. The subject remains controversial, because of the political ramifications of the research, though in Rogoff and Reinhart's words "[t]he politically charged discussion ... has falsely equated our finding of a negative association between debt and growth with an unambiguous call for austerity."

Memberships

2004: Council on Foreign Relations
Economic Advisory Panel of the Federal Reserve.{{cite news |title=Rogoff to Deliver Inaugural Garonzik Lecture |newspaper=Targeted News Service |date=2011-10-24 |url=https://www.proquest.com/docview/900350337 |id={{ProQuest|900350337}}}}
National Academy of Sciences
American Academy of Arts and Sciences
2008: Group of Thirty.

Publications

His book This Time Is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly, which he co-authored with Carmen Reinhart, was released in October 2009.{{citation |last=Rampell |first=Catherine |title=They Did Their Homework (800 Years of It) | newspaper=The New York Times |date=July 4, 2010 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/04/business/economy/04econ.html?src=me&ref=homepage}}

In The Curse of Cash, published in 2016, he urged that the United States phase out the 100-dollar bill, then the 50-dollar bill, then the 20-dollar bill, leaving only smaller denominations in circulation.{{cite web

| url = https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-09-07/harvard-economist-kenneth-rogoff-is-trying-to-kill-cash| title = This Harvard Economist Is Trying to Kill Cash| last = Coy| first = Peter| date = September 7, 2016| website = bloomberg.com| publisher = Bloomberg L.P. | access-date = 2016-09-07 }}

His 2025 book Our Dollar, Your Problem explores the global rise of the U.S. dollar and shows why its future stability is far from assured.{{Cite web |title=Our Dollar, Your Problem |url=https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300275315/our-dollar-your-problem/ |access-date=2025-05-02 |website=Yale University Press |language=en-US}}

Personal life

Rogoff has been married to Natasha Lance since 1995.{{cite web |last=Herring |first=Marvis |title=Author and Economist Power Couple Set to Host Campus Talks |website=University of Mississippi News |date=2024-09-17 |url=https://olemiss.edu/news/2024/09/rogoff-lectures/index.html}}

References

External links

[http://www.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/rogoff Kenneth Rogoff] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20101223103625/http://www.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/rogoff |date=2010-12-23 }} at Harvard University Department of Economics
[http://www.project-syndicate.org/contributor/433 Column archive] at Project Syndicate
{{C-SPAN|1015019}}
{{Charlie Rose view|6769}}
{{IMDb name|4231346}}
{{FIDE}}
{{chessgames player|id=44815}}
[http://www.onpointradio.org/shows/2007/11/wheres-the-economy-headed/ On Point with Tom Ashbrook] Thursday, November 15, 2007, show titled Where's the Economy Headed?
{{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110408161912/http://www.thepolitic.org/articles/52/this-time-is-different-an-interview-with-kenneth-rogoff |date=April 8, 2011 |title=This Time is Different: An Interview with Kenneth Rogoff }}, Nicholas Rugoff, The Politic, May 1, 2010
[http://www.imf.org/external/np/vc/2002/070202.htm Open Letter to Joseph Stiglitz]
{{Google Scholar id|mcZMzRsAAAAJ}}
{{cite web|title=Kenneth Rogoff|url=https://www.jstor.org/action/doBasicSearch?Query=au%3A%22Kenneth+Rogoff%22+&acc=off&wc=on&fc=off&group=none|publisher=JSTOR}}
{{Internet Archive author |sname= Kenneth Rogoff}}