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Below you will find a chronological list of current Center research projects. You can search by issue or region by selecting the appropriate category. In addition to this sorting control, you can search for specific subjects within the alphabetical, regional, and issue categories by choosing from the selections in the drop-down menu below.
Each project page contains the name of the project director, a description of the project, a list of meetings it has held, and any related publications, transcripts, or videos.
March 4, 2005—March 5, 2005
| Staff: | Gordon H. Hanson, Professor of Economics, University of California, San Diego |
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January 1, 2005—Present
| Chair: | Timothy F. Geithner |
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| Author: | Peter B. Kenen, Adjunct Senior Fellow for International Economics Ellen E. Meade, Associate Professor of Economics, American University |
This project will result in a book considering the prospects for the regionalization of the international monetary system. The authors will begin by comparing the various exisiting and soon-to-exist forms of currency consolidation and then examine the prospects for future monetary unions, particularly among NAFTA, MERCOSUR, and East Asian nations.
February 8, 2005—Study Group Meeting
| Director: | Manuel Hinds, Former Salvadoran Finance Minister |
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| Chair: | Sergio J. Galvis |
This project examined the desirability of dollarization in developing countries as well as its role in promoting international financial stability.
January 1, 2005—June 30, 2006
| Staff: | Edward J. Lincoln, Director, Center for Japan-U.S. Business and Economic Studies, New York University |
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This project will examine the fundamental international economic changes that have occurred globally in the past half century, discuss how they affect security and stability in the world, and explore how American foreign policy should respond.
June 16, 2005—June 17, 2005
Co-sponsored by the Maurice R. Greenberg Center for Geoeconomic Studies and The Neil D. Levin Graduate Institute of International Relations and Commerce.
December 1, 2004—January 1, 2006
| Staff: | Benn Steil, Senior Fellow and Director of International Economics |
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This meeting series is designed to bring Council members together in a small seminar environment to discuss new and innovative thinking at the intersection of economics and foreign policy.
December 1, 2004—Present
| Staff: | Peter B. Kenen, Adjunct Senior Fellow for International Economics |
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This roundtable series examines the prospects for regional monetary integration and other developments likely to affect the organization and functioning of the international monetary system.
February 10, 2004—February 10, 2004
| Staff: | Benn Steil, Senior Fellow and Director of International Economics |
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This conference explored NAFTA's economic performance, its implications for continued North American integration and its lessons for the crafting of American trade policy.
November 12, 2004—November 12, 2004
| Staff: | Benn Steil, Senior Fellow and Director of International Economics |
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Morning Panel 1: Macroeconomic Policy and the U.S. Deficits
Morning Panel 2: Monetary Policy in a Liquidity Trap
Luncheon Panel: Policy Challenges in an Interdependent World
Afternoon Panel 1: Inflation Targeting
Afternoon Panel 2: Macroeconomic Policy in the European Union
March 8, 2004—May 25, 2005
| Staff: | Elliot Schrage, Adjunct Senior Fellow for Business and Foreign Policy |
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This roundtable series explored the influence of multinational corporations and business leaders in the Middle East and North Africa and discussed whether the private sector, as a byproduct of its operations, could influence development.
January 1, 2004—Present
| Staff: | James P. Dougherty, Adjunct Senior Fellow for Business and Foreign Policy |
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America’s ability to encourage innovative ideas has helped to establish it as the world’s economic and military leader. However, technological developments over the past thirty years have spawned an increasingly globalized world and created new challenges to American pre-eminence. This roundtable series investigates how the government’s response to these challenges will affect America’s global economic and political standing.
This roundtable series is made possible by the Bernard and Irene Schwartz Foundation.
January 1, 2003—Present
| Staff: | David Braunschvig, Adjunct Senior Fellow for Business and Foreign Policy |
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This roundtable series explores current issues at the intersection of U.S. foreign policy and private sector activity. Meetings in the past have focused on the possible effects of anti-Americanism in Europe on U.S. brands, the negotiations between the European Union and the United States over genetically modified foods, and the impact of the European Union's satellite navigation system (Galileo) on U.S. strategic interests. The aim of the series is to inform the current debate on those policies important to both corporate executives and government officials, and to provide them with constructive and thoughtful recommendations.
January 1, 2003—September 1, 2004
| Chair: | Jeffrey R. Shafer |
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| Staff: | Benn Steil, Senior Fellow and Director of International Economics |
Financial markets, institutions, and instruments are playing an increasing role in American foreign policy, both as servants of traditional foreign policy aims, such as national security, and as objects, in their own right, of foreign trade and market access negotiations. Tensions and contradictions abound in this formulation, and are apparent in fierce policy debates over the merits of IMF bailouts, dollarization, financial sanctions, and market access restrictions. The project director is writing a book that examines the growing role of finance in foreign policy, why it is important, where its effects are misunderstood, and how institutional reforms can help in managing incompatible goals. Sessions of this study group will provide feedback on draft chapters.
September 1, 2002—Present
| Director: | Benn Steil, Senior Fellow and Director of International Economics |
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This quarterly meetings series brings together major U.S. and foreign policymakers, business leaders, and independent commentators to discuss and debate current issues in international economics, such as global energy markets, tax policy, global demographic change, and securities regulation.
October 1, 2001—Present
| Staff: | Caroline Atkinson, Adjunct Senior Fellow for International Economics |
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This roundtable series brings together key players from the private markets, government, Federal Reserve, IMF, World Bank, and think tanks to discuss pressing policy issues in international economics. The group, which meets monthly, has so far discussed issues such as the impact of terrorism on economic prospects, the outlook for emerging markets, and U.S. trade policy.
May 9, 2001—Present
| Staff: | Roger M. Kubarych, Henry Kaufman Adjunct Senior Fellow for International Economics and Finance |
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Tremendous controversy swirls around the issue of whether emerging economies would be better off or worse off by embracing the kind of financial market structures that have been developed in the U.S. and other advanced industrial countries during the past two decades or so. This evolution, which we call the “Americanization of Finance” essentially involves the transformation of a financial system centered around traditional commercial banks to a more free-wheeling system organized around open capital markets.
October 1, 1996—Present
| Director: | Benn Steil, Senior Fellow and Director of International Economics |
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This monthly speaker series brings the world’s foremost economic policymakers and scholars to address a high-level audience from the business and financial community on current topics in international economics, such as outsourcing, monetary policy, and competition policy.
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In Money, Markets, and Sovereignty, the authors present a fascinating intellectual history of monetary nationalism from the ancient world to the present and explore why, in its modern incarnation, it represents the single greatest threat to globalization.
In The Closing of the American Border, Edward Alden goes behind the scenes to tell the story of the Bush administration’s struggle to balance security and openness in the wake of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
In Termites in the Trading System, Jagdish Bhagwati reveals how the rapid spread of preferential trade agreements endangers the world trading system.
In Regional Monetary Integration, Peter B. Kenen poses an important question: Should various country groups follow the lead of the European Monetary Union and form similar full-fledged monetary unions?
In contrast to conventional wisdom, the growth in government spending and heightened regulation during the Great Depression may have done much to slow economic recovery.
In this report, Benn Steil shows that the financial crisis is the inevitable bust of a classic credit boom, and explains how monetary, taxation, and home ownership promotion policy combined with other feaures of the financial system to fuel an unsustainable buildup in debt. He recommends significant reforms to reverse the debt financing bias and make the system more resilient to falls in asset prices.
In order for policymakers to tackle today’s global economic crisis, this report argues, they must go beyond bailouts and stimulus packages and focus on one of the crisis's root causes: imbalances between savings and investment in major countries.
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