Events

A Bretton Woods Moment?

Registration (above) is required for this event.

Panelists will be asked to reflect upon the role of governments and central banks in overseeing a new financial architecture, and whether new institutional innovations, such as a new global reserve currency, are required. Some of the central questions to be explored include:

• Are the current international institutions, such as the IMF and BIS, sufficient to engage in global regulation? Are new institutional innovations required?
• At what institutional level, i.e. local, national, global, should cross-border financial transactions be regulated?
• Should central banks have an increased role in regulating the financial sector?
• Is a world of unrestrained global capital flows and financial innovation at odds with economic stability?
• Should the dollar be replaced by a global reserve currency?
• Is global economic stability possible if there is a generalized division of labor between producing and consuming nations?
• How has the crisis challenged both Monetarist and Keynesian macroeconomics?

Benjamin J. Cohen is Louis G. Lancaster Professor of International Political Economy at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Prior to his current position he worked as a research economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (1962-1964), and taught at Princeton University (1964-1971), and at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University (1971-1991). A specialist in the political economy of international money and finance, he serves on the editorial boards of several leading academic journals and is the author of twelve books, including most recently Global Monetary Governance and International Political Economy: An Intellectual History (2008).

Michael Doyle is the Harold Brown Professor of International Affairs, Law and Political Science and a member of the Committee on Global Thought at Columbia University. His publications include Alternatives to Monetary Disorder (Council on Foreign Relations/McGraw Hill) which he wrote with Fred Hirsch and Edward Morse; New Thinking in International Relations Theory (Westview) edited with G. John Ikenberry and Striking First: Preemption and Prevention in International Conflict (Princeton Press, 2008).

José Antonio Ocampo is Professor in the School of International and Public Affairs and Fellow of the Committee on Global Thought at Columbia University. He served as the United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs from September 2003 to June 2007. Dr. Ocampo is author or editor of over 30 books and has published over 200 scholarly articles on macroeconomic theory and policy, international financial issues, economic development, international trade, and Colombian and Latin American economic history.

Adam S. Posen is a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE) and is also a member of the Monetary Policy Committee of the Bank of England. His research focuses on macroeconomic policy and performance, European and Japanese political economy, central banking issues, and the resolution of financial crises. He is the author of editor and part-author of three collected volumes: The Euro at Ten: The Next Global Currency? (PIIE, 2009); The Euro at Five: Ready for a Global Role? (PIIE, 2005); and The Japanese Financial Crisis and its Parallels with U.S. Experience (PIIE, 2000; Japanese translation, 2001). His new book, The Limits of Export-Led Growth: Germany and the Future of Capitalism, will be published by the Institute in early 2010.

Joseph E. Stiglitz is a University Professor of Economics and Chair of the Committee on Global Thought at Columbia University and a Nobel Prize recipient. His book Globalization and Its Discontents (Norton, 2003) has sold more than one million copies worldwide. His most recent book, The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict (Norton), with Linda Bilmes of Harvard University, was published in 2008.