Henry L. Stimson Lectures on World Affairs – Kenneth Rogoff

Kenneth Rogoff (’75) is an award-winning economist and a professor of economics and public policy at Harvard University. This event will feature his book, Our Dollar, Your Problem: An Insider's View of Seven Turbulent Decades of Global Finance, and the Road Ahead (Yale University Press, 2025), which “argues that America’s currency might not have reached today’s lofty pinnacle without a certain amount of good luck. Drawing in part on his own experiences, including with policymakers and world leaders…Rogoff animates the remarkable postwar run of the dollar—how it beat out the Japanese yen, the Soviet ruble, and the euro—and the challenges it faces today from crypto and the Chinese yuan, the end of reliably low inflation and interest rates, political instability, and the fracturing of the dollar bloc. Americans cannot take for granted that the Pax Dollar era will last indefinitely, not only because many countries are deeply frustrated with the system, but also because overconfidence and arrogance can lead to unforced errors. Rogoff shows how America’s outsized power and exorbitant privilege can spur financial instability—not just abroad but also at home.”

Rogoff is Maurits C. Boas Professor at Harvard University, and former chief economist at the IMF. His influential 2009 book with Carmen Reinhart, This Time Is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly, shows the remarkable quantitative similarities across time and countries in the roots and aftermath of debt and financial crises. Rogoff is also known for his pioneering work on central bank independence, and on exchange rates. He is co-author of the widely used graduate text, Foundations of International Macroeconomics. His 2016 book The Curse of Cash looks at the past, present and future of currency from standardized coinage to crypto-currencies. His monthly syndicated column on global economic issues is published in over 50 countries.

Created in 1998 to honor Yale alumnus Henry L. Stimson, an attorney and statesman whose government service culminated with his tenure as U.S. secretary of war during World War II, the Stimson Lecture Series brings to campus distinguished diplomats and foreign policy experts who have published books with Yale University Press.