Distinguished Speaker Seminars

Michael D. Intriligator, professor of economics, political science, and public policy at the University of California at Los Angeles and senior fellow at the Milken Institute, delivered a lecture on The Current Worldwide Financial and Economic Crisis at a distinguished speaker seminar on 25 March in Tokyo. For Mr. Intriligator, the current crisis was caused by a convergence of several factors, notably, the 1999 deregulation of the financial markets and the US Federal Reserve Bank's low interest-rate policy under its former chairman, Alan Greenspan. He added that unless lending resumes, US President Barack Obama's economic stimulus plan will be insufficient to stop the downward economic spiral. Mr. Intriligator recommends a host of policies to hasten economic recovery, two of which were inspired by historic American programs—namely, the Marshall Plan, a revamping of which would send aid to vulnerable, crisis-hit countries, and the Manhattan Project, whose updated version would gather the world's top economics and finance experts and develop approaches that would effectively deal with the current world financial crisis.

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Peter A. Petri, Carl J. Shapiro professor of International Finance at the Brandeis International Business School in Massachusetts and a senior fellow of the East-West Center in Hawaii, delivered a lecture on International Economic Governance: Problems and Solutions at a distinguished speaker seminar on 10 April in Tokyo.

Mr. Petri's discussion on reforming international economic institutions (IEIs) explored the built-in structural limitations of existing IEIs that hinder the institutions' effectiveness, helping to shed light on the difficulty of reforming them. For Mr. Petri, IEIs face a “governance trilemma”—that is, the improbability of achieving universal, democratic, and decisive institutions simultaneously. One solution proposed under the club theory framework is decentralized decision making, which would allow subgroups within an institution to craft policies to which not all members may subscribe. To address the issue of finding a balance between flexibility of global IEIs and coherence among sub-global IEIs, international resources should cofund regional initiatives so as to align these with the global objectives of larger IEIs.

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Fan Gang, director of the National Economic Research Institute in Beijing and chair of the China Reform Foundation, delivered a lecture on Short-Term Anti-Crisis Policy and Long-Term Growth of China at a distinguished speaker seminar on 24 April in Tokyo.

Mr. Fan addressed key questions surrounding the current recession in the PRC, particularly on how the country can get through the current crisis in the short-run as well as longer-term macroeconomic policy responses. Mr. Fan is confident of the PRC's long-run sustainable economic growth owing to improvements in total factor productivity (TFP) and input growth. He attributed the high TFP contribution to the PRC's overall growth rate to several factors including market-oriented reforms, the spillover effects of foreign direct investment, and more research and development spending, whose benefits are expected to further spread throughout the economic system. However, structural impediments such as a national high savings rate must be addressed in order to hasten the PRC's recovery from the crisis.

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Barry Bosworth, senior fellow in the Economic Studies Program and Robert V. Roosa chair in international economics at The Brookings Institution, delivered a lecture on The Determinants Studies Program and Robert V. Roosa chair in international economics at The Brookings Institution, delivered a lecture on The Determinants of US Exports to China (the People's Republic of China [PRC]) at a distinguished speaker seminar on 24 April in Tokyo.

Mr. Bosworth explored three factors—(i) composition of US exports, (ii) the role of American multinational corporations, and (iii) the great physical distance between the PRC and the US—behind the low level of US exports to the PRC. Results of his analysis showed that only distance appeared to play a significant role in the US' poor export performance to the PRC. He argued that this low showing is not particular to the PRC as the US has had trade deficits with nearly every country in the world. He added that uncompetitive real exchange rates may have something to do with the US-PRC export imbalance.

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