Kenneth S. Rogoff

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Kenneth Rogoff.jpg
Kenneth S. Rogoff, 2002
Surname Kenneth Saul Rogoff
Association United StatesUnited States United States
Born March 22, 1953
Rochester (New York)
title International Master (1974)
Grand Master (1978)
Current  Elo rating 2505 (August 2020)
Best Elo rating 2520 (January 1977 to January 1978, January 1980)
Tab at the FIDE (English)

Kenneth Saul "Ken" Rogoff (born March 22, 1953 in Rochester (New York) ) is an American economist . Since 1999 he has been a professor at Harvard University . From 2001 to 2003 he was chief economist at the International Monetary Fund (IMF). He also became known as a chess player who holds the title of Grand Master .

Life

Rogoff received his bachelor's and master's degrees from Yale University with summa cum laude and Honors in Economics . In 1980 the Massachusetts Institute of Technology awarded him a Ph.D. His dissertation topic was Essays on Expectations and Exchange Rate Volatility .

From 1980 to 1983 he worked as an economist on the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System . From 1982 to 1983 he was in the Research Department of the International Monetary Fund. From 1985 to 1988 he was an Associate Professor at the University of Wisconsin – Madison . In 1986 he became a research fellow of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation ( Sloan Research Fellow ). He received his first professorship in 1989 at the University of California at Berkeley . In 1992 he moved to Princeton University , where he headed the Chair of Foreign Trade for seven years .

In 1999 Rogoff moved to Harvard University, where he has held a professorship for public policy ever since. From 2001 to 2003 he was also chief economist and scientific director of the IMF.

Scientific positioning

Rogoff is considered a neoliberal economist, a monetarist of the Friedmann School, opponents like Stiglitz even call him a “market fundamentalist”, and he himself a “technocratic optimist”.

Since the early 1980s he has published extensively on questions of economic policy and international finance . His focus is on exchange rates , international debt and international monetary policy .

In his paper on exchange rates, published in 1983, he demonstrated that economic models are unable to reproduce the exchange rate more precisely than the random walk model , a work that is still considered to be groundbreaking today.

Controversy Rogoff – Stiglitz 2002

In 2001/2002 there was a dispute between Rogoff and the Nobel laureate in economics Joseph Stiglitz , a former chief economist of the World Bank . The dispute was driven by Stiglitz's criticism of the IMF's policies, which the latter presented in detail in “ The Shadows of Globalization ” 2002. Among other things, Stiglitz had described the economists of the IMF as third class. The main point of criticism was the harmfulness and counterproductivity of the austerity policy in the interests of the financial oligarchy. In response to Stiglitz's allegations, Rogoff wrote an open, very personal letter in July 2002, in which he presented the Keynesian concept of increasing government spending as ineffective and polemicized against Stiglitz: “Joe, as an academic you are an outstanding genius. Like John Nash, who also won the Nobel Prize, you have a beautiful mind. As a politician you are a little less impressive. ”Stiglitz explained Rogoff's behavior as an attempt to defend the honor of his teacher and IMF architect Stanley Fisher , and later Rogoff came to the same results as he did.

Rogoff is critical of the recovery of the US economy. In August 2008, he predicted the worst was yet to come and foresaw a collapse of large US banks. He also examined the history of financial crises in a sensational monograph.

Incorrect calculations for Growth in a time of debt

His essay Growth in a time of debt , published together with Carmen Reinhart , has been the subject of controversy since 2013 . This article, published in May 2010, comes to the conclusion that the economic growth of an economy declines sharply when the debt rises to more than 90 percent of the gross domestic product . Rogoff came to this conclusion after analyzing economic data from a total of 66 countries for the past 800 years. This contribution was taken up by many politicians to justify austerity measures .

Thomas Herndon , economist and PhD student at the University of Massachusetts, analyzed the data processed with Microsoft Excel and came to the conclusion that the Excel spreadsheet by Rogoff and Reinhart contained errors. He noticed that Rogoff and Reinhart had weighted some data very strangely in their study and excluded individual countries that had grown strongly despite high debts (especially New Zealand ). Also, due to an error in the Excel formulas, some data were not taken into account in the calculation. According to Herndon’s calculation, economic growth did not collapse even with indebtedness of 90 percent or more of the gross domestic product . Criticism of Rogoff's work came from Paul Krugman, a Nobel laureate in economics , among others . It was u. a. noted that the causality is reversed, countries have high national debt because they have serious economic problems. Rogoff was accused of supporting austerity policies with his Excel errors and thus causing high unemployment.

Rogoff replied that although his mistake was embarrassing, it did not change the central research results. A high national debt could have a negative impact on economic growth. Another problem with the discussion is that the study was exaggerated by some politicians and political activists from various camps. This gave the impression that they had asserted a simple connection between national debt and economic growth and spoke out in general and undifferentiated in favor of austerity measures. The question of whether high national debt results from lower tax revenues and slower economic growth, or whether high national debt slows economic growth, cannot be answered across the board. He believes that causality can basically go in both directions without being able to make a general statement.

Barry Eichengreen believes that Reinhart and Rogoff were nuanced and careful in their original analysis. The political conclusions drawn from this by Olli Rehn and Paul Ryan were however negligent, and Reinhart and Rogoff should have contradicted this.

Call for the abolition of cash

In 2014, Rogoff proposed the abolition of cash and extolled the benefits of a cashless economy . Cash, Rogoff said, would encourage crime. It would be easier for central banks to enforce negative interest rates , while tax evaders and other criminals would have a harder time with cashless money transactions. This proposal has recently also been discussed in Germany - v. a. State data protection officers and consumer advocates have since started to deal with the issue.

Memberships and functions

Chess and private matters

At fourteen, Rogoff received the title of Master from the US Chess Federation, USCF , and two years later he dropped out of school to concentrate on the game of chess. Rogoff was considered one of the best chess players in the United States. He took part in the US Chess Championship several times and was awarded the title of International Grand Master by the World Chess Federation FIDE in 1978 after qualifying for an elimination tournament to determine a challenger for the World Chess Championship. After 1980, Rogoff did not play an Elo rated game and is therefore listed as inactive at FIDE.

Kenneth Rogoff is known in the chess scene for one of the shortest games. At the student world championship in Graz (1973) he met Robert Hübner . In order not to endanger their position in the scoring table, Rogoff and Huebner agreed to abandon the game as a draw without playing a move . However, the referees insisted that they must make at least a few moves. So they played a series of ridiculous moves and then agreed on a tie. The referees intervened again and demanded an apology from both players and started a new game at seven in the evening. Rogoff appeared and apologized. When Huebner had not appeared after an hour, the game was counted as a victory for Rogoff.

Rogoff is married and has two children.

Honors

Publications (selection)

Monographs

Articles in scientific journals

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Philip Mirowski: Undead Live Longer: Why Neoliberalism Is Even Stronger After the Crisis . Matthes & Seitz Berlin Verlag, 2015, ISBN 978-3-95757-209-7 ( google.de [accessed on September 25, 2016]).
  2. ↑ Guy Sorman: Economics Does Not Lie . Encounter Books, 2009, ISBN 978-1-59403-438-1 ( google.de [accessed September 26, 2016]).
  3. ^ An Open Letter to Joseph Stiglitz, by Kenneth Rogoff, Economic Counselor and Director of the Research Department, IMF. In: www.imf.org. Retrieved September 26, 2016 .
  4. ↑ Empirical exchange rate models of the seventies: Do they fit out of sample? , together with RA Messe, Journal of International Economics Vol. 14 1–2, pp. 3-24, 1983
  5. ↑ open letter to Joseph Stiglitz
  6. ↑ Series: Economists: Joseph Stiglitz: Der Querdenker . In: Balance . ISSN  1022-3487 ( bilanz.ch [accessed on September 26, 2016]).
  7. ↑ Cf. "The worst is yet to come", FAZ, Aug. 19, 2008 Financial crisis "The worst is yet to come"
  8. ↑ "This Time is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly" (German: "This time everything is different. Eight centuries of financial crises"), together with Carmen Reinhart, Princeton University Press 2009
  9. ↑ JOURNAL EDITOR: The Famous Reinhart-Rogoff Debt Paper Did Not Go Through The Normal Refereeing Process , on businessinsider.com, accessed on May 25, 2018 (English)
  10. ↑ Marc Brost, Mark Schieritz, Wolfgang Uchatius: Verrechnet! In: The time . June 27, 2013, ISSN  0044-2070 , p. 17-19 ( online ).
  11. ↑ Malte Buhse: The economists soap opera. Die Zeit (online edition), May 28, 2013, accessed on July 3, 2013 .
  12. ↑ Center for Economic and Policy Research : How Much Unemployment Was Caused by Reinhart and Rogoff's Arithmetic Mistake? , April 16, 2013
  13. ↑ “A witch hunt” - Kenneth Rogoff on his Excel error Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , October 22, 2013
  14. ^ New York Times, Kenneth Rogoff, Carmen Reinhard, Debt, Growth and the Austerity Debate
  15. ^ Zeit Online, Barry Eichengreen, The Real Scandal , March 2, 2013
  16. ↑ See “Economist Rogoff wants to abolish cash” , FAZ, Nov. 19, 2014
  17. ↑ Cf. Roland Tichy: "Will cash be abolished?" , "Tichy's insight" (blog article), May 7, 2015, as well as "Cash in the digital society - anachronism or printed freedom?" ( Memento from May 18, 2015 in the Internet Archive ), event announcement on the website of the State Commissioner for Data Protection Rhineland-Palatinate, May 2015
  18. ^ Brief Biography & CV. Retrieved September 25, 2016 .
  19. ↑ http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1543378 (accessed December 18, 2014)
  20. ↑ Alexander, C. (1973): A Book of Chess , New York: Harper & Row, ISBN 0-06-010048-6
  21. ↑ Bernhard Harms Prize. ifw-kiel.de , archived from the original on June 14, 2013 ; Retrieved June 15, 2013 .
  22. ↑ https://www.ifk-cfs.de/fileadmin/downloads/dbprize/PM_Symposium_Final_GER_220911.pdf
personal data
SURNAME Rogoff, Kenneth S.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Rogoff, Kenneth; Rogoff, Kenneth Saul (full name); Rogoff, Ken
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American economist
DATE OF BIRTH March 22, 1953
PLACE OF BIRTH Rochester (New York)