Kenneth Rogoff

The chess world is reeling from an accusation of cheating that has generated headlines around the world, even drawing a response from Elon Musk

The epic collapse of wunderkind Sam Bankman-Fried’s $32 billion crypto empire, FTX, looks set to go down as one of the great financial debacles of all time

It is now past time to revisit the widely prevailing “free lunch” view of government debt

Over the past few years, China has significantly expanded its economic footprint in South America, overtaking the United States as the continent’s largest trading partner

Who should pay for Ukraine’s postwar reconstruction?

The tentative deal that was just struck to raise the United States’ debt ceiling won’t make the problem go away

The global economy was full of surprises in 2023

A month into 2024, the consensus forecast for the global economy remains cautiously optimistic, with most central banks and analysts projecting either a soft landing or potentially no landing at all

LONDON – Will the next recession be worse than you think? With the major central banks having little space for further interest-rate cuts, might the next cyclical downturn become a crash? In theory, fiscal policy can go far in filling the void. The past decade has seen a rise in fiscal evangelism among many economists and policymakers, and it is indeed likely that fiscal fine-tuning will be widely tested in the next downturn. Are they right?

CAMBRIDGE – With interest rates on government debt at multi-decade lows, a number of leading economists have argued that almost every advanced economy can allow debt to drift up toward Japanese levels (over 150% of GDP even by the most conservative measure) without any great concern about long-term consequences. Advocates of much higher debt might be right, but they tend to downplay or ignore everything that can go wrong

Who should pay for Ukraine’s postwar reconstruction?

In the surprise hit movie “Crazy Rich Asians” (based on a 2013 Kevin Kwan novel), a New York University economics professor (Rachel), travels with her boyfriend to Singapore to meet his family. There, she learns, apparently for the first time, that her significant other (Nick) is heir to one of Asia’s largest fortunes and has a mother intent on making sure her son does not marry a commoner, Asian-American or not

LONDON – Though US President Donald Trump tends to grab most of the headlines, he is hardly a global exception. Populist autocrats have enjoyed a breathtaking rise to power in countries around the world, and nowhere is the trend more pronounced than in Latin America following the elections of Mexico’s leftist president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO), and Brazil’s right-wing president, Jair Bolsonaro. Americans are right to complain about Trump’s autocratic tendencies, but, as former Chilean Finance Minister Andrés Velasco would remind them, Trump is a mere apprentice compared to Latin America’s populists

A month into 2024, the consensus forecast for the global economy remains cautiously optimistic, with most central banks and analysts projecting either a soft landing or potentially no landing at all

With so much angst about artificial intelligence and the future of work, the recent world chess championship in London offers some hope

If you ask most central bankers around the world what their plan is for dealing with the next normal-size recession, you would be surprised how many (at least in advanced economies) say “fiscal policy.” Given the high odds of a recession over the next two years – around 40% in the United States, for example – monetary policymakers who think fiscal policy alone will save the day are setting themselves up for a rude awakening

CAMBRIDGE – Displaying a degree of courage and clarity that is difficult to overstate, US senator and presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren has taken on Big Tech, including Facebook, Google, Amazon, and Apple. Warren’s proposals amount to a total rethink of the United States’ exceptionally permissive merger and acquisition policy over the past four decades. Indeed, Big Tech is only the poster child for a significant increase in monopoly and oligopoly power across a broad swath of the American economy. Although the best approach is still far from clear, I could not agree more that something needs to done, especially when it comes to Big Tech’s ability to buy out potential competitors and use their platform dominance to move into other lines of business

CAMBRIDGE – Why are stock-market valuations soaring when the real economy remains so fragile? One factor has become increasingly clear: The crisis has disproportionately affected small businesses and low-income service workers. They are essential for the real economy, but not so much for equity markets. True, there are other explanations for today’s lofty valuations, but each has its limitations

A decade on from the 2008 global financial crisis, policymakers constantly assure us that the system is much safer today. The giant banks at the core of the meltdown have scaled back their risky bets, and everyone – investors, consumers, and central bankers – is still on high alert. Regulators have worked hard to ensure greater transparency and accountability in the banking industry. But are we really all that safe?

The global economy was full of surprises in 2023