3 Questions: Roberto Rigobon on world markets
World markets produced a roller-coaster ride for investors in August. MIT News recently spoke to international economics expert Roberto Rigobon to hear his views about the chaos investors have been facing. Rigobon is the Society of Sloan Fellows Professor of Management at the MIT Sloan School of Management, and a founder of MIT’s Billion Prices Project, an innovative real-time inflation tracker. Q. The month of August was seemingly the most volatile in world markets since the financial crisis that peaked in 2008 and extended into 2009. What strikes you as noteworthy about the market activity we have just seen?A. I have learned five things. One, markets and consumers have been growing impatient with the lack of success of economic policy, and the volatility is a kind of disenchantment with that. The political discussion in the United States was far more damaging and immature than anyone ever expected. Second, I was...