My answers to three questions at the start of 2016 (from Chosun Ilbo, leading Korean newspaper):1. How do you analyze the recent US interest hike, and how will it influence the global economy in the coming year?The Fed had telegraphed its decision to raise the interest rate so far in advance and (by December) so clearly, that the policy change was already fully reflected in markets.  For example most of the substantial appreciation of the dollar since 2014 can be attributed to anticipation of the Fed tightening.

How should one evaluate the agreement reached in Paris December 12 by the 21st Conference of Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)?   Some avid environmentalists may have been disappointed in the outcome.  The reason is that the negotiators did not commit to limiting global warming to 1 ½ degrees centigrade by 2050, nor will the new agreement directly achieve the 2 degree limit.But such commitments would not have been credible.  What came out of Paris was in fact better, because the negotiators were able to agree on meaningful practical near-term steps.

In a sort of year-end look back on Prime Minister Abe’s record and on Japan’s current situation, Reuters Japan has asked for action points or policy suggestions regarding economic and foreign policy.  Here are the responses I offered. Economic policyTo address the problems of the Japanese economy, all three arrows of Abenomics are necessary. The monetary arrow was shot well; but a big fiscal arrow was aimed in the wrong direction; and the structural reform arrows have hardly been taken out of the quiver.

Calls for International coordination of macroeconomic policy are back, after a 30-year hiatus.  To some it looks anomalous that the Fed is about to raise interest rates at a time when most major central banks see a need to extend further monetary stimulus.The heyday of coordination in practice was the decade 1978-1987, beginning with a G-7 Summit in Bonn in 1978 and including the Plaza Accord of 1985, of which this year is the 30th Anniversary.  Economists were able to provide a good rationale for coordination based in game theory: because each country’s   policies have spillover effects on its trading partners’ economies, countries can in theory do better when agreeing on a cooperative package of policy adjustments than in the non-cooperative equilibrium where each tries to do the best it can while taking the policies of the others as given.

Now that the TPP text has been released, I have read at least some parts of it in detail.  It seems to me that it does what the negotiators said it does.  There is a lot to like in the way it came out that many of the critics seem not to know about.   I hope that those Democrats who have been fervently opposed to the TPP  -- in particular some of the Massachusetts congressional delegation -- will now consider it with an open mind!I have an op-ed appearing in the  Boston Globe this week, making the case.

I have written a few columns this year supportive of the Trans-Pacific Partnership.  (E.g. "Critics Should Keep an Open Mind,” The Guardian, Oct. 11, 2015.)   Commentators on my column and critics of TPP more generally have expressed great eagerness to know when and where they could read the full legal text of the agreement.  The full text is now available.Many skeptics seem confident in their ability to understand the significance of the detailed legal language even when they have only had a few hours to read it.

The TPP (Trans Pacific Partnership) that was finally agreed among trade negotiators of 12 Pacific countries on October 5 came as a triumph over long odds.  Tremendous political obstacles, domestic and international, had to be overcome over the last five years.  Now each country has to decide whether to ratify the agreement.Many of the issues are commonly framed as “Left” versus “Right."  The unremitting hostility to the negotiations up until now from the Left – often in protest at being kept in the dark regarding the text of the agreement -- has carried two dangers.

Exactly 30 years ago, on September 22, 1985, ministers of the Group of Five countries met at the Plaza Hotel in New York and agreed on a successful initiative to reverse what had been a dangerously overvalued dollar. The Plaza Accord was backed up by intervention in the foreign exchange market. The change in policy had the desired effect over the next few years: bringing down the dollar, reducing the US trade deficit and defusing protectionist pressures.  Many economists think that foreign exchange intervention cannot have effects unless it also changes money supplies.

September 7, 2015It is tempting to view economic events in China through a single template: the view that they are driven by government intervention because the authorities haven’t learned to let the market operate.  After all, Mao’s portrait still hangs on the wall and the Communist Party still governs.   But the lens of government intervention has led foreign observers to misinterpret some of the most important developments this year in the foreign exchange market and the stock market.  An instance of such misinterpretations is the confused positions of many American congressmen which have helped bring about the opposite of what they really want from China’s exchange rate.

World oil prices have been highly volatile during the last decade.   Over the past year they have fallen more than 50%.Should we root for prices to go up, down, or stay the same?   The economic effects of falling oil prices are negative overall for oil-exporting countries, of course, and positive for oil-importing countries.  The US is now surprisingly close to energy self-sufficiency, so that the macroeconomic effects roughly net out to zero.  But what about effects that are not directly economic?   If we care about environmental and other externalities, should we want oil prices to go up or down?  Up, because that will discourage oil consumption?  Or down because that will discourage oil production?The answer is that countries should seek to do both: lower the price paid to oil producers and raise the price paid by oil consumers.