Event Summary
The Peterson Institute released a new book by Surjit Bhalla entitled Devaluing to Prosperity: Misaligned Currencies and Their Growth Consequences on September 17, 2012. The book analyzes the role of currency policy in the development strategies of a number of major developing countries during the postwar period, with a focus on China's recent efforts but with considerable attention to earlier approaches by Japan, Korea, and others. Bhalla concludes that successful development has often been achieved through deliberate currency undervaluation and stresses the need for systemic responses that will prevent deleterious effects on the global economy from such practices in the future.
Surjit Bhalla is managing director of Oxus Research and Investments, a New Delhi based economic research and asset management firm. He is also a member of the National Statistical Commission of India (since 2007) and was a member of the committees created by the Government of India (2006) and the Reserve Bank of India (1996) to consider capital account convertibility for the rupee. Dr. Bhalla received his PhD at Princeton in 1977 and has taught at the Delhi School of Economics and worked at the World Bank, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, and the RAND Corporation. The Institute published his earlier book Imagine There's No Country: Poverty, Inequality, and Growth in the Era of Globalization in 2002.
Event Materials
Book: Devaluing to Prosperity: Misaligned Currencies and Their Growth Consequences
Surjit S. Bhalla
September 2012