Altitude Sickness: Comparing the Political Economy of Two Periods of Extreme Dollar Strength
Journal: Digital Access to Scholarship at Harvard (DASH) (Harvard University)
Year: 2025

This thesis examines the absence of coordinated international intervention to counter the US dollar’s historic strength in the 2020s, contrasting this with the 1980s episode that culminated in the Plaza Accord. The study employs econometric analysis, historical case studies, and policy research to examine changes in global responses to dollar appreciation, with a focus on structural, cyclical, and geopolitical factors. Structurally, the decline of US manufacturing’s economic and political influe