Those are the topics covered tomorrow (Friday, 10/14) at the 5th annual West Coast Workshop in International Finance 2016, taking place at Santa Clara University. As usual, these look like a set of fascinating papers, and a must-see for those interested in international finance/open economy macro (A post discussing last year’s conference proceedings is here).
Commodity Prices in Open Economies, Chair: Helen Popper, SCU
9:00 – 9:45
“Commodity prices and labour market dynamics,” Martin Bodenstein (Federal Reserve Board), Güneş Kamber (BIS) and Christoph Thoenissen (U. Sheffield)
Discussant: Robert Dekle (USC)
9:45 – 10:30
“Pegxit: Evidence from the Classical Gold Standard,” Kris James Mitchener (SCU) and Gonçalo Pina (SCU)
Discussant: Andrew Rose (UCB)
10:30 – 10:45 Break
Interest Parity, Chair: Christopher M. Meissner (UCD)
10:45-11:30
“Monetary policy and global banking” Falk Brauning (Federal Reserve Bank of Boston) and Victoria Ivashina (Harvard and NBER)
Discussant: Michael Hutchison (UCSC)
11:30 – 12:15
“When carry goes bad: the magnitude, causes, and duration of currency carry unwinds,” Michael Melvin (UCSD) and Duncan Shand (U. Warwick)
Discussant: Benjamin Hébert (Stanford)
12:15 – 1:45 Lunch
International Equity Markets, Chair: Alex Mandilaras (U. Surrey)
2:00-2:30
“Four centuries of return predictability,” Benjamin Golez (U. Notre Dame) and Peter Koudijs (Stanford)
Discussant: Yu-chin Chen (U. Washington)
2:30 – 3:15
“Sectoral Productivity Matters: A New Angle on Equity Home Bias,” Chenyue Hu (UCSC)
Discussant: Mark Speigel (Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco)
3:15 – 3:30 Break
Real Exchange Rates, Chair: Serguei Maliar (SCU)
3:30-4:15
“Financial Frictions and Export Dynamics in Large Devaluations,” David Kohn (U. Torcuato Di Tella), Fernando Leibovici (York U.) and Michal Szkup (UBC)
Discussant: Ina Simonovska (UCD)
4:15 – 5:00
“The effects of government spending on real exchange rates : Evidence from Military Spending Panel Data,” Wataru Miyamoto (Bank of Canada), Thuy Lan Nguyen (SCU) and Viacheslav Sheremirov (Federal Reserve Bank of Boston)
Discussant: Òscar Jordà (Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco and UCD)
Most people don’t know what economists do. There’s a book “The Making of an Economist” that gives some idea what they really do. Most economists are very specialized, there are many sub-fields, very few people go into grad econ, and much fewer are able to graduate. Not long ago, only 600 Ph.Ds and 2,000 MAs in economics were awarded in the U.S. each year (compared to 100,000 MBAs).