What exchange rate regime should China adopt? The answer must be: one that supports stable growth at home and, given China’s growing role in the world, also abroad. The government has already decided to shift towards greater reliance on consumption. In doing so it has willed the end. Now it must will the means.

Nicholas Lardy of the Washington-based Institute for International Economics spells out the case for such a shift in a thought-provoking new paper*. This represents just one of the host of contributions made by the Institute to the greater understanding of international economic policy issues over the past quarter of a century. I do not agree with everything it has published. That is hardly surprising. But the world would have been far worse informed and less stimulated without it. Happy birthday, IIE!