Economist's View

Economic Fluctuations and Growth Research Meeting

I am here today:

Economic Fluctuations and Growth Research Meeting
Andrew Atkeson and Monika Piazzesi, Organizers
Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco
February 23, 2018

Friday, February 23

9:00 am
Fatih Guvenen, University of Minnesota and NBER
Gueorgui Kambourov, University of Toronto
Burhanettin Kuruscu, University of Toronto
Sergio Ocampo-Diaz, University of Minnesota
Daphne Chen, Florida State University
Use It Or Lose It: Efficiency Gains from Wealth Taxation
Discussant: Roger H. Gordon, University of California at San Diego and NBER

10:15 am
Matteo Maggiori, Harvard University and NBER
Brent Neiman, University of Chicago and NBER
Jesse Schreger, Columbia University and NBER
International Currencies and Capital Allocation
Discussant: Harald Uhlig, University of Chicago and NBER

11:30 am
Katarína Borovičková, New York University
Robert Shimer, University of Chicago and NBER
High Wage Workers Work for High Wage Firms
Discussant: Isaac Sorkin, Stanford University and NBER

1:30 pm
Marcus Hagedorn, University of Oslo
Iourii Manovskii, University of Pennsylvania and NBER
Kurt Mitman, Institute for International Economic Studies
The Fiscal Multiplier
Discussant: Adrien Auclert, Stanford University and NBER

2:45 pm
Carlos Garriga, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis
Aaron Hedlund, University of Missouri
Housing Finance, Boom-Bust Episodes, and Macroeconomic Fragility
Discussant: Veronica Guerrieri, University of Chicago and NBER

4:00 pm
John Kennan, University of Wisconsin at Madison and NBER
Spatial Variation in Higher Education Financing and the Supply of College Graduates
Discussant: Danny Yagan, University of California at Berkeley and NBER

Monetary Policy in a New Era (Video) - Ben Bernanke

Short Sharp Shocks

Roger Farmer:

Short Sharp Shocks: This is week four of my posts featuring research presented at the conference on Applications of Behavioural Economics, and Multiple Equilibrium Models to Macroeconomics Policy Conference held at the Bank of England on July 3rd and 4th 2017.

Today’s memo features two economists working on models of multiple equilibria from different perspectives. George Evans is a pioneer in models of adaptive learning, a topic he has worked on for more than thirty years. George presented his joint work with Seppo Honkapohja, Deputy Governor of the Bank of Finland, and Kaushik Mitra, Professor of Economics at the University of Birmingham. Patrick Pintus, a Researcher at the Banque de France, presented a co-authored paper with Yi Wen, an Assistant Vice-President at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis and Xiaochuan Xing from Yale University.  ...

George Evans began his work on adaptive learning in his Ph.D. dissertation at Berkeley in the early 1980s. When the rest of the profession was swept up by the rational expectations revolution, George persevered with the important idea that perfectly correct beliefs about the future cannot be plucked from the air, they must be learned. For an introduction to George’s work, I highly recommend the book co-authored with his long-time co-author, Seppo Honkapohja.

The paper of Evans, Honkapohja and Mitra (EHM), begins with a theme we met in post two where I discussed the fact that the standard New Keynesian model, in which the central bank follows a Taylor Rule, has two steady state equilibria. ...

Evans, Honkapohja and Mitra (EHM) build on this idea by adding a theory of adaptive learning. I am often asked how my own work on the belief function is related to George’s work on adaptive learning. They are very closely linked. ...

Previous work has shown that, in the basic New-Keynesian model, the upper steady state is stable under adaptive learning but the lower steady state is not. They modify the basic model by adding the assumption that the rate at which prices and output can fall has a lower bound. They show that this assumption implies that there exists a third steady state in which recessions can be persistent and deep. ...

George and his co-authors use their analysis to argue that a large fiscal intervention, a short-sharp shock, can knock the economy out of region C and back into region A. Readers of this blog will know that I have expressed scepticism of that idea in the past, largely because I am not a big fan of the basic NK model. However, this is the most convincing rationale in favour of a large fiscal stimulus that I have yet seen. ... If you are a young researcher who is thinking of working in macroeconomic theory and policy, consider working on models of expectations formation. 

Next, I will turn to the work of Patrick Pintus, Yi Wen and Xiaochuan Xing (PWX). ...

PWX take up a puzzle that has long been known to plague the equilibrium real business cycle (RBC) model that has dominated macroeconomic theory for more than thirty years. That model predicts that when interest rates are high, the economy will soon enter an expansion. The reality is different. High interest rates are an omen that a recession is coming down the road. What are the features of the real world that are missed by the classical RBC paradigm? ...

New Conditions for Monetary and Fiscal Policy?

The Marriage of Psychology with Multiple Equilibria in Economics

Roger Farmer:

The Marriage of Psychology with Multiple Equilibria in Economics: This is the first of a new weekly blog series, Monday’s Macro Memo with Roger Farmer, which will discuss a wide range of economic issues of the day. The blog will appear on both the NIESR site and on Roger Farmer’s Economic Window and in the first few weeks, I will be posting a series of videos, recorded at a conference held at the Bank England  on July 3rd and 4th of 2017.  The conference was titled "Applications of Behavioural Economics and Multiple Equilibrium Models to Macroeconomic Policy"...

I had been planning, for some time, to run a conference on the topic of multiple equilibria sponsored by Warwick University. Andy Haldane and Sujit Kapadia had been talking with Alan Taylor of U.C. Davis about organizing a conference on the topic of behavioural economics. After talking with Andy, Sujit and Alan, we decided it would be ideal to combine our plans into a single conference that would highlight the promise of studying the marriage of psychology with multiple equilibria in economics. The video ... explains why this is a fruitful idea.

Roger goes on to discuss how "psychology enters the picture," and why the Robert Lucas idea that "the expectations of market participants are determined by economic fundamentals ... makes little or no sense in models ... where there are multiple equilibria." Also:

In addition to the introductory video, linked above, we also recorded videos from many of the conference presenters and discussants. I will be releasing these videos in a series of posts in the coming weeks and I will discuss the research associated with the accompanying topic. You can find links to the original papers on the conference website linked here. Stay tuned.

Have Blog, Will Travel

I am here today and tomorrow:

Applications of Behavioural Economics, and Multiple Equilibrium Models to Macroeconomic Policy
Conference 3-4 July 2017 at the Bank of England

Monday 03 July

09:00 - 09:35 Introduction and Welcome
Victoria Saporta, Executive Director, Bank of England

09:35 - 10:30: Keynote Address: Do Low Interest Rates Punish Savers’?
James Bullard, President, FRB of St. Louis

10:30 - 11:25 Endogenous Regime Shifts in a New Keynesian Model with a Time varying Natural Rate of Interest
Kevin Lansing, FRB of San Francisco
Discussant: Giovanni Ricco, University of Warwick

11:25 - 11:55 Tea Break

11:55 - 12:50 Animal spirits in a monetary model
Konstantin Platonov, University of California Los Angeles
Discussant: Stephanie Schmitt-Grohé, Columbia University

12:50 - 14:00 Lunch

14:00 - 14:55 A Behavioral New Keynesian Model
Xavier Gabaix, Harvard University
Discussant: Martin Ellison, University of Oxford

14:55 - 15:50 Informative social interactions
Hector Calvo, Pardo University of Southampton
Discussant: Nora Wegner, Bank of England

15:50 - 16:20 Tea Break

16:20 - 17:15 History Dependence in UK Housing Market
Philippe Bracke, Bank of England
Discussant: Alan Taylor, University of California

17:15 - 18:10 Macroprudential policy in an agent based model of the UK housing market
Arzu Uluc, Bank of England
Discussant: Paolo Gelain, Norges Bank

18:30 Networking Reception

19:30 Dinner (By Invitation Only)
Speaker: Andy Haldane, Chief Economist, Bank of England

Tuesday 04 July

09:30 - 10:25 U.S. Monetary Policy in the Post-war Period
Giovanni Nicoló, University of California Los Angeles
Discussant: Ana Galvao, University of Warwick

10:25 - 11:20 The Inverted Leading Indicator Property and Redistribution Effect of the Interest Rate, Patrick Pintus, University of Aix-Marseile  and Banque de France
Discussant: Kaushik Mitra, University of Birmingham

11:20 - 11:50 Tea Break

11:50 - 12:45 Systemic Bank Panics in Financial Networks
Zhen Zhou, Tsinghua University
Discussant: Sujit Kapadia, Bank of England

12:45 - 13:45 Lunch

13:45 - 14:40 Divergent Risk Attitudes and Endogenous Collateral Constraints
Ester Faia, University of Frankfurt
Discussant: Daisuke Ikeda, Bank of England

14:40 - 15:35 Expectations, Stagnation and Fiscal Policy
George Evans, University of Oregon
Discussant: Thomas Hintermaier, University of Bonn

15:35 - 16:05 Tea Break

16:05 - 17:00 Inflation targets and the zero lower bound in a behavioural macroeconomic model
Paul De Grauwe, London School of Economics
Discussant: Laura Povoledo, University of the West of England

17:00 - 17:05 Introduction
Roger Farmer, University of Warwick and Research Director: NIESR

17:05 - 18:00 Keynote Address: Forward Guidance when Planning Horizons are Finite
Michael Woodford, Columbia University

18:00 Conference Closes

Have Blog, Will Travel

I am here today:

NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH, INC.
EF&G Research Meeting
Laura Veldkamp and Jon Steinsson, Organizers
February 24, 2017
Federal Reserve Bank of New York 33 Liberty Street New York, NY

PROGRAM 

Friday, February 24:

9:00 am Matthias Kehrig, Duke University Nicolas Vincent, HEC Montreal Do Firms Mitigate or Magnify Capital Misallocation? Evidence from Plant-Level Data Discussant: Virgiliu Midrigan, New York University and NBER

10:15 am Daniel Garcia-Macia, International Monetary Fund Chang-Tai Hsieh, University of Chicago and NBER Peter Klenow, Stanford University and NBER How Destructive is Innovation? Discussant: Andrew Atkeson, University of California at Los Angeles and NBER

11:30 am George-Marios Angeletos, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and NBER Chen Lian, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Forward Guidance without Common Knowledge Discussant: Kristoffer Nimark, Cornell University

1:30 pm Barney Hartman-Glaser, University of California at Los Angeles Hanno Lustig, Stanford University and NBER Mindy Zhang, University of Texas at Austin Capital Share Dynamics When Firms Insure Managers Discussant: Brent Neiman, University of Chicago and NBER

2:45 pm Sang Yoon Lee, University of Mannheim Yongseok Shin, Washington University in St. Louis and NBER Horizontal and Vertical Polarization: Task-Specific Technological Change in a Multi-Sector Economy Discussant: Nancy Stokey, University of Chicago and NBER

4:00 pm Michael Gelman, University of Michigan Yuriy Gorodnichenko, University of California at Berkeley and NBER Shachar Kariv, University of California at Berkeley Dmitri Koustas, University of California at Berkeley Matthew Shapiro, University of Michigan and NBER Dan Silverman, Arizona State University and NBER Steven Tadelis, University of California at Berkeley and NBER The Response of Consumer Spending to Changes in Gasoline Prices Discussant: Arlene Wong, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis

5:00 pm Adjourn

Advances in Research Conference, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis

I am here today and tomorrow:

St. Louis Advances in Research (STLAR) Conference Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis

Thursday, April 7, 2016

11:30 – 12:30 pm Consumption and House Prices in the Great Recession: Model meets Evidence Presenter: Greg Kaplan (Princeton University) Coauthors: Kurt Mitman, Gianluca Violante

1:30 – 2:30 pm How Credit Constraints Impact Job Finding Rates, Sorting & Aggregate Output Presenter: Kyle Herkenhoff (University of Minnesota) Coauthors: Ethan Cohen-Cole, Gordon Phillips

2:45 – 3:45 pm The Influence of Benefit Extensions on Unemployment Presenter: Loukas Karabarbounis (Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis)

4:00 – 5:00 pm House Prices and Consumer Spending Presenter: David Berger (Northwestern University) Coauthors: Veronica Guerreri, Guido Lorenzoni, Joe Vavra

5:00 – 6:00 pm Do Banks Pass Through Credit Expansions to Consumers Who Want to Borrow? Presenter: Johannes Stroebel (New York University) Coauthors: Sumit Agarwal, Souphala Chomsisengphet, Neale Mahoney

Friday, April 8, 2016

9:00 – 10:00 am Lack of Selection and Limits to Delegation: Firm Dynamics in Developing Countries Presenter: Ufuk Akcigit (University of Chicago) Coauthors: Harun Alp, Michael Peters

10:00 – 11:00 am Urban-Rural Wage Gaps in Developing Countries: Spatial Misallocation or Efficient Sorting? Presenter: David Lagakos (University of California, San Diego) Coauthors: Mushfiq Mobarak, Michael Waugh

11:15 – 12:15 pm Inequality and Aggregate Demand Presenter: Adrien Auclert (Stanford University)

12:15 – 1:15 pm Unconventional Monetary Policy and the Allocation of Credit Presenter: Amir Kermani (Berkeley University) Coauthors: Marco Di Maggio, Christopher Palmer

'Expectations in Dynamic Macroeconomic Models'

I will be here tomorrow:

Expectations in Dynamic Macroeconomic Models
Eugene Hilton, Vista Room I, Floor 12
August 13 - 15 2015
Organizers: George Evans, Roger Guesnerie, Bruce McGough and Bruce Preston Sponsors: INEX C and University of Oregon

Thursday, August 13

7:30 am Continental Breakfast (Vista Room II, Floor 12)

8:45 am Opening Remarks

9:00am Cars Hommes, University of Amsterdam, "Behavioral Learning Equilibria for the New Keynesian Model"
Discussant: George Waters

10.00 am Coffee

10:30 am Jasmina Arifovic, Simon Fraser University, "Escaping Expectations - Driven Liquidity Traps"
Discussant: John Duffy

11:30 am Bill Branch, University of California, Irvine Perpetual, "Learning  and  Stability in Macroeconomic Models"
Discussant: Cars Hommes

12:30 pm Lunch

2.00 pm Mordecai Kurz, Stanford University, "Stabilizing Wage Policy"
Discussant: George Evans

3:00 pm Diogo Pinheiro, CUNY Brooklyn, "Refinement of Dynamic Equilibriun"
Discussant: Bruce McGough

4.00 pm Coffee

4:30 pm Arunima Sinha, Fordham University, "A Lesson from the Great Depression that the Fed Might have Learned: A Comparison of the 1932 Open Market Purchases with Quantitative Easing"
Discussant: Vasco Curdia

6:45 pm Conference Dinner, with address by James Bullard, President and CEO, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.

Friday, August 14

7:30 am Continental Breakfast (Vista Room II, Floor 12)

8.30 am Damjan Pfajfar, University of Tilberg, "Are Survey Expectations Theory - Consistent? The Role of Central Bank Communication and News"
Discussant: Fernanda Nechio

9:30 am Stefano Eusepi, Federal Reserve Bank of New York, "In Search of a Nominal Anchor: What Drives Inflation Expectations?"
Discussant: Sergey Slobodyan

10:30 am Coffee

11:00 am In - Koo Cho, University of Illinois, "Gresham’s Law of Model Averaging"
Discussant: Noah Williams

12:00 p m Martin Ellison, Oxford University, "Time - Consistent Institutional Design"
Discussant: Sergio Santoro

1:00 pm Lunch

2:00 pm Klaus Adam, University of Mannheim, "Can a Financial Transaction Tax Prevent Stock Price Booms?"
Discussant: Pei Kuang

3.00 pm Kevin Lansing, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, "Explaining the Boom - Bust Cycle in the US Housing Market: A Reverse - Engineering Approach"
Discussant: Paul Shea

4:00 pm Coffee

4:30 pm Thomas Sargent, New York University, "Sets of Models and Prices of Uncertainty"

6:00 pm Adjourn

7: 00 pm Reception

Saturday, August 15

7:30 am Continental Breakfast (Wilder Room, Lobby Level)

8:30 am David Evans, University of Oregon, "Optimal Taxation with Persistent Idiosyncratic Investment Risk"
Discussant: Max Croce

9:30 am Anmol Bhandari, "Fiscal policy and debt management with incomplete markets"
Discussant: Kenneth Kasa

10:30 am Coffee

11:00 am Chris Gibbs, University of New South Wales, "Disinflationary Policies with Imperfect Credibility"
Discussant: Eric Gaus

12:00 pm Kaushik Mitra, University of Birmingham, UK Comparing Inflation and Price Level Targeting: the Role of Forward Guidance and Transparency"
Discussant: Bruce Preston

Have Blog, Will Travel

I am here today: Milken Institute Global Conference:

Program Glance

NBER Annual Conference on Macroeconomics: Abstracts for Day Two

First paper:

Declining Desire to Work and Downward Trends in Unemployment and Participation, by Regis Barnichon and Andrew Figura: Abstract The US labor market has witnessed two apparently unrelated trends in the last 30 years: a decline in unemployment between the early 1980s and the early 2000s, and a decline in labor force participation since the early 2000s. We show that a substantial factor behind both trends is a decline in desire to work among individuals outside the labor force, with a particularly strong decline during the second half of the 90s. A decline in desire to work lowers both the unemployment rate and the participation rate, because a nonparticipant who wants to work has a high probability to join the unemployment pool in the future, while a nonparticipant who does not want to work has a low probability to ever enter the labor force. We use cross-sectional variation to estimate a model of non-participants' propensity to want a job, and we find that changes in the provision of welfare and social insurance, possibly linked to the mid-90s welfare reforms, explain about 50 percent of the decline in desire to work.

Second paper:

External and Public Debt Crises, by Cristina Arellano, Andrew Atkeson, and Mark Wright: Abstract In recent years, the members of two advanced monetary and economic unions -- the nations of the Eurozone and the states of the United States of America -- experienced debt crises with spreads on government borrowing rising dramatically. Despite the similar behavior of spreads on public debt, these crises were fundamentally different in nature. In Europe, the crisis occurred after a period of significant increases in government indebtedness from levels that were already substantial, whereas in the USA state government borrowing was limited and remained roughly unchanged. Moreover, whereas the most troubled nations of Europe experienced a sudden stop in private capital flows and private sector borrowers also faced large rises in spreads, there is little evidence that private borrowing in US states was differentially affected by the creditworthiness of state governments. In this sense, we can say that the US States experienced a public debt crisis , whereas the nations of Europe experienced an external debt crisis affecting both public and private borrowers. Why did Europe experience an external debt crisis and the US States only a public debt crisis? And, why did the members of other economic unions, such as the provinces of Canada, not experience a debt crisis at all despite high and rising provincial public debt levels? In this paper, we construct a model of default on domestic and external public debt and interference in private external debt contracts and use it to argue that these different debt experiences result from the interplay of differences in the ability of governments to interfere in the private external debt contracts of their citizens, with differences in the flexibility of state fiscal institutions. We also assemble a range of empirical evidence that suggests that the US States are less fiscally flexible but more constrained in their ability to interfere in private contracts than the members of other economic unions, which simultaneously exposes the states to public debt crises while insulating them from an external debt crisis affecting private sector borrowers within the state. In contrast, Eurozone nations are more fiscally flexible but have a greater ability to interfere with the contracts, which together allow for more public borrowing at the cost of a joint public and private external debt crisis. Lastly, Canadian provincial governments are both fiscally flexible and limited in their ability to interfere, which allows both for more public borrowing and limits the likelihood of either a public or external debt crisis occurring. We draw lessons from these findings for the future design of Eurozone economic and legal institutions.

NBER Annual Conference on Macroeconomics: Abstracts for Day One

First paper at the NBER Annual Conference on Macroeconomics

Expectations and Investment, by Nicola Gennaioli, Yueran Ma, and Andrei Shleifer: Abstract Using micro data from Duke University quarterly survey of Chief Financial Officers, we show that corporate investment plans as well as actual investment are well explained by CFOs’ expectations of earnings growth. The information in expectations data is not subsumed by traditional variables, such as Tobin’s Q or discount rates. We also show that errors in CFO expectations of earnings growth are predictable from past earnings and other data, pointing to extrapolative structure of expectations and suggesting that expectations may not be rational . This evidence, like earlier findings in finance, points to the usefulness of data on actual expectations for understanding economic behavior.

Second paper:

Trends and Cycles in China's Macroeconomy, by Chun Chang, Kaji Chen, Daniel Waggoner, and Tao Zha: Abstract We make three contributions in this paper. First, we provide a core of macroeconomic time series usable for systematic research on China. Second, we document, through various empirical methods, the robust findings about striking patterns of trend and cycle. Third, we build a theoretical model that accounts for these facts. The model's mechanism and assumptions are corroborated by institutional details, disaggregated data, and banking time series, all of which are distinctive of Chinese characteristics. The departure of our theoretical model from standard ones offers a constructive framework for studying China's macroeconomy.

Third paper:

Demystifying the Chinese Housing Boom, byHanming Fang, Quanlin Gu, Wei Xiong, and Li-An Zhou: Abstract We construct housing price indices for 120 major cities in China in 2003 - 2013 based on sequential sales of new homes within the same housing developments. By using these indices and detailed information on mortgage borrowers across these cities, we find enormous housing price appreciation during the decade, which was accompanied by equally impressive growth in household income, except in a few first-tier cities. Housing market participation by households from the low-income fraction of the urban population remained steady. Nevertheless, bottom-income mortgage borrowers endured severe financial burdens by using price-to-income ratios over eight to buy homes, which reflected their expectations of persistently high income growth into the future. Such future income expectations could contract substantially in the event of a sudden stop in the Chinese economy and present an important source of risk to the housing market.

Fourth paper:

Networks and the Macroeconomy: An Empirical Exploration, by Daron Acemoglu, Ufuk Akcigit, and William Kerr: Abstract The propagation of macroeconomic shocks through input-output and geographic networks can be a powerful driver of macroeconomic fluctuations. We first exposit that in the presence of Cobb-Douglas production functions and consumer preferences, there is a specific pattern of economic transmission whereby demand-side shocks propagate upstream (to input supplying industries) and supply-side shocks propagate downstream (to customer industries) and that there is a tight relationship between the direct impact of a shock and the magnitudes of the downstream and the upstream indirect effects. We then investigate the short-run propagation of four different types of industry-level shocks: two demand-side ones (the exogenous component of the variation in industry imports from China and changes in federal spending) and two supply-side ones (TFP shocks and variation in knowledge/ideas coming from foreign patent- ing). In each case, we find substantial propagation of these shocks through the input-output network, with a pattern broadly consistent with theory. Quantitatively, the network-based propagation is larger than the direct effects of the shocks, sometimes by several fold. We also show quantitatively large effects from the geographic network, capturing the fact that the local propagation of a shock to an industry will fall more heavily on other industries that tend to collocate with it across local markets. Our results suggest that the transmission of various different types of shocks through economic networks and industry inter-linkages could have first-order implications for the macroeconomy.

Have Blog, Will Travel

I am here today:

2015 Annual INET Conference

liberté, égalité, fragilité

April 8-11, 2015 |

Paris, France

PROGRAM (papers)

Plenary

Wednesday, April 8, 2015

L’ESPACE PIERRE CARDIN

1, Avenue Gabriel, 75008

Paris, France

______________________________________________________

6.30P

Cocktail Reception

7.00

Opening Remarks

Robert Johnson

Anatole Kaletsky

Adair Turner

George Soros

Clive Cowdery

Program

Moderator: Clive Cowdery

Speakers: Angel Gurria, Thomas Piketty, and Joseph Stiglitz

______________________________________________________

Have Blog, Will Travel

I am here today:

Royal Economic Society Conference 2015
University of Manchester, United Kingdom
 
March 30, 2015

• 09:00 to 11:00 Registration and Coffee/Tea, University Place Foyer
• 11:00 to 12:30 Special Sessions A
• 12:30 to 13:30 Buffet Lunch, Eats Restaurant
• 13:30 to 14:45 Sargan Lecture: Michael Keane: Labor Supply: Estimating the Roles of Human Capital and the Extensive Margin
• 14:45 to 15:15 Coffee / Tea Break, University Place Foyer
• 15:15 to 16:45 General Sessions 1
• 16:45 to 17:00 Coffee / Tea Break, University Place Foyer
• 17:00 to 18:30 EJ Anniversary Session: I
• 19:00 to 21:00 Reception

March 31, 2015

• 09:00 to 10:30 General Sessions 2
• 10:30 to 11:00 Coffee / Tea Break, University Place Foyer
• 11:00 to 12:30 Economic Journal Lecture: Philippe Aghion: Innovation, Income Inequality and Social Mobility
• 12:30 to 13:30 Buffet Lunch, Eats Restaurant
• 12:30 to 13:30 RES AGM (with lunch), Room 1.219
• 13:30 to 14:45 Hahn Lecture: Pierre-André Chiappori: Equivalence Scales Versus Indifference Scales
• 14:45 to 15:15 Coffee / Tea Break, University Place Foyer
• 15:15 to 16:45 General Sessions 3
• 16:45 to 17:00 Coffee / Tea Break, University Place Foyer
• 17:00 to 18:30 EJ Anniversary Session: II
• 19:30 to 23:00 Reception and Gala Dinner

April 1, 2015

• 09:00 to 10:30 General Sessions 4
• 10:30 to 11:00 Coffee / Tea Break, University Place Foyer
• 11:00 to 12:30 Special Sessions B
• 12:30 to 13:30 Buffet Lunch, Eats Restaurant
• 12:30 to 13:30 RES Women's Committee Special Session (with lunch), Room 1.219
• 13:30 to 14:45 Presidential Address: Sir Charles Bean: Living with Low for Long
• 14:45 to 15:15 Coffee / Tea Break, University Place Foyer
• 15:15 to 16:45 General Sessions 5
• 16:45 to 17:00 Coffee / Tea Break, University Place Foyer
• 17:00 to 18:30 EJ Anniversary Session: III

Have Blog, Will Travel

I am here today:

NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH, INC.
EF&G Research Meeting
Manuel Amador and Andrea Eisfeldt, Organizers
February 27, 2015
Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco
101 Market Street
San Francisco, CA

PROGRAM

8:30 am Continental Breakfast

9:00 am
Pablo Kurlat, Stanford University and NBER
Asset Markets with Heterogeneous Information
Discussant:  Veronica Guerrieri, University of Chicago and NBER

10:00 am Break

10:15 am
Johannes Stroebel, New York University
Joseph Vavra, University of Chicago and NBER
House Prices, Local Demand, and Retail Prices
Discussant:  John Leahy, New York University and NBER

11:15 am Break

11:30 am
Daniel Greenwald, New York University
Martin Lettau, University of California at Berkeley and NBER
Sydney Ludvigson, New York University and NBER
Origins of Stock Market Fluctuations
Discussant:  John Cochrane, University of Chicago and NBER

12:30 pm Lunch

1:30 pm
Fatih Guvenen, University of Minnesota and NBER
Fatih Karahan, Federal Reserve Bank of New York
Serdar Ozkan, University of Toronto, Jae Song, Social Security Administration
What Do Data on Millions of US Workers Reveal About Life-Cycle Earnings Risk?
Discussant:  Luigi Pistaferri, Stanford University and NBER

2:30 pm Break

2:45 pm
Thomas Philippon, New York University and NBER
Philippe Martin, Sciences Po
Inspecting the Mechanism: Leverage and the Great Recession in the Eurozone
Discussant:  Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas, University of California at Berkeley and NBER

3:45 pm Break

4:00 pm
Rabah Arezki, International Monetary Fund
Valerie Ramey, University of California at San Diego and NBER
Liugang Sheng, Chinese University of Hong Kong
News Shocks in Open Economies: Evidence from Giant Oil Discoveries
Discussant:  Nir Jaimovich, Duke University and NBER

5:00 pm Adjourn

5:15 pm Reception and Dinner

Have Blog, Will Travel

I am here today:

5th Lindau Meeting on Economic Sciences

19-23 August 2014, Lindau, Germany

Lindau Meeting of the Laureates of the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel

The 5th Lindau Meeting on Economic Sciences will provide an open exchange of economic expertise and inspire cross-cultural and inter-generational encounters among economists from all over the world. From 19 to 23 August, the participating 18 Nobel Laureates and 460 young scientists will have plenty of opportunity for an intensive exchange of ideas.

The meeting will open on 20 August with a keynote address by the German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and will also feature “a panoramic view on the situation and prospects in Latin America” by Mario Vargas Llosa, the 2010 Nobel Laureate in Literature. The scientific programme will address central fields of the discipline, ranging from econometrics, game theory, and neo-classical growth theory to mechanism design and systemic risk measurement. The overarching question “How useful is economics – how is economics useful?” will also be subject of the meeting’s closing panel debate on Mainau Island on Saturday, 23 August.

Programme

The scientific programme of the 5th Lindau Meeting on Economic Sciences will comprise lectures and panel discussions (accessible for all registered meeting participants and guests), as well as discussion sessions and master classes (both accessible only for participating Nobel Laureates and young scientists).

A detailed version of the programme including all lecture titles of the participating laureates with links to their abstracts is available in the Lindau Mediatheque. Please find a PDF version of the printed programme here. To get an overview of the meeting schedule you can also download the programme structure.

Participating Laureates

18 Laureates will attend the 5th Lindau Meeting on Economic Sciences. Among 17 economists there will also be Mario Vargas Llosa, Nobel Laureate in Literature in 2010, participating in the meeting. Please find further information on the Laureates' profiles including their CVs in the Lindau Mediatheque.

Robert Aumann
Peter DiamondLars Peter Hansen
Finn Kydland
Eric Maskin
Daniel McFadden
Robert C. Merton
James Mirrlees
Roger Myerson
Edmund Phelps
Edward Prescott
Alvin Roth 
Reinhard Selten
William Sharpe
Christopher Sims
Vernon Smith
Joseph Stiglitz
Mario Vargas Llosa

Today's Program:

Wednesday, 20 August

8.30 Plenary Lecture Inselhalle Lars Peter Hansen Uncertainty and Valuation

 09.00 Plenary Lecture Inselhalle Alvin E. Roth Repugnant Markets and Prohibited Transactions

09.30 Plenary Lecture Inselhalle Edmund S. Phelps Bringing Dynamism, Homegrown Innovation and Human Flourishing into Economics

10.00 Coffee Break

10.30 Plenary Lecture Inselhalle Christopher A. Sims Inflation, Fear of Inflation, and Public Debt

11.00 Plenary Lecture Inselhalle Vernon L. Smith Rethinking Market Experiments in the Shadow of Recessions: The Good and the Sometimes Ugly; Propositions on Recessions

14.00 Opening Ceremony Inselhalle Opening Ceremony

Angela Merkel Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany Master of Ceremony

16.00 Discussion Lars Peter Hansen Discussion with young scientists

16.00 Discussion Edmund S. Phelps Discussion with young scientists

16.00 Alvin E. Roth Discussion with young scientists

16.00 Discussion Christopher A. Sims Discussion with young scientists

 16.00 Discussion Vernon L. Smith Discussion with young scientists

17.30 Break

20.00 Social Function Inselhalle Get-Together

Have Blog, Will Travel

I am here today:

Tiger Forum, Toulouse, France, June 2-6: Exclusive info: live streaming will be available for all policy events, including:

Joseph Stiglitz lecture: 16:30 to 17:30 Monday, June 2: "Creating a Learning Society: A New Approach to Growth, Development, and Social Progress

TIGER Insights: One-hour intensive sessions on specific themes, in a small format. Seats are limited to 50 to encourage debate and interactions, but the sessions can be followed online (live-streaming). Registration on-site from 9am on the morning of each session.  ROARING Debates: Key policy-related debates in a round-table format aimed at a wide audience and open to all TIGER Forum participants. Held in the main lecture hall, registration online.    ** Watch Live Streams Here ** [Note: we are 9 hours ahead of west coast time.]

Have Blog, Will Travel

At the Milken Global Conference for the next few days.

At a session on Abenomics, and the "three arrows" (monetary stimulus, fiscal stimulus, and supply-side structural reform).

I'll post the video from interesting sessions.

Secular Stagnation? The Future Challenge for Economic Policy

This is worth watching:

Cyber War, Cyber Space: National Security and Privacy in the Global Economy

Information technologies and infrastructure play an increasingly important role in daily life. But at the same time, cyber security is becoming increasingly threatened. How does society deal with these conflicting challenges.

This keynote INET panel features speakers Steven Bellovin, Yvo Desmedt, Amir Hertzberg, and Bart Preneel, moderated by Thomas Ferguson.

Have Blog, Will Travel

I am here today:

INET: Human After All - April 10-12: The Institute for New Economic Thinking is hosting its fifth annual conference with its partner the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI) at the Fairmont Royal York Hotel in Toronto. The conference topic is the economics of innovation and the impact of innovation on society. Speakers will include a roster of newsmakers, including former U.S. Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, Nobel laureates Joseph Stiglitz and James Heckman, former co-CEO of Research In Motion Jim Balsillie, Bank of England Chief Economist Andy Haldane, former head of the U.K. Financial Services Authority Adair Lord Turner, Harvard University professor and best-selling author Michael Sandel, and author, essayist and President of PEN International, John Ralston Saul. Watch Live beginning at noon EST.

 I will post the conference schedule as soon as I can -- for some reason it's not yet available

Update: Today's schedule (I'll post Friday and Saturday later):

CANADIAN ROOM 1:00–2:45 PM LUNCH KEYNOTE ( OPENING ) Is Innovation Always A Good Thing? Technology and innovation create “disruption.” That basically means creating new markets or value networks, which eventually disrupts earlier technologies. New products, new inventions, new sources of demand are all possible. Yet, the very innovation that creates these opportunities also can create job losses as well as having significant distributional consequences for society as a whole.

The panel seeks to explore this duality.

• James Balsillie Chair, Centre for International Governance Innovation
• Lisa Cook Professor, Department of Economics, Michigan State University
• Robert Johnson President, Institute for New Economic Thinking
• Richard Nelson Professor of Economics, Columbia University
• Moderator Richard Waters Financial Times

CANADIAN ROOM 3:00–4:30 PM PLENARY PANEL
Innovation: Do Private Returns Produce the Social Returns We Need? The machines of the frst age replaced and multiplied the physical labor of humans and animals. The machines of the second age will replace and multiply our intelligence. The driving force behind this revolution will, argue the “techno-positivists,” exponentially increase the power (or exponentially reduce the cost) of computing. The celebrated example is Moore’s Law, named after Gordon Moore, a founder of Intel. For half a century, the number of transistors on a semiconductor chip has doubled at least every two years. But the information age has coincided with—and must, to some extent, have caused—adverse economic trends: stagnation of median real incomes; rising inequality of labor income and of the distribution of income between labor and capital; and growing long- term unemployment. Are the great gains in wealth and material prosperity created by our entrepreneurs in and of themselves sufficient to produce desired social returns demanded in today’s world?

• Simon Head Fellow, Institute for Public Knowledge, New York University, and Director of Programs, The New York Review of Books Foundation
• Mariana Mazzucato R.M. Phillips Professor in the Economics of Innovation, SPRU, University of Sussex
• Stian Westlake Executive Director, National Endowment for Science Technology and the Arts
• Dr. Joon Yun Partner and President, Palo Alto, LLC Moderator Quentin Hardy Deputy Tech Editor, The New York Times
• Moderator Quentin Hardy Deputy Tech Editor, The New York Time

CANADIAN ROOM 4:45–6:15 PM PLENARY PANEL
Have we Repaired Financial Regulations since Lehman? The 2008 global financial crisis led to the worst recession in the developed world since the Great Depression. Governments had to respond decisively on a large scale to contain the destructive impact of massive debt deflation, (although there is some question as to the degree to which this represented support for the financial ser - vices industry vs the needs of the real economy). Still, large financial institutions such as American International Group, Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Countrywide Financial, Washington Mutual, Wachovia, Northern Rock, and Landsbanki collapsed; thousands of small-to-medium- sized financial institutions failed or needed to be rescued; millions of households lost their retirement savings, jobs, homes, and communities; and numerous non- financial businesses closed. Five years later, we are still experiencing the effects of the crisis. Are the financial reforms and regulations introduced since the onset of the crisis likely to be effective in preventing another catastrophe?

• Anat Admati Professor, Stanford Graduate School of Business
• Richard Bookstaber U.S. Treasury with the Office of Financial Research and FSOC
• Andrew Haldane Executive Director of Financial Stability, Bank of England
• Edward Kane Professor of Finance, Boston College
• Moderator Martin Wolf Financial Times

CANADIAN ROOM FOYER 6:15–7:15 PM Cocktail Reception

CANADIAN ROOM 7:15–9:00 PM KEYNOTE DINNER
Innovation: To What Purpose? Innovation is said to be essential for survival in most industries. Yet, innovation can be very risky—some inno - vations can even destroy value. How can managers and entrepreneurs know what to do, and how should this trade-o ff between innovation and risk be treated? What are the broader social goals that ought to be achieved via innovation?

• Presenter John Ralston Saul Novelist, Essayist and President, PEN International
• Moderator Rohinton Medhora President, Centre for International Governance Innovation

Have Blog, Will Travel

I am here today:

National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc., EF&G Research Meeting
Robert Shimer and Michael Woodford, Organizers
February 7, 2014, Federal Reserve Bank of New York

Program

9:00 am Charles Carlstrom, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland Timothy Fuerst, University of Notre Dame Matthias Paustian, Federal Reserve Board Targeting Long Rates in a Model with Segmented Markets Discussant:  Mark Gertler, New York University and NBER

10:00 am Break

10:30 am Fernando Alvarez, University of Chicago and NBER Herve Le Bihan, Banque de France Francesco Lippi, EIEF Small and Large Price Changes and the Propagation of Monetary Shocks Discussant:  Virgiliu Midrigan, New York University and NBER

11:30 am Bill Dupor, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis Rong Li, Ohio State University The 2009 Recovery Act and the Expected Inflation Channel of Government Spending Discussant:  Gauti Eggertsson, Brown University and NBER

12:30 pm Lunch - 1st Floor, Liberty Room

1:30 pm Roger Farmer, University of California at Los Angeles and NBER Carine Nourry, University of the Mediterranean Alain Venditti, University of the Mediterranean The Inefficient Markets Hypothesis: Why Financial Markets Do Not Work Well in the Real World Discussant:  Nobuhiro Kiyotaki, Princeton University and NBER

2:30 pm Break

3:00 pm Gabriel Chodorow-Reich, Harvard University Loukas Karabarbounis, University of Chicago and NBER The Cyclicality of the Opportunity Cost of Employment Discussant:  Robert Hall, Stanford University and NBER

4:00 pm Anna Orlik, Federal Reserve Board Laura Veldkamp, New York University and NBER Understanding Uncertainty Shocks and the Role of Black Swans Discussant:  Jennifer La'O, Columbia University and NBER

5:00 pm Adjourn

Have Blog, Will Travel: Dallas Fed Housing, Stability, and the Macroeconomy Conference

I am here today and tomorrow:

Housing, Stability and the Macroeconomy: International Perspectives

November 14–15, 2013 · Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas
(By invitation only)

Sponsored by
Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, IMF Research Department and Journal of Money, Credit and Banking

The Great Recession interrupted a long boom in real house prices in many countries. In the U.S., the collapse in house prices and residential construction, the surge in mortgage delinquencies and foreclosures, as well as the dramatic tightening in mortgage standards and fall in household leverage played a major role in the recent financial crisis. Similar factors have affected a number of other countries. These developments have prompted a great deal of new research on housing and mortgage markets, macroeconomic models with housing credit channels, and macro-prudential regulation and macroeconomic stability.

To inform researchers and policymakers of these efforts and to foster future advances, the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, the IMF Research Department and the Journal of Money, Credit, and Banking are sponsoring a two-day conference to provide a venue for original theoretical and empirical studies on the macroeconomics of housing, focusing on the lessons learned from the crisis and outstanding issues that remain to be addressed.

Agenda

Thursday, November 14, 2013
8:15 a.m.	Registration and Continental Breakfast
8:45 a.m.	Welcome Remarks Helen Holcomb, Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas Stijn Claessens, International Monetary Fund
9 a.m.	Paper Session 1 Chair: Anthony Murphy, Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas
	Optimal Monetary Policy Rules and House Prices: The Role of Financial Frictions Alessandro Notarpietro*, Bank of Italy Stefano Siviero, Bank of Italy
	Discussant: Zheng Liu, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco
	House Price Booms, Current Account Deficits and Low Interest Rates Andrea Ferrero*, Oxford University
	Discussant: Edward Leamer, University of California, Los Angeles
11 a.m.	Paper Session 2 Chair: Thorsten Beck, Cass Business School and Tilburg University
	Capital Inflows and the U.S. Housing Boom Filipa Sá*, King’s College, London Tomasz Wieladek, Bank of England
	Discussant: Pedro Gete, Georgetown University
	Macroprudential Policies and Housing Prices—A New Database and Empirical Evidence for Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe Enrica Detragiache, International Monetary Fund Jérôme Vandenbussche*, International Monetary Fund Ursula Vogel, Deutsche Bundesbank
	Discussant: Stefan Gerlach, Central Bank of Ireland
12:45 p.m.	Luncheon and Keynote Address 1
	David Miles, Bank of England
2 p.m.	Panel 1: Lessons Learned and Implications for Policy Chair: John Duca, Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas
	Panel: Allan Crawford, Bank of Canada Philipp Hartmann, European Central Bank Dwight Jaffee, University of California, Berkeley Susan Wachter, University of Pennsylvania
4 p.m.	Paper Session 3 Chair: Prakash Loungani, International Monetary Fund
	Capital Inflows, Housing Prices and the Macroeconomy: Evidence from Advanced and Emerging Market Economies Ambrogio Cesa-Bianchi, Bank of England Luis Céspedes, Adolfo Ibáñez University, Chile Alessandro Rebucci*, Johns Hopkins University
	Discussant: Ken Kuttner, Williams College
	Explaining House Price Dynamics: Isolating the Role of Non-Fundamentals Thao Le, National University of Singapore David Ling*, University of Florida Joseph Ooi, National University of Singapore
	Discussant: Kevin Lansing, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco
7 p.m.	Conference Reception and Dinner

Friday, November 15, 2013
8:15 a.m.	Paper Session 4 Chair: Rabah Arezki, International Monetary Fund
	Supply Restrictions, Subprime Lending and Regional U.S. Housing Prices Andre Kallålk Anundsen, University of Oslo Christian Heebøll*, University of Copenhagen
	Discussant: Andra Ghent, Arizona State University
	Timing of Homeownership, Credit Constraint and House Price Expectation Sumit Agarwal, National University of Singapore Luojia Hu*, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago Xing Huang, Michigan State University
	Discussant: Daniel Fetter, Wellesley College
10 a.m.	Keynote 2
	Robert Shiller, Yale University
11:15 a.m.	Panel 2: Housing and Macroeconomics Chair: Sony Kapoor, Re-Define and London School of Economics
	Panelists: Edward Leamer, University of California, Los Angeles John Muellbauer, University of Oxford Amir Sufi, University of Chicago Stijn Claessens, International Monetary Fund
12:30 p.m.	Lunch
1:45 p.m.	Paper Session 5 Chair: Robert DeYoung, University of Kansas and Journal of Money, Credit and Banking
	Joint Dynamics of House Prices and Foreclosures Yavuz Arslan, Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey Bulent Guler*, Indiana University Temel Taskin, Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey
	Discussant: Paul Willen, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston
	The Impact of Housing Markets on Consumer Debt: Credit Report Evidence from 1999 to 2012 Meta Brown*, Federal Reserve Bank of New York Sarah Stein, Federal Reserve Bank of New York Basit Zafir, Federal Reserve Bank of New York
	Discussant: Karen Pence, Federal Reserve Board
3:15 p.m.	Closing Comments

*Presenter

Fiscal Multipliers: Liquidity Traps and Currency Unions

First paper at the conference is interesting:

Fiscal Multipliers: Liquidity Traps and Currency Unions, by Emmanuel Farhi and Iván Werning, NBER: We provide explicit solutions for government spending multipliers during a liquidity trap and within a fixed exchange regime using standard closed and open-economy models. We confirm the potential for large multipliers during liquidity traps. For a currency union, we show that self-financed multipliers are small, always below unity. However, outside transfers or windfalls can generate larger responses in out- put, whether or not they are spent by the government. Our solutions are relevant for local and national multipliers, providing insight into the economic mechanisms at work as well as the testable implications of these models.

Discussant: The "Keynesian demand effect can potentially be very large." Here is a bit of the introduction that explains further:

1 Introduction Economists generally agree that macroeconomic stabilization should be handled first and foremost by monetary policy. Yet monetary policy can run into constraints that impair its effectiveness. For example, the economy may find itself in a liquidity trap, where interest rates hit zero, preventing further reductions in the interest rate. Similarly, countries that belong to currency unions, or states within a country, do not have the option of an independent monetary policy. Some economists advocate for fiscal policy to fill this void, increasing government spending to stimulate the economy. Others disagree, and the issue remains deeply controversial, as evidenced by vigorous debates on the magnitude of fiscal multipliers. No doubt, this situation stems partly from the lack of definitive empirical evidence, but, in our view, the absence of clear theoretical benchmarks also plays an important role. Although various recent contributions have substantially furthered our understanding, to date, the implications of standard macroeconomic models have not been fully worked out. This is the goal of our paper.

We solve for the response of the economy to changes in the path for government spending during liquidity traps or within currency unions using standard closed and open-economy monetary models. ...

Our results confirm that fiscal policy can be especially potent during a liquidity trap. The multiplier for output is greater than one. The mechanism for this result is that government spending promotes inflation. With fixed nominal interest rates, this reduces real interest rates which increases current spending. The increase in consumption in turn leads to more inflation, creating a feedback loop. The fiscal multiplier is increasing in the degree of price flexibility, which is intuitive given that the mechanism relies on the response of inflation. We show that backloading spending leads to larger effects; the rationale is that inflation then has more time to affect spending decisions.

In a currency union, by contrast, government spending is less effective at increasing output. We show that consumption is depressed, so that the multiplier is less than one. Moreover, price flexibility diminishes the effectiveness of spending, instead of increasing it. We explain this result using a simple argument that illustrates its robustness. Government spending leads to inflation in domestically produced goods and this loss in competitiveness depresses private spending. Applied to current debates in Europe, this highlights a possible tradeoff: putting off fiscal consolidation may postpone internal devaluations that actually help reactivate private spending.

It may seem surprising that fiscal multipliers are necessarily less than one whenever the exchange rate is fixed, because this contrasts sharply with the effects during liquidity traps. Our analytical approach allows us to uncover the crucial difference in monetary policy: although a fixed exchange rate implies a fixed nominal interest rate, the converse is not true. Indeed, we prove that the liquidity trap analysis implicitly combines a shock to government spending with a one-off devaluation. The positive response of consumption relies entirely on this devaluation. A currency union rules out such devaluations, explaining the negative response of consumption.

In the context of a currency union, our results uncover the importance of transfers from the outside, from other countries or regions. In the short run, when prices haven’t fully adjusted, positive transfers from the rest of the world increase the demand for home goods, stimulating output. We compute “transfer multipliers” that capture the response of the economy to transfers from the outside. We show that these multipliers may be large and depend crucially on the degree of openness of the domestic economy.

Outside transfers are often tied to government spending. In the United States federal military spending allocated to a particular state is financed by the country as a whole. The same is true for exogenous differences in stimulus payments, due to idiosyncratic provisions in the law. Likewise, idiosyncratic portfolio returns accruing to a particular state’s coffers represent a windfall for this state against the rest. When changes in spending are financed by such outside transfers, the associated multipliers are a combination of self-financed multipliers and transfer multipliers. As a result, multipliers may be substantially larger than one.

Finally, we explore non-Ricardian effects from fiscal policy by introducing hand-to- mouth consumers. We think of this as a tractable way of modeling liquidity constraints. In both in a liquidity trap and in a currency union, government spending now has an additional stimulative effect. It increases the income and consumption of hand-to-mouth agents. This effects is largest when spending is deficit financed; indeed, the effects may in some cases depend entirely on deficits, not spending per se. Overall, although hand to mouth consumers introduce an additional effect most of our conclusions, such as the comparison of fiscal multipliers in a liquidity trap and a currency union, are unaffected. ...

Have Blog, Will Travel

I am here today:

NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH, INC.
EF&G Research Meeting
Martin Eichenbaum and Erik Hurst, Organizers
Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago

PROGRAM

Friday, October 25:

8:30 am Continental Breakfast

9:00 am Emmanuel Farhi, Harvard University and NBER
Ivan Werning, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and NBER
Fiscal Multipliers: Liquidity Traps and Currency Unions

Discussant:  Jon Steinsson, Columbia University and NBER

10:00 am Break

10:30 am Jesus Fernandez-Villaverde, Univ of Pennsylvania and NBER
Pablo Guerron-Quintana, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia
Keith Kuester, University of Bonn
Juan Rubio-Ramírez, Duke University
Fiscal Volatility Shocks and Economic Activity

Discussant:  Nicholas Bloom, Stanford University and NBER

11:30 am Leonid Kogan, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and NBER
Dimitris Papanikolaou, Northwestern University and NBER
Amit Seru, University of Chicago and NBER
Noah Stoffman, Indiana University
Technological Innovation, Resource Allocation and Growth

Discussant:  Pete Klenow, Stanford University and NBER

12:30 pm Lunch

1:30 pm Yuriy Gorodnichenko, UC Berkeley and NBER
Michael Weber, University of California at Berkeley
Are Sticky Prices Costly? Evidence From The Stock Market

Discussant:  Ricardo Reis, Columbia University and NBER

2:30 pm Break

3:00 pm Gian Luca Clementi, New York University and NBER
Berardino Palazzo, Boston University
Entry, Exit, Firm Dynamics, and Aggregate Fluctuations

Discussant:  Jeffrey Campbell, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago

4:00 pm Andrew Atkeson, UCLA and NBER
Andrea Eisfeldt, University of California at Los Angeles
Pierre-Olivier Weill, University of California at Los Angeles and NBER
Measuring the Financial Soundness of US Firms, 1926-2012

Discussant:  Thomas Philippon, New York University and NBER

5:00 pm Adjourn

Have Blog, Will Travel

I am here for the next two days:

38^th Annual Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis Fall Conference

Thursday, October 10, 2013

8: 45 – 9:00 am Opening Remarks
James Bullard, President, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis

Session I - Financial Markets 1

9:00 – 10:15 am "Trade Dynamics in the Market for Federal Funds"
Presenter:  Ricardo Lagos, New York University
Coauthor:  Gara Afonso, Federal Reserve Bank of New York
Discussant:  Huberto Ennis, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond

10:45 am – 12:00 pm "Banks' Risk Exposures"
Presenter:  Martin Schneider , Stanford University
Coauthors:  Juliane Begenau, Stanford University and Monika Piazzesi, Stanford University
Discussant:  Hanno Lustig, University of California-Los Angeles

Session II: Monetary Policy and Macro Dynamics

1:00 – 2:15 pm "Unemployment and Business Cycles"
Presenter:  Martin S. Eichenbaum, Northwestern University
Coauthors:  Lawrence J. Christiano, Northwestern University and Mathias Trabandt, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System
Discussant:  Jaroslav Borovicka, New York University

2:45 – 4:00 pm "Conventional and Unconventional Monetary Policy in a Model with Endogenous Collateral Constraints"
Presenter:  Michael Woodford, Columbia University
Coauthors:  Aloísio Araújo, Getulio Vargas Foundation and Susan Schommer, Instituto Nacional de Matemática Pura e Aplicada
Discussant:  Stephen Williamson, Washington University

4:00 – 5:15 pm "Leverage Restrictions in a Business Cycle Model"
Presenter:  Lawrence J. Christiano, Northwestern University
Coauthor:  Daisuke Ikeda, Bank of Japan
Discussant:  Benjamin Moll, Princeton UniversityFriday, October 11, 2013

Friday, October 11, 2013

Session III: Financial Markets 2

9:00 – 10:15 am "Measuring the Financial Soundness of U.S. Firms, 1926—2012"
Presenter:  Andrew G. Atkeson, University of California-Los Angeles
Coauthor:  Andrea L. Eisfeldt, University of California-Los Angeles and Pierre-Olivier Weill, University of California-Los Angeles
Discussant:  Gian Luca Clementi, New York University

10:45 am – 12:00 pm "The I Theory of Money"
Presenter:  Markus K. Brunnermeier, Princeton University
Coauthor:  Yuliy Sannikov, Princeton University
Discussant:  Ed Nosal, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago

Session IV: Households Lifecycle Behavior

1:00 – 2:15 pm "Is There 'Too Much' Inequality in Health Spending Across Income Groups?"
Presenter:  Larry E. Jones, University of Minnesota
Coauthors:  Laurence Ales, Carnegie Mellon University and Roozbeh Hosseini , Arizona State University
Discussant:  Selahattin İmrohoroğlu, University of Southern California

2:15 –3:30 pm "Retirement, Home Production and Labor Supply Elasticities"
Presenter:  Richard Rogerson, Princeton University
Coauthor:  Johanna Wallenius, Stockholm School of Economics
Discussant:  Nancy Stokey, University of Chicago

Have Blog, Will Travel

I am here today:

Finance and the Wealth of Nations Workshop
Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco
& The Institute of New Economic Thinking

9:00AM - 9:45AM: David Scharfstein and Robin Greenwood (Harvard Business School), “The Growth of Finance”, Discussant: Bradford DeLong (UC Berkeley)

9:45AM-10:30AM: Ariell Reshef (Virginia) and Thomas Philippon (NYU-Stern), “An International Look at the Growth of Modern Finance” , Discussant: Charles Jones (Stanford GSB)

10:45AM -11:30AM: Andrea Eisfeldt (UCLA-Anderson), Andrew Atkeson (UCLA) and Pierre-Olivier Weill (UCLA), “The Financial Soundness of U.S. Firms 1926–2011: Financial Frictions and the Business Cycle”, Discussant: Jonathan Rose (Federal Reserve Board) 

11:30AM -12:15PM: Ross Levine (UC Berkeley-Haas), Yona Rubenstein (LSE), “Liberty for More: Finance and Educational Opportunities”, Discussant: Gregory Clark (UC Davis)

1:30PM-2:15PM: Atif Mian (Princeton), Amir Sufi (U. Chicago-Booth), “The Effect Of Interest Rate And Collateral Value Shocks On Household Spending: Evidence from Mortgage Refinancsing”, Discussant: Reuven Glick (SF Fed)

2:15PM-3:00PM: Maurice Obstfeld (UC Berkeley), “Finance at Center Stage: Some Lessons of the Euro Crisis”, Discussant: Giovanni dell'Ariccia (IMF)

3:00PM-3:45PM: Stephen G. Cecchetti and Enisse Kharroubi (BIS), “Why Does Financial Sector Growth Crowd Out Real Economic Growth?”, Discussant: Barry Eichengreen (UC Berkeley) 

4:00PM-4:45PM: Thorsten Beck (Tilburg), “Financial Innoation: The Bright and the Dark Sides”, Discussant: Sylvain Leduc (SF Fed) 

4:45PM-5:30PM: Alan M. Taylor (UC Davis), Òscar Jordà (SF Fed/UC Davis), Moritz Schularick (Bonn), “Sovereigns versus Banks: Crises, Causes and Consequences”, Discussant: Aaron Tornell (UCLA)

6:15PM: Keynote Speaker, Introduction: John Williams (SF Fed, President), Lord Adair Turner (INET, Senior Fellow; former Chairman of the UK Financial Services Authority), "Credit, Money and Leverage"

Have Blog, Will Travel: TIGER Forum in Toulouse, France

I am at the TIGER Forum: Economic Growth: Challenges for Regulatory Change in Toulouse, France today (TIGER = Toulouse - Industry - Globalization - Environment - Regulation).

Lots of good speakers, e.g. Jean-Claude Trichet  talks tomorrow evening.

Have Blog, Will Travel: Poverty, Inequality, and Social Policy

I am here today (I discuss inequality, poverty, and social policy quite a bit and thought this conference would be a good opportunity to hear some of the latest academic research on these issues):

NBER Universities' Research Conference
Poverty, Inequality, and Social Policy
Phillip B. Levine and Melissa Schettini Kearney, Organizers

May 10-11, 2013
Royal Sonesta Hotel

PROGRAM

Friday, May 10

1:30 pm Welcome and Introduction

1:40 pm
Hilary W. Hoynes, University of California at Davis and NBER
Marianne Bitler, University of California at Irvine and NBER
Elira Kuka, University of California at Davis
Do In-Work Tax Credits Serve as a Safety Net?
Discussant: Bruce Meyer, University of Chicago and NBER

2:30 pm
Bhashkar Mazumder, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago
Sarah Miller, University of Michigan RWJ Scholar
The Effects of the Massachusetts Health Reform on Financial Well Being
Discussant: Robin McKnight, Wellesley College and NBER

3:20 pm Break

3:40 pm
Joanne Hsu, Federal Reserve Board
David Matsa, Northwestern University
Brian T. Melzer, Northwestern University
Unemployment Insurance and Consumer Credit
Discussant: Tal Gross, Columbia University and NBER Food Insecurity Roundtable

4:30 pm
Neeraj Kaushal, Columbia University and NBER
Jane Waldfogel, Columbia University
Vanessa Wight, Columbia University
Public Policy and Food Insecurity among Children

Patricia M. Anderson, Dartmouth College and NBER
Kristin Butcher, Wellesley College and NBER
Hilary W. Hoynes, University of California at Davis and NBER
Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach, Northwestern University and NBER
Understanding Food Insecurity During the Great Recession

Lucie Schmidt, Williams College
Lara Shore-Sheppard, Williams College and NBER
Tara Watson, Williams College and NBER
The Effect of Safety Net Programs on Food Insecurity

5:30 pm  Adjourn

6:00 pm Reception and Group Dinner

Saturday, May 11

8:00 am Continental Breakfast

8:30 am
Hannes Schwandt, Princeton University
Unlucky Cohorts: Income, Health Insurance and AIDS Mortality of Recession Graduates
Discussant: Ann Huff Stevens, University of California at Davis and NBER

9:20 am
Ariel Kalil, University of Chicago
Magne Mogstad, University College London
Mari Rege, Case Western Reserve University
Mark Votruba, Case Western Reserve University
Father Presence and the Intergenerational Transmission of Educational Attainment
Discussant: Elizabeth Ananat, Duke University and NBER

10:10 am Break

10:30 am
Phillip B. Levine, Wellesley College and NBER
Melissa Schettini Kearney, University of Maryland and NBER
Income Inequality and the Decision to Drop Out of High School
Discussant: David Deming, Harvard University and NBER

11:20 am
Anna Aizer, Brown University and NBER
Florencia Borrescio Higa, Brown University
Hernan Winkler, University of California at Los Angeles
Impact of Rising Inequality on Health at Birth
Discussant: Doug Almond, Columbia University and NBER

12:10 pm Lunch

1:10 pm
Adriana Lleras-Muney, University of California at Los Angeles and NBER
Anna Aizer, Brown University and NBER
Joseph P. Ferrie, Northwestern University and NBER
Shari Eli, University of Toronto
The Long Term Impact of Means-Tested Transfers: Evidence from the Mother's Pension Program
Discussant: Hoyt Bleakely, University of Chicago and NBER

2:00 pm
Sendhil Mullainathan, Harvard University and NBER
Eldar Shafir, Princeton University
The Psychology of Poverty (additional paper)

2:45 pm
David Ellwood, Harvard University and NBER
What Can We Possibly Do Now?  Reflections on Future Directions for Research and Policy in an Era of Rising Inequality

3:15 pm Adjourn

Debt and the Deficit: What's Really on the Table?

I have a feeling this session is going to be a bit irritating:

Debt and the Deficit: What's Really on the Table?
Monday, April 29, 2013 2:15 PM - 3:15 PM

• Speakers:
• Bob Corker, U.S. Senator
• David Cote, Chairman and CEO, Honeywell; Steering Committee Member, Campaign to Fix the Debt
• Maya MacGuineas, Head, Campaign to Fix the Debt; President, Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget
• Peter Orszag, Vice Chairman, Corporate and Investment Banking, Citigroup; former Director, Office of Management and Budget

Moderator: Steven Rattner, Chairman, Willett Advisors; former Counselor and Lead Auto Advisor to the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury

With outsize debt putting the stability of credit markets and the pace of economic growth at risk, will Americans embrace shared sacrifice to set the country on a path toward fiscal health? Or is the problem essentially the result of gridlock in Washington? And what does "shared sacrifice" actually mean? Who will bear the heavier burden: the rich, the elderly, the middle class? Are Simpson and Bowles still relevant? Our panel will examine the economics and politics around our accumulating public debt and annual deficit, with an eye toward palatable and realistic solutions. Can we grow our way out of the mess? How will we cope with the twin hazards of graying demographics and healthcare inflation? Back to the credit markets: Are Treasuries as safe as they seem?

There was remarkably little discussion of increasing revenues through tax rate increases. There was some discussion of increasing revenue, but it was mainly about eliminating deductions like home interest rather than increasing tax rates. Instead, most of the focus was on, surprise, "entitlement reform" with only Orszag being careful to point to health care costs as the main problem to solve.

The most entertaining moment was when the business guy on the panel, David Cote, said that unlike in business where what you think, say, and do must align, for Congress these are different decisions. Senator Corker said he was offended by that comment and went on to defend Congress (e.g. saying many people in business don't understand that politicians have to represent a diverse constituency). Ha. A Republican fighting with a business rep, then defending government. Too bad he wants to cut the crap out of it.

Other than that, the degree of hawkery and the implicit assumption that the only way to solve problems with our long-run budget picture is to cut social insurance programs the working class relies upon was, in fact, irritating. The continued discussion about deficit reduction as the key to spurring private sector growth was similarly irritating. It's exactly what we heard about the Bush tax cuts, and we know how that turned out. A huge increase in the debt load with little (if any) increased growth to show for it.

Finally, as far as I recall, the word "unemployment" did not come up. In the short-run, deficit hawkery is what's standing in the way of doing more to help with the unemployment problem. The key question -- whether the concern in the short-run with the debt rather than the unemployed is justified in the short-run (it isn't in my view) -- was not even discussed.

Have Blog, Will Travel: Milken Global Conference

I am here today (Milken Global Conference 2013).

One quick first impression based upon the schedule of sessions. In the last few years, two or three years ago more so than last year, there were quite a few "soul-searching" sessions from the financial industry. How did financial markets fail, how can they be fixed, etc. That's not to say that there wasn't a lot of resistance to regulation from the industry, but they were at least dealing with the main issues, there was an attempt at an honest appraisal from many, and there were quite a few sessions on the topic.

There are sessions on regulation this year -- I'm currently in one called "Global Financial Regulation" (usual TBTF discussion so far, just turning to leverage) -- but compared to previous years the main concern now appears to be where we are headed in the next few years, opportunities for investment, etc. I suppose that's good news for the economy, but for financial stability? There's still a lot of work to be done, and an eroding will to do it.

Have blog, Will Travel: Kauffman Economic Bloggers Forum

The forum will be streamed live at www.kauffman.org/EconBloggersLiveStream from 8:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. CDT.

Webcast Schedule: Economic Bloggers Forum 2013
Tentative agenda (subject to change)

Friday, April 12 (all times listed are Central Time)

8:30 a.m. Welcome by Brad Delong, Professor of Economics U.C. Berkeley and weblogger at "Grasping Reality with Both Invisible Hands"

8:35 a.m. Keynote – Economic and Financial Weblogging and the Future (Speaker: Hal Varian; Discussant Joshua Gans; Moderator, Mayor Sly James)

9:35 a.m. Break (no Webcast)

9:50 a.m. Panel discussion – Economic and Financial Weblogging, and New Modes and Orders in Education (Speaker: Clay Shirky; Discussant Ben Wildavsky; Moderator: R. Crosby Kemper III)

10:40 a.m. Break (no Webcast)

10:55 a.m. Panel discussion – Economic and Financial Weblogging and the Future and Sustainability of Financial Journalism (Panel: Cardiff Garcia, Joe Weisenthal, Allison Schrager; Moderator: Troy Davig)

11:45 a.m. Lunch (no Webcast)

12:45 p.m Panel discussion – Economic and Financial Weblogging and the Future and Sustainability of Mainstream Journalism (Panel: Bruce Bartlett; Megan McArdle; Josh Barro; Moderator: Felix Salmon)

1:35 p.m. Break (no Webcast)

1:50 p.m. Panel discussion – Economic and Financial Weblogging, Thinktanks and Policy Advocacy, and the Public Sphere (Panel: Stan Collender; Robert Litan;  Sarah Kliff; Moderator: Corey Dillon)

2:40 p.m. Break (no Webcast)

2:55 p.m. Panel discussion – Economic and Financial Weblogging and Standard Ivy-Covered Academia (Speaker: Mark Thoma; Discussant Stephanie Kelton; Moderator: Bob Strom)

3:45 p.m. Closing remarks

Live feed for INET Hong Kong Conference

I should have noted this when I posted the conference schedule. If you want to watch a live feed of the sessions, it's at:

Live feed for INET Hong Kong Conference

Remember that all times listed are Hong Kong Time (15 hours ahead of PST, 12 hours ahead of EST). Videos of each session will also be posted (same address as the link above).

Have Blog, Will Travel: INET Hong Kong

Here today:

Changing of the Guard
INET Conference 2013
Hong Kong

Thursday, April 4, 2013

12:30 - 14:15

• OPENING REMARKS Robert Johnson - Executive Director, INET
• WELCOME REMARKS BY FGI AND INET LEADERSHIP
  Victor K. Fung - Chairman, Fung Global Institute
  Anatole Kaletsky - Chairman, INET Governing Board
  Rohinton Medhora - President, CIGI
• LUNCH
• LUNCH KEYNOTE (OPENING) GROWTH ADJUSTMENT AND CONVERGENCE IN ASIA: THE CHALLENGE AHEAD?

  The developed economies of Europe, North America, and Japan are facing tremendous challenges related to indebtedness and stagnation. How will the developing economies of Asia respond to this challenge as they reorient their growth strategies to meet the rising aspirations of their people?

  Victor K. Fung - Chairman, Fung Global Institute Edwin Lim - Director, China Economic Research and Advisory Program
  A. Michael Spence - Academic Council Chairman, Fung Global Institute

  Moderator: Orville Schell - Director of the Center on U.S.-China Relations at Asia Society

14:15 - 16:15

• PLENARY PANEL INNOVATION SYSTEMS The Foundations of Economic Prosperity: The Lessons of Innovation Process and History

  The transformation of basic science into viable inventions that improve the well-being of mankind is a delicate process. The study of innovation, both in the past and the present, reveals a complex process that involves complementary contributions from government, the financial markets, and the investment community What has worked in past and what current strategies are being successfully employed by nations around the world?

  Li Daokui – Mansfield Freeman Chair, Professor,Department of Finance, Tsinghua University
  Bill Janeway - Senior Advisor, Warburg Pincus; INET Governing Board
  Edward Jung - Founder & Chief Technology Officer, Intellectual Ventures
  Mari Pangestu - Minister of Tourism and Creative Economy, Republic of Indonesia
  Lord David Sainsbury - Chancellor, University of Cambridge

  Moderator: Peter Jungen - Peter Jungen Holding; INET Governing Board

16:15 - 16:45

• COFFEE BREAK

16:45 - 18:15

• PLENARY PANEL INTERSUBJECTIVITY: RENÉ GIRARD’S VISION OF MIMETIC DESIRE AND ECONOMIC DYNAMICS Rene Girard, a French-born literary scholar, has developed a theory of the formation of desire that is based upon interactions between individuals. The process he calls mimetic desire, when brought to bear on economic thinking, may have profound implications for the theory of the consumer/individual, for the normative conclusions of economic theory, and for economic dynamics in an era of environmental challenges. A group of scholars who have been engaged exploring the implications of Girard’s thinking and the ramifications for the social sciences provide a window into this new realm of economic thinking.

  Presenter: Edward Fullbrook - University of the West of England
  Presenter: Jean-Pierre Dupuy, Professor of Philosophy, Ecole Polytechnique, Paris
  Mark Anspach, Research Fellow, CREA, Ecole Polytechnique, Paris
  Paul Dumouchel - Professor of Philosophy, Ritsumeikan University, Kyoto, Japan
  André Orléan, Professor of Economics, Ecole Normale Supérieure

  Moderator: Jean-Pierre Dupuy, Professor of Philosophy, Ecole Polytechnique, Paris

18:30 - 19:30

• COCKTAIL RECEPTION & PERFORMANCE BY HOI CHUI

19:30 - 21:30

• DINNER KEYNOTE Macroeconomic Policy and Economic Stability: Lessons of the Historical Experience with Fiat Money and the Implications for the Future

  Adair Lord Turner explores the role of financial, monetary, and fiscal policy management in this era of deficient aggregate demand, and discussants explore the implications of Turner’s thinking on monetary financing of debt in light of the current challenges facing many nations at the forefront of the world economy.

  Introduction: George Soros - Chairman, Soros Fund Management; Open Society Foundations
  Keynote Presenter: Adair, Lord Turner - Chairman, Financial Services Administration
  Discussion: Hiroshi Watanabe - CEO/Executive Managing Director Japan bank for International Co- operation
  William White - Chairman of the Economic Development and Review Committee at the OECD

  Moderator: Hu Shuli - Editor-in-Chief, Caixin Media

Friday, April 5, 2013

8:00 - 9:00

• SUNRISE BREAKFAST PLENARY BUSINESS LEADERS PANEL: THE FUTURE OF THE WORLD AND ASIA'S ROLE
  
  Jim Balsillie - Founder and chair of The Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI)
  Ronnie Chan - Chairman, Hang Lung Properties
  Mari Pangestu - Minister of Tourism and Creative Economy, Republic of Indonesia
  
  Moderator: Victor K. Fung - Chairman, Fung Global Institute

9:15 - 10:45

• PLENARY PANEL THE RMB AND THE FUTURE OF ASIAN FINANCE

  The architecture of the international monetary system has important implications for the privileges and responsibilities of the reserve currency countries at the center of the system. As China continues to develop and become a leading economy in the global system, it will be important to understand the evolving role of the RMB as a potential new reserve currency and to understand both the domestic and international ramifications of this institutional evolution.

  Introduction: Yanqing Yang - Deputy Editor-in-Chief, China Business News
  Barry Eichengreen - Professor, University of California at Berkeley
  Jean Pisani Ferry - Director, Bruegel
  Sylvia Ng - Head of Strategy and Planning, HSBC Bank (China) Company Limited
  Yu Yongding - Director, Institute of World Economics and Politics, CASS

  Moderator: Paola Subacchi - Research Director, International Economics Chatham House

10:45 - 11:15

• COFFEE BREAK

11:15 - 12:45

• BREAKOUT SESSIONS

  BREAKOUT SESSION A THE EURO ZONE CURRENCY SYSTEM: CATALYST OR WRECKING BALL OF THE EUROPEAN UNION?

  The flaws in the euro zone single currency system that were uncovered by the crisis of 2008 have crippled many European nations for more than four years. Self-fulfilling sovereign debt default spirals, persistent intolerable levels of unemployment, and disputes over the proper role for the European Central Bank are telltale symptoms of a social and economic system in disarray. What can be done to fix this system? Can it be repaired and once again become the basis for a hopeful and balanced integration of Europe?

  Erik Berglof - Chief Economist, European Bank for Reconstruction and Development
  Dennis Snower - President, Kiel Institute for the World Economy
  Lars Feld, Professor of Ecnomics University of Frieburg
  Discussant: Harold James - Claude and Lore Kelly Professor, Princeton University
  Discussant : Leif Pagrotsky - Member of Parliament, Sweden

  Moderator: Niels Thygesen - Professor Emeritus, University of Copenhagen

  BREAKOUT SESSION B FINANCIAL STABILITY AND REGULATORY DESIGN

  INET's financial stability research program encompasses a range of working groups. These focus on the causes and consequences of the instability of the financial system, and on new modeling approaches to credit and the macroeconomy. Agent-based and network-based models provide a window into the system's dynamic instability, while legal and political-economic approaches shed light on the institutional architecture of the financial system.

  Anat Admati - Professor, Stanford University
  Simon Johnson - Professor, MIT; Senior Fellow, Peterson Institute
  Katharina Pistor - Professor, Columbia Law School
  Andrew Sheng - President, Fung Global Institute

  Moderator: Perry Mehrling - Director of Education Programs, INET

  BREAKOUT SESSION C NEW APPROACHES TO ECONOMIC CHALLENGES – ORGANIZED BY OECD

  This session will feature the Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) initiative on New Approaches to Economic Challenges (NAEC). NAEC is an organisation-wide reflection process to upgrade the analytical frameworks and strengthen the policy advice of the OECD. Its objective is to develop a strategic policy agenda for inclusive growth. The financial and economic crisis is a key motivation for NAEC, but the reflection also aims to identify policy options to address the current challenges we are facing (slow growth, high unemployment, increasing inequality), as well as the rise in interconnectedness and complexity of the world economy.

  Gabriela Ramos – Chief of Staff and G20 Sherpa, OECD
  Discussant: Barry Eichengreen - Professor, Berkeley
  Discussant: Robert Johnson – Executive Director, Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET)
  Discussant: William White - Chairman of the Economic Development and Review Committee at the OECD

  Moderator: Pier Carlo Padoan – Deputy Secretary General and Chief Economist, OECD

12:45 - 14:45

• LUNCH KEYNOTE TIME AND EXPECTATIONS IN ECONOMIC ANALYSIS

  The formation of expectations and the subtle implicit assumptions regarding knowledge held by consumers, businesses, investors, and policy makers is a foundation stone that must be thoroughly explored so that models of economic dynamics represent the phenomena under investigation in an illuminating manner. The obvious presence of non-routine change, or what Frank Knight called radical uncertainty, challenges the very notion that dynamic economic systems can be modeled as closed systems. How do these models perform? If dynamic economics is better envisioned as an open system, what can researchers do to understand and analyze the decision making process? What are the implications for economic policy and governance of open system dynamics?

  Sheila Dow - Emeritus Professor, University of Stirling
  Roman Frydman -Professor of Economics, New York University
  Roger Guesnerie -Chairman of the Board, Paris School of Economics
  George Soros -Chairman, Soros Fund Management; Open Society Foun- dations

  Moderator: Axel Leijonhufvud - Professor, University of California Los Angeles

14:50 - 16:30

• EXPLORATIONS IN NEW ECONOMIC THINKING

  EXPLORATIONS IN NEW ECONOMIC THINKING SESSION A THE IMPERFECT KNOWLEDGE ECONOMICS (IKE) APPROACH TO MODELING AN OPEN WORLD

  The INET research program on IKE is working at the University of Copenhagen, New York University, and the University of New Hampshire to understand the implications of fallibility for economic systems. In these sessions, IKE researchers will discuss how they model risk in asset markets and the evolution of asset prices in a world characterized by imperfect knowledge.

  Moderator: Michael Goldberg - Professor, University of New Hampshire

  Part 1 (3:00-3:55): IKE Modeling of Asset Prices

  Nick Mangee - Junior Research Associate, INET Program on IKE Rationality in the Present-Value Model of Stock Prices: Fundamentals, Psychology, and Structural Change
  Peter Sullivan - Junior Research Associate, INET Program on IKE Rationality and the Meese and Rogoff Exchange-Rate-Disconnect Puzzle: Learning vs. Contingent Knowledge
  Morten Tabor - Research Associate, INET Center on IKE at the University of Copenhagen Econometrics of IKE Models

  General Discussion (15 minutes)

  Part 2 (15:55-16:30): IKE Modeling of Risk in Asset Markets

  Olesia Kozlova - Junior Research Associate, INET Program on IKE Forward-Rate Bias, Contingent Knowledge, and Risk: Evidence from Developed and Developing Countries
  Josh Stillwagon - Junior Research Associate, INET Program on IKE A Keynes-IKE Model of Currency Risk: A Cointegrated VAR Investigation

  General Discussion (10 minutes)

  EXPLORATIONS IN NEW ECONOMIC THINKING SESSION B WHAT IS THE ROLE OF PSYCHOLOGICAL CONSIDERATIONS IN ECONOMICS?

  Many of our global problems – from climate change to financial crises – arise from people’s failure to cooperate adequately to achieve socially desirable outcomes. There is a widespread recognition that we need a deeper understanding of human nature in order to discern new opportunities for human cooperation. The Kiel Institute and the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig are developing an interdisciplinary program with INET to examine new avenues of how psychological and neuroscientific knowledge about human motivation, emotion and social cognition can inform models of economic decision making. How can a profounder understanding of human motivation and preferences lead to a broader appreciation of our prospects for pro-social and sustainable economic behaviors?

  David Tuckett - Training and Supervising Analyst in the British Psychoanalytical Society
  Inske Pirschel - Research Assistant, Christian-Albrechts University of Kiel
  Gert Pönitzsch - Research Assistant, Kiel Institute for the World Economy
  Cars Hommes - Professor of Economics Universiteit van Amsterdam

  Moderator: Dennis Snower - President, Kiel Institute for the World Economy

16:45 - 18:15

• PLENARY PANEL CHINA IN THE WORLD: GROWTH, ADJUSTMENT AND INTEGRATION

  The Chinese economy has developed at a remarkable pace over the last 30 years. The integration of China into the world economy has led to extraordinary flows of foreign direct investment, infrastructure buildup, and an impressive export capacity. As we look to the future, both domestic and international considerations bear on the capacity for China to continue on this robust course and for the world to adjust to China’s growth and changed role. The differences in philosophical, legal, and governance systems between China and the West suggest that the challenges will be formidable and that cooperation and mutual benefit will require extraordinary attention.

  Daniel A. Bell - Professor, Tsinghua University
  Jan Kregel - Senior scholar at the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College
  Huang Yiping -Professor of Economics, National School of Development, Peking University
  Yu Yongding - Director, Institute of World Economics and Politics, CASS

  Moderator: Xiao Geng - Director of Research and Senior Fellow, Fung Global Institute

18:15 - 19:30

• COCKTAIL RECEPTION

19:30 - 21:30

• DINNER KEYNOTE & PANEL CAPITALISM AND THE RULE OF LAW

  How do different nations handle the problem of social design? What is the role of legal systems in creating and implementing that design? There is a large body of comparative evidence on the behaviors and performance of different legal traditions. These concerns are of vital importance to emerging nations as they plot their course toward institutional deepening and maturation to facilitate their development.

  Niall Ferguson - Professor, Harvard University
  Katharina Pistor - Professor, Columbia Law School

  Moderator: Anatole Kaletsky - Chairman, INET Governing Board

Saturday, April 6, 2013

9:15 - 10:45

• PLENARY PANEL INEQUALITY IN CHINA, INDIA AND AMERICA: CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES

  The extraordinary development of the emerging economies has been associated with increasing incomes and rising inequality. In the developed world, the integration between emerging and mature economies also has been accompanied by rising inequality, most profoundly in the United States. A myriad of causes related to trade, policy, and technological change have been cited as, reasons for the unequal distribution of income and wealth in varying degrees. As the process continues, what are the implications for societies across the planet as these three large and powerful economies move into the future?

  Steven Durlauf - Professor, University of Wisconsin
  Xiao Geng - Director of Research and Senior Fellow Fung Global Institute
  John McArthur - Senior Fellow, Fung Global Institute
  Sanjay Reddy - Associate Professor of Economics, Director of Undergraduate Studies, The New School for Social Research

  Moderator: Pier Carlo Padoan - Deputy Secretary-General and Chief Economist of the OECD

10:50 - 12:20

• BREAKOUT SESSIONS

  BREAKOUT SESSION A AUSTERITY, POLARIZATION, AND THE PROSPECT OF REGIME CHANGE

  Both the international economy and the economies of many individual countries are badly out of balance. Not surprisingly, political polarization and social cleavages are sharply increasing within many, though not at the same rate. This panel looks at the varying experiences of Europe, the US, and some countries in Asia, considering not only the domestic roots and complications of policy making, but also how austerity continues to generate major turmoil and challenges to existing political arrangements.

  Thomas Ferguson - Professor, UMASS, Boston; INET (On the USA) Contributor: Jie Chen University Statistician at the UMASS, Boston
  Paul Jorgensen - Assistant Professor of Political Science, University of Texas, Pan American
  Ching Kwan Lee - Professor, UCLA (On China)
  David Vines - Professor, University of Oxford
  Junsen Zhang - Professor of Economics, Chinese University of Hong Kong

  Moderator: Steven Durlauf - Professor of Economics, University of Wisconsin

  BREAKOUT SESSION B INEQUALITY IN CHINA

  INET's Human Capital and Economic Opportunity working group discusses advances in Chinese inequality research and critical findings of working group members.

  Albert Park - Professor of Economics, Chair Professor of Social Science, Hong Kong Institute for Science and Technology
  Scott Rozelle - Helen F. Farnsworth Senior Fellow Stanford University
  Dali Yang - Professor of Political Science and Faculty Director, Center in Beijing, University of Chicago
  Junsen Zhang - Professor of Economics, Chinese University of Hong Kong

  Moderator: Steven Durlauf - Professor of Economics, University of Wisconsin

12:30 - 14:15

• LUNCH KEYNOTE WHAT IS DEVELOPMENT?

  Many developing countries have experienced rapid increases in GDP growth, and traditionally this was considered an adequate proxy for improved human welfare within these countries. However, in recent years some countries have experienced higher growth accompanied by environmental degradation, rising inequality and, social unrest. As a result, we are forced to ask what it is that constitutes real progress and development in a society.

  James Heckman - Henry Schultz Professor, University of Chicago
  Sir James Alexander Mirlees - Professor and Master, Morningside College Chinese University of Hong Kong

  Moderator: A. Michael Spence - Academic Council Chairman, Fung Global Institute

14:30 - 15:45

• EXPLORATIONS IN NEW ECONOMIC THINKING

  EXPLORATIONS IN NEW ECONOMIC THINKING SESSION A FINANCIAL INSTABILITY WORKING GROUP

  The INET program on financial instability and macroeconomics has developed a series of studies on dynamically unstable systems. Shadow banking instability, contagious network dynamics, and stock/flow interactive models will be discussed to showcase a series of research projects that are unfolding with INET support.

  Dan Awrey - University Lecturer in Law & Finance, University of Oxford
  Co-Pierre Georg - Research Economist, The Research Center of Deutsche Bundesbank
  Arie Krampf - Postdoctoral fellow, Freie Universität Berlin
  Alberto Russo - Assistant Professor of Economics, Università Politecnica delle Marche

  Moderator: Adair, Lord Turner - Chairman, Financial Services Administration

  EXPLORATIONS IN NEW ECONOMIC THINKING SESSION B GROWTH AND TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE IN COMPLEX SYSTEMS

  A key question for many countries is how to re-invigorate growth after the crisis. The INET@Oxford program is collaborating with an international group of scholars on new approaches to understanding economic growth and innovation from a complex systems and evolutionary perspective. This session will review recent work and discuss its potential implications for re-thinking public policy approaches to economic growth.

  W. Brian Arthur - External Professor, Santa Fe Institute and Visiting Researcher, Intelligent Systems Lab, PARC
  J. Doyne Farmer - Co-Director, Complexity Economics, INET@Oxford
  Luciano Pietronero - Director, Institute of Complex Systems, CNR and Professor of Condensed Matter Physics, University Sapienza, Rome, Italy
  Deborah Strumsky - Assistant Professor, Public Policy University of North Carolina Charlotte

  Moderator: Eric Beinhocker - Executive Director, INET@Oxford

16:00 - 17:30

• PLENARY PANEL ECONOMICS AND THE POWERFUL: FAULTY ANALYSIS, ECONOMIC ADVICE AND THE IMPERATIVES OF POWER

  When economies exhibit dreadful results is it because we have flawed understanding? Or are correct models often ignored? Are good economists listened to? Does scientifically robust work prevail when it conflicts with the desires of the powerful? What are the lessons of economic history for understanding the role of expertise in guiding social outcomes?

  Norbert Haring - Correspondent, Handelsblatt
  Steve Keen - Professor, University of Western Sydney
  Robert Lord Skidelsky - Emeritus Professor, University of Warwick

  Moderator: Robert Johnson – Executive Director, INET

17:30 - 18:30

• COCKTAIL RECEPTION

18:30 - 20:30

• DINNER KEYNOTE THE FUTURE OF CENTRAL BANKING

  Central banks across the planet are engaging in a robust agenda that would have been unrecognizable just a few years ago. Quantitative easing, macro prudential monitoring, asset market support in Europe have all made it much more difficult to understand what a central bank does and does not do.

  Can central banks easily mop up liquidity and shrink their balance sheets when the world economy begins to recover, or will inflationary dynamics emerge? In the mystical realm of money, are central banks courting controversy that will threaten their credibility and stature within society? If they lose their leading role what will markets condition their expectation upon?

  Charles Goodhart - Professor, London School of Economics
  Richard Koo - Chief Economist of Nomura Research Institute
  Liu Mingkang - Distinguished Fellow, Fung Global Institute
  Adam Posen - President of the Peterson Institute for international Economics

  Moderator: Andrew Sheng - President, Fung Global Institute

20:30 - 21:00

• CLOSING REMARKS Robert Johnson - Executive Director, INET

Have Blog, Will Travel

I am here today.

Another Conference

I am at the Atlanta Fed today (on a panel). I'll post as I can.

The Nobel Laureates Meetings at Lindau

Here's today's lineup:

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 24TH  

09:30 - 11:00 Opening Ceremony // Welcome Address of German Federal President Christian Wulff // Induction Honorary Senate //

Plenary Panel Discussion "Sustainability in International Economics" with Laureates McFadden, Myerson, Stiglitz and Young Economists

11:00 - 11:30 Coffee Break

11:30 - 12:00 Prof. Dr. Peter A. Diamond Economic Sciences Search and Macro  

12:00 - 12:30 Prof. Dr. Christopher A. Pissarides Economic Sciences The Future of Work in Europe  

12:30 - 14:30 Lunch Break

14:30 - 16:00 Panel "Demographic Change, Economics and Politics": Peter A. Diamond, Sir James A. Mirrlees, Christopher A. Pissarides, Edward C. Prescott (Chair: Martin Wolf, Financial Times)

16:30 - 18:00 Afternoon Discussions with Laureates Diamond, Mortensen and Pissarides (for Laureates and Young Economists only)

20:00 - 22:00 Get-Together Evening at Congress Venue Inselhalle

The purpose of the meetings is to "provide a globally recognised forum for the exchange of knowledge between Nobel Laureates and young researchers." These young researchers -- at least the ones interested in macro -- are the ones who will be most likely to shake off the shackles of the past and develop new theories of the macroeconomy. So I'll be curious to see how that topic is handled. Will Stiglitz push hard in this direction and if so, how will the other Laureates, e.g. Phelps and Prescott, respond? Note that Prescott's abstract starts with "This is the golden age of aggregate economics." Stiglitz's abstract, on the other hand, begins with "The standard macroeconomic models have failed, by all the most important tests of scientific theory." Those two talks aren't until later in the week, but as I said I'll be very interested to see how this critical issue is presented to the upcoming generation of economists.

Update: I'm glad Stiglitz is here. In the opening panel, he began the discussion of macro models, and said (to applause) that macroeconomic models played a role in creating policies that caused the crisis. He also attacked austerity. Without him, there wouldn't be a strong advocate for these views at this meeting.