The Felix Neubergh Lecture

Despite the ubiquitous emphasis on uncertainty in central bankers' speeches and statements, we know little about how policymakers' uncertainty and, more broadly, their beliefs about higher-order moments of economic outcomes affect policy decisions. How uncertainty impacts central bank decision-making evokes particular relevance today in the face of the recent inflation surge and uncertainty surrounding its path. In this lecture, Anna Cieslak summarizes her recent research on this question.

Speaker
Anna Cieslak is an Associate Professor of Finance at Duke University's Fuqua School of Business, working at the intersection of asset pricing, macroeconomics, and monetary economics. Her agenda spans two related domains: the dynamics of interest rates and the interactions between central banks and financial markets. She has recently focused on central bank communication, particularly understanding the channels through which the Federal Reserve impacts financial markets. Her research has been published in academic journals such as the Journal of Finance, the Review of Financial Studies, and the Journal of Financial Economics and featured in news outlets such as the WSJ and the Economist.

Watch the lecture here.

The Swedish economist Knut Wicksell (1851-1926) recommended a stable price level as the proper goal for monetary policy in his groundbreaking work published originally in 1898. His monetary theory, often labeled the cumulative process, is the intellectual foundation of inflation targeting, the best-practice approach to monetary policy across the world today.

Speaker
Lars Jonung is professor emeritus at the department of economics at Lund University. He served as chairman of the Swedish Fiscal Policy Council, 2011-13. He was Research Advisor at DG ECFIN, European Commission, Brussels 2000-2010, professor in economics, Stockholm School of Economics (Handelshögskolan), 1988-2000, professor in finance at Lund University, 1987-88, Research Director at the National Institute of Economic Research (Konjunkturinstitutet), Stockholm, 1981-82. His research interests cover monetary economics, monetary and financial history, inflationary expectations, the euro, European integration and the economics of Knut Wicksell.

He has published books and articles in English and Swedish and is the co-author of a leading macroeconomic textbook in Swedish. Jonung served as chief economic advisor to Prime Minister Carl Bildt in 1992-94. He holds a PhD in economics from the University of California, Los Angeles, 1975. He is active in the present debate on Swedish monetary and fiscal policy. His work is available at his research portal.

See the lecture here.

In the lecture Renée Adams will link two facts: 1) In the United States, the finance industry is heavily regulated, and 2) the finance industry is the single largest source of campaign contributions to federal candidates. She will show that the influence of the finance industry on legislation extends over the entire legislative process. Thus, financial regulation cannot be evaluated in isolation from influence.

Speaker
Renée B. Adams is a Professor of Finance at Saïd Business School, University of Oxford. She is a Fellow of the European Corporate Governance Institute, a Finance Department Editor at Management Science, and she chairs AFFECT, the American Finance Association’s committee for women in Finance. She is an expert on corporate governance, bank governance and gender. Her work has a strong policy orientation and lies at the intersection between economics, finance, management and psychology. She has published in top accounting, economics, finance and management journals including the Journal of Accounting and Economics, the Journal of Finance, the Journal of Financial Economics, Management Science, the Review of Economic Studies and Strategic Management Journal.

Macroeconomists now see the period since around 1960 as a succession of Greats: the Great Inflation, Great Moderation, and Great Recession. Following the Nobel prize winning analysis of Robert Lucas, many mainstream economists agree that contemporary economic policy analysis contributed mightily to the first of these. As of 2007, at least, mainstream economists were roundly congratulating themselves on the role contemporary analysis played in the second. While the dust has not yet settled on the third Great, opinions at present seem to vary on the role of macroeconomics in the financial crisis and its aftermath.

Speaker
Jon Faust, professor of Economics at John Hopkins University, Baltimore, will question all of these views, and argue that viewing the period since 1960 as three extended “black swan” periods obscures a fundamental flaw in how macroeconomists approached policy analysis throughout the period. He will also make some suggestions for doing better.

Speaker:
Mats Persson is professor of Economics at the Institute for International Economic Studies at Stockholm University, with a main research focus on macroeconomics and public economics. He received a PhD in Economics in 1979 at the Stockholm School of Economics. He is a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences (IVA), the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences (KVA), and the Prize Committee for the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel. Mats is the author of the book ”Den europeiska skuldkrisen” (The European debt crisis), where he criticizes the money transfers that have been made with the aim to save the euro since the debt-crises unfolded in 2010. His point is that the euro was never in danger, that the transfers primarily have benefitted the banks and that they have encouraged continued harmful risk taking.

Speaker
Hélène Rey is Professor of Economics at London Business School. Until 2007, she was at Princeton University, as Professor of Economics and International Affairs. Her research focuses on the determinants and consequences of external trade and financial imbalances, the theory of financial crises and the organization of the international monetary system. She demonstrated in particular that countries gross external asset positions help predict current account adjustments and the exchange rate. Professor Rey has been awarded a number of prestigious prizes for her research including the Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship in 2005, the Bernácer Prize in 2006, the inaugural Birgit Grodal Award of the European Economic Association in 2012, and the Yrjö Jahnsson Award in 2013.