Dr. David O. Cushman, Westminster College professor of economics and Captain William McKee Chair of Economics and Business, edited (with Jan Boucher Breuer of the University of South Carolina) a special issue of the Review of Financial Economics (August 2007).

In addition to the issue's introduction, "Exchange rates and international financial assets: A special issue in honor of Stanley W. Black" (co-authored with Breuer), Cushman contributed an article titled "A Portfolio Balance Approach to the Canadian-U.S. Exchange Rate." The issue also contains articles by scholars from the Federal Reserve Board, the International Monetary Fund, the University of Glasgow (Scotland), the University of Michigan, and the University of Virginia.

The issue's honoree, Stan Black, has been Lurcy Professor of Economics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill since 1983. Prior to that he taught at Princeton and then Vanderbilt, where he was Cushman's Ph.D. dissertation adviser. Black was responsible for, among other things, introducing rational expectations and the asset market approach into models of exchange rates.

Cushman's paper in the issue honors the latter contribution, showing that U.S. and Canadian assets and liabilities have been related to the U.S.-Canadian exchange rate over the last 30 years, just as predicted by Black's pioneering contribution.

"The results help explain the recent, well publicized decline of the U.S. dollar against various currencies including the Canadian dollar," said Cushman. "In particular, the decline can be attributed to the growing U.S. international debt from a large excess of imports over exports, itself largely a result of federal government spending much larger than its tax collections."

The journal can be accessed at http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/10583300.

Cushman has been with Westminster since 2005. He earned his undergraduate degree from Stetson University and his master's and Ph.D. from Vanderbilt University.

Before coming to Westminster, he taught at the University of New Orleans, the University of North Carolina, Vanderbilt University, the University of South Florida, and the University of Saskatchewan (Canada), where he continues as adjunct professor of economics.

Contact Cushman at (724) 946-7169 or email cushmado@westminster.edu for additional information. 

Dr. David Cushman

Review of Financial Economics