Discover the Best Books Written by Kenneth S. Rogoff

Kenneth Saul Rogoff (born March 22, 1953) is an American economist and chess Grandmaster. He is the Thomas D. Cabot Professor of Public Policy and professor of economics at Harvard University. Rogoff grew up in Rochester, New York. His father was a professor of radiology at the University of Rochester. Rogoff received a BA and MA from Yale University summa cum laude in 1975 and a Ph.D. in Economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1980.

At sixteen, Rogoff dropped out of high school to concentrate on chess. At that time, he met Bobby Fischer, who was impressed by Rogoff's "self-assured style and his knowing exactly what he wanted over the chessboard." 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 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, where he finished 13–15th. 

In other tournaments, he drew for first at Norristown in 1973 and at Orense in 1976. He also draws individual games against former world champions Mikhail Tal and Tigran V. Petrosian. In 2012 he drew a blitz game with the world's highest-rated player Magnus Carlsen. Early in his career, Rogoff served as an economist at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and at the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System.

Rogoff was the Charles and Marie Robertson Professor of International Affairs at Princeton University. In 2002, Rogoff was in the spotlight because of a dispute with Joseph Stiglitz, former World Bank chief economist, and 2001 Nobel Prize 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.

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 or 2000, the Keynesian tools of tax cuts, infrastructure spending (fiscal stimulus), and 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, household, corporate, 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 sometimes became pro-cyclical, which it was in some European countries under austerity policies.) In the United States, economist Paul Krugman argued that even the combination of the Oct. 2008 bailout plus the Feb. 2009 bailout was not big enough. However, 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 would not 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, Rogoff contributed to an open letter to The Sunday Times endorsing the Conservative Party and Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne's demands for greater austerity during the European debt crisis.