Seventh Luca d’Agliano Lecture in Development Economics

Seventh Luca d’Agliano Lecture in Development Economics: “The Dollar in Doubt” by Barry Eichengreen (George C. Pardee and Helen N. Pardee Professor of Economics and Professor of Political Science, University of California, Berkeley), 4 December 2009, 5 p.m., Fondazione Luigi Einaudi, Palazzo d’Azeglio, Via Principe Amedeo 34, 10123 Turin.

Abstract
Recent events have created new doubts about the dollar’s prospects for remaining the leading international reserve currency.  The crisis has not exactly enhanced the attractions of the United States as a producer of high quality financial assets.  Yet incumbency is a strong advantage in international monetary affairs, and the dollar is the incumbent reserve currency.  And the alternatives, from the euro, to the renminbi, to the IMF’s Special Drawing Rights, all have problems and disadvantages of their own.  This lecture will consider whether the dollar will remain the dominant international currency and, if it doesn’t, what implications – economic, financial, political and strategic – follow for the United States and the world, including especially the emerging and developing economies.

Biography
Barry Eichengreen teaches at the University of California, Berkeley, which he joined in 1987 and where he is George C. Pardee and Helen N. Pardee Professor of Economics and Professor of Political Science. At present, he is also Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research (Cambridge, Massachusetts), Research Fellow of the Centre for Economic Policy Research (London) and convener of the Bellagio Group of academics and economic officials. He was  a senior policy advisor to the International Monetary Fund in 1997 and 1998. Barry Eichengreen’s research focuses mainly on the history of the international monetary and financial system and has published widely on related issues. His books include: “Golden Fetters: The Gold Standard and the Great Depression, 1919-39” (Oxford University Press, 1992), “Globalizing Capital: A History of the International Monetary System” (Princeton University Press, 1996), “The European Economy since 1945: Coordinated Capitalism and Beyond” (Princeton University Press, 2008), “Bond Markets in Latin America: On the Verge of a Big Bang?”, with Eduardo Borensztein, Kevin Cowan and Ugo Panizza (MIT Press, 2008) and  “China, Asia and the New World Economy”, with Charles Wyplosz and Yung Chui Park (Oxford University Press, 2008). He is the recipient of a number of honors and prizes such as the Economic History Association’s Jonathan R.T. Hughes Prize for Excellence in Teaching and the University of California, Berkeley, Social Science Division Distinguished Teaching Award.

Programme
Text of the Lecture