Kenneth Saul Rogoff (born March 22, 1953) is an American
economist
An economist is a professional and practitioner in the social sciences, social science discipline of economics.
The individual may also study, develop, and apply theories and concepts from economics and write about economic policy. Within this ...
and
chess
Chess is a board game for two players, called White and Black, each controlling an army of chess pieces in their color, with the objective to checkmate the opponent's king. It is sometimes called international chess or Western chess to dist ...
Grandmaster. He is the Thomas D. Cabot Professor of Public Policy and professor of economics at
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of highe ...
.
Early life
Rogoff grew up in
Rochester, New York
Rochester () is a City (New York), city in the U.S. state of New York (state), New York, the county seat, seat of Monroe County, New York, Monroe County, and the fourth-most populous in the state after New York City, Buffalo, New York, Buffalo, ...
. His father was a professor of radiology at the
University of Rochester
The University of Rochester (U of R, UR, or U of Rochester) is a private research university in Rochester, New York. The university grants undergraduate and graduate degrees, including doctoral and professional degrees.
The University of ...
.
Rogoff received a
BA and
MA from
Yale University
Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the w ...
''
summa cum laude
Latin honors are a system of Latin phrases used in some colleges and universities to indicate the level of distinction with which an academic degree has been earned. The system is primarily used in the United States. It is also used in some Sou ...
'' in 1975,
and a
PhD PHD or PhD may refer to:
* Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), an academic qualification
Entertainment
* '' PhD: Phantasy Degree'', a Korean comic series
* '' Piled Higher and Deeper'', a web comic
* Ph.D. (band), a 1980s British group
** Ph.D. (Ph.D. al ...
in
Economics
Economics () is the social science that studies the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services.
Economics focuses on the behaviour and interactions of economic agents and how economies work. Microeconomics anal ...
from the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of th ...
in 1980.
Chess
At sixteen Rogoff dropped out of high school to concentrate on chess. 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
, french: Biennois(e)
, neighboring_municipalities= Brügg, Ipsach, Leubringen/Magglingen (''Evilard/Macolin''), Nidau, Orpund, Orvin, Pieterlen, Port, Safnern, Tüscherz-Alfermée, Vauffelin
, twintowns = Iserlohn (Germany) ...
where he finished 13–15th. In other tournaments, he drew for first at Norristown in 1973 and at Orense in 1976. He has also drawn individual games against former world champions
Mikhail Tal
Mikhail Nekhemyevich Tal; rus, Михаил Нехемьевич Таль, ''Mikhail Nekhem'yevich Tal' '', ; sometimes transliterated ''Mihails Tals'' or ''Mihail Tal'' (9 November 1936 – 28 June 1992) was a Soviet-Latvian chess player ...
and
Tigran V. Petrosian. In 2012 he drew a blitz game with the world's highest rated player
Magnus Carlsen
Sven Magnus Øen Carlsen (born 30 November 1990) is a Norwegian chess grandmaster who is the reigning five-time World Chess Champion. He is also a three-time World Rapid Chess Champion and five-time World Blitz Chess Champion. Carlsen has h ...
.
Career
Early in his career, Rogoff served as an economist at the
International Monetary Fund
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is a major financial agency of the United Nations, and an international financial institution, headquartered in Washington, D.C., consisting of 190 countries. Its stated mission is "working to foster glo ...
(IMF), and at the
Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System
The Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, commonly known as the Federal Reserve Board, is the main governing body of the Federal Reserve System. It is charged with overseeing the Federal Reserve Banks and with helping implement the m ...
.
Rogoff was the Charles and Marie Robertson Professor of International Affairs at
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the ...
.
In 2002, Rogoff was in the spotlight because of a dispute with
Joseph Stiglitz
Joseph Eugene Stiglitz (; born February 9, 1943) is an American New Keynesian economist, a public policy analyst, and a full professor at Columbia University. He is a recipient of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences (2001) and the J ...
, former chief economist of the
World Bank
The World Bank is an international financial institution that provides loans and grants to the governments of low- and middle-income countries for the purpose of pursuing capital projects. The World Bank is the collective name for the Inte ...
and 2001
Nobel Prize
The Nobel Prizes ( ; sv, Nobelpriset ; no, Nobelprisen ) are five separate prizes that, according to Alfred Nobel's will of 1895, are awarded to "those who, during the preceding year, have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind." Alfr ...
winner. After Stiglitz criticized the IMF in his book, ''Globalization and Its Discontents'', Rogoff replied in an open letter. He is also a regular contributor to Project Syndicate since 2002.
2008 near-meltdown
Fellow economist
Alan Blinder credits both Rogoff and
Carmen Reinhart with describing highly relevant aspects of the
2008 financial institution near-meltdown and
resulting serious recession.
In a normal recession such as
1991
File:1991 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: Boris Yeltsin, elected as Russia's first president, waves the new flag of Russia after the 1991 Soviet coup d'état attempt, orchestrated by Soviet hardliners; Mount Pinatubo erupts in the Phi ...
or
2000
File:2000 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: Protests against Bush v. Gore after the 2000 United States presidential election; Heads of state meet for the Millennium Summit; The International Space Station in its infant form as seen from S ...
, the
Keynesian
Keynesian economics ( ; sometimes Keynesianism, named after British economist John Maynard Keynes) are the various macroeconomic theories and models of how aggregate demand (total spending in the economy) strongly influences economic output an ...
tools of
tax cuts
A tax cut represents a decrease in the amount of money taken from taxpayers to go towards government revenue. Tax cuts decrease the revenue of the government and increase the disposable income of taxpayers. Tax cuts usually refer to reductions in ...
and infrastructure spending (
fiscal stimulus
In economics, stimulus refers to attempts to use monetary policy or fiscal policy (or stabilization policy in general) to stimulate the economy. Stimulus can also refer to monetary policies such as lowering interest rates and quantitative easin ...
), 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
Paul Robin Krugman ( ; born February 28, 1953) is an American economist, who is Distinguished Professor of Economics at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, and a columnist for ''The New York Times''. In 2008, Krugman was t ...
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
The 2010 United Kingdom general election was held on Thursday 6 May 2010, with 45,597,461 registered voters entitled to vote to elect members to the House of Commons. The election took place in 650 constituencies across the United Kingdom und ...
, Rogoff contributed to an open letter to ''
The Sunday Times
''The Sunday Times'' is a British newspaper whose circulation makes it the largest in Britain's quality press market category. It was founded in 1821 as ''The New Observer''. It is published by Times Newspapers Ltd, a subsidiary of News UK, whi ...
'' endorsing the
Conservative Party
The Conservative Party is a name used by many political parties around the world. These political parties are generally right-wing though their exact ideologies can range from center-right to far-right.
Political parties called The Conservative P ...
and Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer
George Osborne's demands for
greater austerity during the
European debt crisis
The European debt crisis, often also referred to as the eurozone crisis or the European sovereign debt crisis, is a multi-year debt crisis that took place in the European Union (EU) from 2009 until the mid to late 2010s. Several eurozone me ...
.
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 recession.
An analysis by
Thomas Herndon
Thomas Herndon (born 1985) is an assistant professor of economics at Loyola Marymount University became known for critiquing " Growth in a Time of Debt", a widely cited academic paper by Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff supporting the austerit ...
, Michael Ash and
Robert Pollin
Robert Pollin (born September 29, 1950) is an American economist, and self described socialist. He is a professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and founding co-director of its Political Economy Research Institute (PE ...
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."
Their calculations demonstrated that some high debt countries grew at 2.2 percent, rather than the 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. They disavowed their claim that a 90% government
debt-to-GDP ratio
In economics, the debt-to-GDP ratio is the ratio between a country's government debt (measured in units of currency) and its gross domestic product (GDP) (measured in units of currency per year). While it is a "ratio", it is technically measured ...
is a specific tipping point for growth outcomes.
[. 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 "
e 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
The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) is an American think tank specializing in U.S. foreign policy and international relations. Founded in 1921, it is a nonprofit organization that is independent and nonpartisan. CFR is based in New York Ci ...
Economic Advisory Panel of the Federal Reserve.
National Academy of Sciences
The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the Nat ...
American Academy of Arts and Sciences
The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (abbreviation: AAA&S) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, a ...
2008:
Group of Thirty
The Group of Thirty, often abbreviated to G30, is an international body of financiers and academics which aims to deepen understanding of economic and financial issues and to examine consequences of decisions made in the public and private sect ...
.
Publications
His book ''This Time Is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly'', which he co-authored with
Carmen Reinhart, was released in October 2009.
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.
See also
*
List of Jewish chess players
Jewish players and theoreticians have long been involved in the game of chess and have significantly contributed to the development of chess, which has been described as the "Jewish National game". Chess gained popularity amongst Je ...
References
External links
Kenneth Rogoffat
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of highe ...
Department of Economics
Column archiveat
Project Syndicate
Project Syndicate is an international media organization that publishes and syndicates commentary and analysis on a variety of global topics. All opinion pieces are published on the ''Project Syndicate'' website, but are also distributed to a wi ...
*
*
*
*
*
''On Point'' with Tom AshbrookThursday, November 15, 2007, show titled Where's the Economy Headed?
* , Nicholas Rugoff, ''
The Politic'', May 1, 2010
Open Letter to Joseph Stiglitz*
*
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Rogoff, Kenneth
20th-century American economists
20th-century American Jews
21st-century American economists
21st-century American Jews
1953 births
American chess players
Center for Global Development
Chess grandmasters
Economists from New York (state)
Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Fellows of the Econometric Society
Group of Thirty
Harvard University faculty
Institute for New Economic Thinking
International finance economists
Jewish chess players
Living people
Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences
New Keynesian economists
Princeton University faculty
Scientists from Rochester, New York
Yale University alumni