Risk Appetite, Interest Rate Parity, Integration, Crises, Currency Wars, and theTrilemma

These are the topics covered in West Coast Workshop on International Finance and Open Economy Macroeconomics, October 11th, organized by Michael Hutchison (UCSC) and Helen Popper (SCU).


Here’s the agenda:


Default and its Implications



International Finance and Macroeconomic Policy



The International Macroeconomic Trilemma and Monetary Policy



International Financial Market Barriers and Integration



This is a great line-up, and I wish I could attend (reading the papers seldom conveys all the nuances, and a lot of understanding comes from the back and forth between presenter, discussant and audience).


The conference website is here.

3 thoughts on “Risk Appetite, Interest Rate Parity, Integration, Crises, Currency Wars, and theTrilemma

  1. Jeffrey J. Brown

    Steven,
    I call it Fantasy Island Economics (FIE). On Fantasy Island, oil fields don’t decline, as unicorns graze in the pastures, attended to by helpful elves.
    But of course, most countries seem to be operating on the premise that FIE is a valid concept.

  2. Jeffrey J. Brown

    Fantasy Island Economics Vs. Declining Available Net Exports*
    Because of our rising reliance on EIA data for net export calculations, I’ve switched over to solely using EIA data, and the EIA data show that the GNE/CNI ratio fell from 12.0 in 2002 to 9.5 in 2005 (a -7.8%/year rate of change) and from 9.5 in 2005 to 5.0 in 2012 (-9.2%/year rate of change), i.e., the rate of decline in the CNI/CNI ratio accelerated from 2005 to 2012, versus 2002 to 2005.
    At a GNE/CNI ratio of 1.0, China and India alone would theoretically consume 100% of Global Net Exports of oil (GNE). I define GNE as combined net exports from the top 33 net exporters in 2005. CNI = China & India’s Net Imports.
    At the 2005 to 2012 rate of decline in the GNE/CNI ratio, the ratio would theoretically hit 1.0 around the year 2030, in 17 years.
    If we look solely at the 2005 to 2012 rate of decline in the ratio of GNE to China’s Net Imports, China alone would theoretically consume 100% of GNE in 19 years, around the year 2032.
    From 2002 to 2012, the Economist Magazine showed the global public debt increased from $20 Trillion in 2002 to $49 Trillion in 2012, a 9%/year rate of increase.
    I think that developed net oil importing countries are desperately trying to keep their “Wants” based economies going, via deficit spending, financed by real creditors and by accommodative central banks, based on the premise that high oil price are temporary, and they will soon once again enjoy significantly increasing rates of increase in the production of lower priced crude oil.
    In my opinion, the reality is that, at least through 2012, developed net oil importing countries like the US were gradually being forced out of the global market for exported oil, via price rationing, as the developing countries, led by China, consumed an increasing share of a post-2005 declining volume of Global Net Exports of oil.
    Two graphs that compare the declining GNE/CNI ratio to annual Brent crude oil prices and to total global public debt (through 2011):
    http://i1095.photobucket.com/albums/i475/westexas/Slide4-4_zps9a9c4aed.jpg
    http://i1095.photobucket.com/albums/i475/westexas/Slide5-3_zps9a533a56.jpg
    *Available Net Exports = GNE less CNI

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