Kenneth Rogoff: commitment

Transcript context

…Thank you. Final question for you, for our listeners. Your book’s coming out. It’s on very important issues of currencies, international trade, international finance. It draws upon a lifetime of your learning and practice and advising. What is it you think you’ll do next? [laughs] Like any academic, I already have my next few years of projects. Some of them, frankly, grow out of the book. I think people have forgotten about political economy. They just think if the central bank says the inflation rate’s 2 percent, on average, it’ll be 2 percent, and we go home. I worked on that early in my life. I wrote the first paper on why you should have an independent central bank. I’m working on it again, admittedly with some very talented young people, including Marina Halac at Yale and Pierre Yared, who’s at Columbia, but now actually on the Council of Economic Advisors. And just thinking that, no, the political pressures are important, so that’s an important topic. I’m also working on China. It’s an area I’ve been working on for a long time. I have some thoughts about comparing China and Japan, for example. I have a lot of things I’m excited about. Part of what was so great about the book is, I had, I would describe, a mini Renaissance in my research. At least I feel that way. I don’t know if the rest of the world thinks that. It gives me joy to have some confidence about some of the ideas, although, as you say, there’s much more to it. Again, everyone, Ken’s new and excellent book is Our Dollar, Your Problem. Ken Rogoff, thank you very much.…

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