Jackson Hole Symposium Papers and Discussion

Here are links to the papers and discussion presented at the Jackson Hole Symposium (the highlighted names are links to papers):

The New Economic Geography: Effects and Policy Implications, A Symposium Sponsored by The Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, August 24-26, 2006:

• OPENING REMARKS, Ben S. Bernanke, Chairman, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System
• SHIFTS IN ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY AND THEIR CAUSES
  • Author: Anthony J. Venables, Professor, London School of Economics, Paper: Shifts in Economic Geography and Their Causes
  • Discussant: Douglas A. Irwin, Professor, Dartmouth College
• CONSEQUENCES FOR PRODUCTION AND PRICES, EMPLOYMENT AND WAGES
  • Authors: Gene M. Grossman, Professor, Princeton University and Esteban Rossi-Hansberg, Professor, Princeton University , Paper: The Rise of Offshoring: It's Not Wine for Cloth Anymore
  • Discussant: John B. Taylor, Professor, Stanford University
• CONSEQUENCES FOR FINANCIAL MARKETS AND GLOBAL SAVING AND INVESTMENT
  • Author: Raghuram G. Rajan, Economic Counsellor and Director of Research, International Monetary Fund, Paper: Foreign Capital and Economic Growth
    
  • Discussant: Susam M. Collins, Professor, Georgetown University and Senior Fellow, Brookings Institution
• LUNCHEON ADDRESS
  • Stanley Fischer, Governor, Bank of Israel
• STRATEGIES FOR GROWTH
  • Panelists: T. N. Srinivasan, Professor, Yale University; Jan Svejnar, Professor, University of Michigan; Paul Collier, Professor, Oxford University
• IMPLICATIONS FOR MONETARY POLICY
  • Author: Kenneth S. Rogoff, Professor, Harvard University, Paper: Impact of Globalization on Monetary Policy
  • Discussant: Charles Bean, Executive Director and Chief Economist, Bank of England
    
• OVERVIEW PANEL
  • Panelists: Martin Feldstein, President and Chief Executive Officer, National Bureau of Economic Research; Arminio Fraga, Chief Executive Officer, Gavea Investimentos; Rakesh Mohan, Deputy Governor, Reserve Bank of India

Comments

[Movie Guy]

I give Martin a lot of credit for summarizing some of the conference remarks and offering a realistic assessment of the need for correcting the trade and current account imbalances.

But, did anyone catch this remark?

The New Economic Geography: A Comment
by Martin Feldstein

http://www.kansascityfed.org/PUBLICAT/SYMPOS/2006/PDF/Feldstein.paper.0827.pdf

"Critics of offshoring have claimed that this process reduces the wages of low skill American workers and will ultimately drive those wages down to the wage level in China. Sophisticated critics can even point to the factor price equalization theorem of Heckscher-Ohlin theory. In reality, however, such a reduction in U.S. wages does not happen because U.S. firms stops producing those goods for which the low wages in countries like China creates a large enough competitive advantage. American low skill workers shift into service jobs that require physical presence in the United States, allowing them to earn a higher wage than their Chinese counterparts."

He walks all around the whole problem with wage declines in the U.S. resulting from advanced global trade (AGT) initiatives and compares U.S. employees' job losses in affected industries, then says that the U.S. service sector is the substitute employment answer, and says that the displaced U.S. worker will be making more than the Chinese worker(s) who absorbed his old job or performs similar service work in China.

That's just too funny.

[Alfredo Pastor]

I believe Martin Feldstein is right on the first part: the structure of production in the US changes -which is one of the reasons why the exchange rate has limited scope to correct the US external deficit: no amount of devaluation will make the US become a world power in the . But the second part -that US industrial workers will find jobs in the service sector at comparable or higher wages does not follow from the theory, and does not seem to be happening in practice

[Mike]

Is it possible to attend the Fed Symposium? Thanks.