April 24, 2021 — A generation of great international economists is passing from the scene. Richard Cooper died on December 23. An American, he was teaching his classes at Harvard until the very end. Robert Mundell, passed away on April 4. Originally Canadian, he was a winner of the Nobel Prize in economics. And John Williamson, on April 11. Originally British, he had been the first scholar hired by the Peterson Institute for International Economics.
December 24, 2020 — Richard N. Cooper (Dick), who passed away Wednesday evening at the age of 86, was always young for his age. Jim Tobin once told me a story from when Dick was a senior staff economist at the President’s Council of Economic Advisers (1961-63). He used to bring his bicycle into his office at the Old Executive Office Building. As I remember the story, President Kennedy remarked that apparently a high school student worked at the CEA!
As recently as a year ago, Dick was still riding his bicycle around Cambridge. I would join his wonderful (and young!) family on weekend bike rides along the Charles River.
August 27, 2020 — The US Treasury’s tendentious interpretation of the IMF’s External Balance Approach this week found a 4.7 % undervaluation of Vietnam’s currency. It may pave the way for the US Commerce Department to impose countervailing duties (in a case involving the tire market), for the first time in a currency case. See Mark Sobel’s useful update of August 27. The Treasury claimed to find undervaluation despite small Vietnamese current account surpluses and fx reserves equal to only four months of imports. This finding is an ominous step in a predictably misguided US movement to use allegations of trading partners’ currency manipulation to justify protectionism.