Kenneth Rogoff
Kenneth Rogoff is the Maurits C. Boas Professor of International Economics at Harvard University and a former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund. His work focuses on international macroeconomics, financial crises, public debt, and monetary policy.
Low Real Rates Were No Basis for Treating Government Debt as Cheap
Kenneth Rogoff argues that policymakers mistook a decade of low real interest rates for a durable feature of the economy, despite the historical volatility of rates and the difficulty of forecasting them. In a discussion with Steven Davis, he says that uncertainty should make governments wary of treating cheap borrowing as a reason to let debt rise without limit: higher rates can increase servicing costs and leave less room to respond to future shocks. Rogoff’s case is for fiscal prudence, not a ban on borrowing.
Dollar Dominance Could Erode Without a Clear Successor Currency
At a Hoover Institution conference on central-bank independence and international risks, Condoleezza Rice, Arvind Krishnamurthy, Stephen Redding and Kenneth Rogoff argued that dollar dominance can no longer be analyzed apart from U.S. security commitments, fiscal policy, technology competition and trade frictions. The central claim running through the discussion was that the United States still benefits from a powerful reserve-currency position, but that privilege depends on confidence in safe dollar assets and stable institutions. Krishnamurthy quantified the reserve-currency asset as a large interest-rate benefit, while Redding and Rogoff warned that tariffs, fiscal strain and political pressure on the Federal Reserve could make erosion costly even without a clear successor to the dollar.