Eighteenth Jacques Polak Annual Research Conference
The Global Financial Cycle
November 2-3, 2017
The theme of this year’s conference is “The Global Financial Cycle.” The conference is intended to provide a forum for discussing innovative research from both within and outside the IMF, and to facilitate the exchange of views among researchers and policymakers. Barry Eichengreen (University of California, Berkeley) will deliver the Mundell-Fleming Lecture.
The conference is open to the public and registration is required (registration will include all conference sessions, the Mundell-Fleming Lecture, and the Economic Forum). Please note that the deadline for registration for this conference has now passed. Registered attendees will be required to present photo identification on entering the IMF at 1900 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W., Washington D.C. For questions regarding the conference, please email ARC@imf.org.
** Watch the live webcast of the Opening Remarks, the Mundell-Fleming lecture and the Economic Forum on this page **
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Thursday, November 2, 2017 |
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08:00 – 09:00am |
Registration and Continental Breakfast |
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09:00 – 09:15am |
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09:15 – 10:45am |
Session 1: Financial, Real, and Commodity Cycles Capital Flow Cycles, A Long Global View Global Macro-Financial Cycles and Spillovers |
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10:45 – 11:00am |
***Coffee Break*** |
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11:00 – 12:30pm |
Session 2: Global Financial Cycle: A Myth? Global Financial Cycles and Risk Premiums How Important is the Global Financial Cycle? Evidence from Capital Flows |
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12:35 – 1:55pm |
***Lunch Break*** |
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2:00 – 4:00pm |
Session 3: Role of the Exchange Rate On the Global Financial Market Integration “Swoosh” and the Trilemma The Dollar Exchange Rate as a Global Risk Factor: Evidence from Investment Currency Manipulation |
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4:00 – 4:15pm |
***Coffee Break*** |
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4:15 – 5:45pm |
Mundell-Fleming Lecture: Trade Policy and the Macroeconomy |
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Friday, November 3, 2017 |
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08:15 – 09:15am |
Registration and Continental Breakfast |
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09:15 – 10:45am |
Session 4: Transmission of Global Financial Shocks International Credit Supply Shocks International Spillovers and Local Credit Cycles |
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10:45 – 11:00am |
***Coffee Break*** |
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11:00 – 12:30pm |
Session 5: Real and Distributional Impacts Household Debt and Business Cycles Worldwide The Aggregate and Distributional Effects of Financial Globalization: Evidence from Macro and Sectoral Data |
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12:35 – 1:55pm |
***Lunch Break*** |
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2:00 – 4:00pm |
Session 6: Taming the Global Financial Cycle Global Financial Cycle and Liquidity Management Global Price of Risk and Stabilization Policies Liability Dollarization, Sudden Stops, & Optimal Financial Policy |
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4:00 – 4:15pm |
***Coffee Break*** |
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4:15 – 5:45pm |
Economic Forum: The Global Financial Cycle – Causes, Consequences, and Policy Responses Panelists: |
Christine Lagarde – Born in Paris in 1956, Christine Lagarde completed high school in Le Havre and attended Holton Arms School in Bethesda (Maryland, USA). She then graduated from law school at University Paris X, and obtained a Master’s degree from the Political Science Institute in Aix en Provence.
David Lipton – Mr. David Lipton assumed the position of First Deputy Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund on September 1, 2011. On March 28, 2016, Mr. Lipton was reappointed for a second five-year term beginning September 1, 2016.
Carmen Reinhart – Carmen M. Reinhart is the Minos A. Zombanakis Professor of the International Financial System at Harvard Kennedy School. Previously, she was the Dennis Weatherstone Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics and Professor of Economics and Director of the Center for International Economics at the University of Maryland. Professor Reinhart held positions as Chief Economist and Vice President at the investment bank Bear Stearns in the 1980s. She spent several years at the International Monetary Fund. Reinhart is a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, and a member of the Congressional Budget Office Panel of Economic Advisers and Council on Foreign Relations. She has served on numerous editorial boards, has testified before congress, and was listed among Bloomberg Markets Most Influential 50 in Finance, 2011. She received her Ph.D. from Columbia University.
Christoph Trebesch – Christoph Trebesch is a Professor of Economics at the Kiel Institute for the World Economy and a Research Affiliate of CEPR and CESifo. Until early 2017 he was an Assistant Professor at the University of Munich, where he moved after completing his PhD at Free University of Berlin in 2011. His research focuses on international finance and macroeconomics, economic history, and political economy. His recent work has been published in journals such as AEJ Macro, AEJ Applied, the JEEA, and the Journal of Economic Perspectives.
Jeromin Zettelmeyer – Jeromin Zettelmeyer is a senior fellow of the Peterson Institute for International Economics and a research fellow in the International Macroeconomics Programme of the Centre for Economic Policy Research. From 2014 to September of 2016, he served as director-general for economic policy at the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy. Before joining the German government, he was director of research and deputy chief economist at the European Bank for Reconstruction (EBRD) and Development (2008–2014) where he co-authored and edited the Transition Report and other EBRD flagship publications. Prior to that, he was a staff member of the International Monetary Fund (1994–2008).
Christopher Otrok – Christopher Otrok is the Sam B. Cook Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri and a Research Fellow at the Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis. From July 2016 until May 2017 he was a Senior Economist on the Council of Economic Advisers in the Executive Office of the President. His research is primarily in the fields of macroeconomics, econometrics, international economics, and asset pricing. Before moving to Missouri, he was a Professor of Economics at the University of Virginia. He has held visiting scholar positions at the Federal Reserve Banks of Atlanta, Kansas City, Minneapolis, New York, and Philadelphia, and has been a consultant for the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. In 2009 he was a Fulbright Senior Specialist Grantee at CERGE-EI in Prague, Czech Republic. His work has appeared in top academic journals including the American Economic Review, Journal of Monetary Economics, International Economic Review, and Journal of International Economics. Otrok was Co-Editor of the Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control from 2010-2016 and has served a two-year term on the National Science Foundation Economics panel. He earned his BA from Davidson College in 1992, and PhD in Economics from the University of Iowa in 1999.
Mark Watson – Mark Watson is the Howard Harrison and Gabrielle Snyder Beck Professor of Economics and Public Affairs at Princeton University. His research focuses on time-series econometrics, empirical macroeconomics, and macroeconomic forecasting. Before coming to Princeton in 1995, Watson served on the economics faculty at Harvard and Northwestern. Watson did his undergraduate work at Pierce Junior College and California State University at Northridge, and completed his Ph.D. at the University of California, San Diego.
Jonathan D. Ostry – Jonathan D. Ostry is Deputy Director of the Research Department (RES) at the International Monetary Fund. His recent responsibilities include leading staff teams on: IMF-FSB Early Warning Exercises on global systemic macrofinancial risks; vulnerabilities exercises for advanced and emerging market countries; multilateral exchange rate surveillance; international financial architecture and reform of the IMF’s lending toolkit; capital account management (capital controls and prudential tools to manage capital inflows) and financial globalization issues; and the nexus between income inequality and economic growth. Past positions include leading the division that produces the IMF’s flagship multilateral surveillance publication, the World Economic Outlook, and leading country teams on Australia, Japan, New Zealand, and Singapore. Mr. Ostry is the author/editor of a number of books on international macro policy issues, and numerous articles in scholarly journals. His work has been widely cited in print and electronic media, including the BBC, the Economist, the Financial Times, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Washington Post, Business Week, and National Public Radio. His work on inequality and unsustainable growth has also been cited in remarks made by President Barack Obama. He earned his B.A. (with distinction) from Queen's University (Canada) at age 18, and went on to earn a B.A. and M.A. from Oxford University (Balliol College), and graduate degrees from the London School of Economics (M.Sc., 1984) and the University Chicago (Ph.D., 1988). He is listed in Who's Who in Economics (2003).
Moritz Schularick – Moritz Schularick is Professor of Economics at the University of Bonn and a Research Fellow of the Centre for Economic Policy Research in London and the CESifo Research Network. He is currently visiting Research Professor at the New York University Stern School of Business. In 2015/16, he held the Alfred-Grosser-Chair at SciencesPo in Paris. Previously, he taught at the Free University of Berlin and was a visiting professor at the University of Cambridge. Working at the intersection of macroeconomics, international economics, and economic history, his research has been published in the American Economic Review, the Journal of Monetary Economics, the Journal of International Economics, the Review of Economics and Statistics, the Journal of Economic History, and several other journals. His research is currently supported by grants from the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research, the VolkswagenStiftung, and the Institute for New Economic Thinking.
Linda Goldberg – Linda Goldberg is a Senior Vice President at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Linda's main areas of expertise are in global banking, international capital flows, international macroeconomics, and the international roles of currencies. Linda is the co-chair of the International Banking Research Network (IBRN), a BIS Central Bank Research Fellow, a Research Associate of the NBER, and a board member of the Central Banking Economic Research Association. Linda currently serves on the Editorial Boards of the Journal of Financial Intermediation and the Journal of Financial Services Research. Roles at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York have included head of Global Economic Analysis, Integrated Policy Analysis Group, Director of the Center for Global Banking Studies, and head of International Research, Research and Statistics Group. From 2014 through 2016 Linda was chair and vice chair of the Council on Global Economic Imbalances of the World Economic Forum, previously participating in the Council on the International Monetary System. Linda has a PhD in Economics from Princeton University, and a B.A. in Mathematics and Economics from Queens College, City University of New York, where she graduated with Honors of Phi Beta Kappa and Summa Cum Laude.
Andrew Rose – Andrew K. Rose is the B.T. Rocca Jr. Professor at Berkeley-Haas. He is also a Research Associate of the NBER, a Research Fellow of the CEPR, and a Senior Fellow of the ABFER. 
Kristin Forbes – Kristin Forbes is the Jerome and Dorothy Lemelson Professor of Management and Global Economics at MIT’s Sloan School of Management. She has regularly rotated between academia and senior policy positions. From 2014-2017 she was an External Member of the Monetary Policy Committee for the Bank of England. From 2003 to 2005 Forbes served as a Member of the White House’s Council of Economic Advisers and from 2001-2002 she was a Deputy Assistant Secretary in the U.S. Treasury Department. She also was a Member of the Governor’s Council of Economic Advisers for the State of Massachusetts from 2009-2014.
Richard Berner – Prior to his confirmation as OFR Director, Berner served as Counselor to the Secretary of the Treasury with responsibility for standing up the Office of Financial Research (OFR). Before joining the Treasury in April 2011, he was co-head of Global Economics at Morgan Stanley. Berner previously served as chief economist at Mellon Bank and as a member of Mellon's Senior Management Committee. He served as a senior economist for Morgan Stanley, Salomon Brothers, and Morgan Guaranty Trust Company, and as director of the Washington, D.C. office of Wharton Econometrics. For seven years, he worked on the research staff of the Federal Reserve Board in Washington. He has also been an adjunct professor of economics at Carnegie-Mellon University and George Washington University.
Tobias Adrian – Tobias Adrian is the Financial Counsellor and Director of the Monetary and Capital Markets Department of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). In this capacity, he leads the IMF’s work on financial sector surveillance, monetary and macroprudential policies, financial regulation, debt management, and capital markets. He also oversees capacity building activities in IMF member countries, particularly with regard to the supervision and regulation of financial systems, central banking, monetary and exchange rate regimes, and asset and liability management.
Gian-Maria Milesi-Ferretti – Gian Maria Milesi-Ferretti is Deputy Director in the Research Department of the International Monetary Fund. He supervises the department’s work on multilateral surveillance, including the World Economic Outlook. He was previously a Deputy Director in the Western Hemisphere Department and IMF mission chief to the United States. He received his undergraduate degree in economics from Università di Roma La Sapienza in 1985 and his Ph.D. from Harvard in 1991. He joined the London School of Economics thereafter, and moved to the IMF in 1993.
Arnaud Mehl – Arnaud Mehl is Principal Economist in the Directorate General International of the European Central Bank where he works on issues related to exchange rates, the international monetary system, and global finance. Before joining the ECB, he worked for the French Treasury and Edmond de Rothschild Group. He is a graduate from Sciences Po Paris and ESCP Europe, a former visiting student at Oxford University and holds a PhD in economics from University Paris Dauphine. His main area of specialization is international finance and economic history, on which he has published several academic articles.
Jay Shambaugh – Jay C. Shambaugh is Professor of Economics and International Affairs at George Washington University. He received his Ph.D. in economics from the University of California at Berkeley, an M.A. from the Fletcher School at Tufts, and a B.A. from Yale University.
Valentina Bruno – Valentina Bruno is Associate Professor of Finance and Kogod Research Professor at American University, Kogod School of Business. She holds a Master in Finance and Economics and a Ph.D. in Finance from the London School of Economics. Before joining American University, she worked at the World Bank in the Financial Sector Strategy and Policy Group and in the International Finance Team. Professor Bruno is Research Fellow at the Center for Economic Policy Research (CEPR). She has studied topics at the intersection of macroeconomics and finance: global liquidity, capital flows, macroprudential policies, and foreign banks. Her recent work has focused on the role of the US dollar in the transmission of global financial conditions. Her research has been published in the Review of Economic Studies, Review of Financial Studies, Journal of Monetary Economics, and Management Science.
Signe Krogstrup – Signe Krogstrup is Advisor in the Research Department of the IMF. She was previously Visiting Fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in 2015-2016, and with the Swiss National Bank from 2007 to 2015, where she served as Assistant Director and Deputy Head of Monetary Policy Analysis from 2011. Krogstrup previously also worked with the United Nations in Beirut. She was a member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on the International Monetary System during 2012–2016. During 2012–2013, she served as external expert on the Danish government appointed Committee on the Identification, Regulation, and Resolution of Systemically Important Financial Institutions in Denmark. Her research interests include monetary policy, international finance and macroeconomics, and she has taught graduate courses on these topics at the Graduate Institute in Geneva, the University of St. Gallen, the ETH in Zurich and the University of Copenhagen. Krogstrup received a doctoral degree in international economics from the Graduate Institute in 2003, and a master’s degree in economics from the University of Copenhagen in 1999. 
Tarek A. Hassan – Tarek Hassan joins Boston University as an Associate Professor of Economics after teaching finance at the University of Chicago and earning his PhD in economics from Harvard University. Professor Hassan’s research focuses on international finance and social factors in economic growth and macro-finance. His work in international finance focuses on large and persistent differences in interest rates across countries and the effect of exchange rate manipulation on the allocation of capital across countries. Another set of papers studies the effect of social structure on economic growth and the effect of historical migration and ethnic diversity on foreign direct investment. Hassan’s work has appeared in the American Economic Review, the Quarterly Journal of Economics, and the Journal of Finance. His varied honors, scholarships, and fellowships include the Austrian Central Bank’s 2009 Klaus Liebscher Award, the 2013 Leo Melamed Prize for Outstanding Research in Finance, and the Kiel Institute’s 2013 Excellence Award in Global Economic affairs. With research experience at Harvard University, UC Berkeley, and the University of Mannheim, the breadth of Hassan’s experience also includes visiting positions at Princeton, Stanford University, the London School of Economics, and London Business School. Hassan is a research fellow of the National Bureau of Economic Research and the Center for Economic Policy Research.
Anton Korinek – Anton Korinek is a professor at the Department of Economics at Johns Hopkins University and a Faculty Research Fellow at the NBER. He received his PhD from Columbia University in 2007 after three years of work experience at the intersection of IT and finance. He has also worked at the University of Maryland and has been a visiting scholar at Harvard University, the World Bank, the BIS and the Bundesbank as well as a Resident Scholar at the IMF. Korinek won several fellowships and awards for this work, including from the Institute for New Economic Thinking.
Barry Eichengreen – Barry Eichengreen is George C. Pardee and Helen N. Pardee Professor of Economics and Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley, Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, and Research Fellow of the Centre for Economic Policy Research. His most recent book is "How Global Currencies Work: Past, Present and Future" (with Arnaud Mehl and Livia Chitu), Princeton University Press, 2017. He received his Ph.D. in economics from Yale University.
Maurice Obstfeld –Maurice Obstfeld was born in New York City in 1952. Since September 2015, he has been the Economic Counsellor and Director of Research at the International Monetary Fund, on leave from the University of California, Berkeley. At Berkeley, he is the Class of 1958 Professor of Economics and formerly Chair of the Department of Economics (1998-2001). He arrived at Berkeley in 1991 as a professor, following permanent appointments at Columbia (1979-1986) and the University of Pennsylvania (1986-1989), and a visiting appointment at Harvard (1989-90). He received his Ph.D. in economics from MIT in 1979 after attending the University of Pennsylvania (B.A., 1973) and King’s College, Cambridge University (M.A., 1975). From July 2014 to August 2015, Dr. Obstfeld served as a Member of President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers. He was previously (2002-2014) an honorary advisor to the Bank of Japan's Institute of Monetary and Economic Studies. He is a Fellow of the Econometric Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Among Dr. Obstfeld's honors are Tilburg University’s Tjalling Koopmans Asset Award, the John von Neumann Award of the Rajk Laszlo College of Advanced Studies (Budapest), and the Kiel Institute’s Bernhard Harms Prize. He has given a number distinguished lectures, including the American Economic Association’s annual Richard T. Ely Lecture, the L. K. Jha Memorial Lecture of the Reserve Bank of India, and the Frank Graham Memorial Lecture at Princeton. Dr. Obstfeld has served both on the Executive Committee and as Vice President of the American Economic Association. He has consulted and taught at the IMF and numerous central banks around the world. He is also the co-author of two leading textbooks on international economics, International Economics (10th edition, 2014, with Paul Krugman and Marc Melitz) and Foundations of International Macroeconomics (1996, with Kenneth Rogoff), as well as more than 100 research articles on exchange rates, international financial crises, global capital markets, and monetary policy.
Giovanni Dell’Ariccia – Giovanni Dell'Ariccia is Deputy Director of the Research Department. He supervises the department’s work on financial, macroprudential, and monetary policy issues including the activities of the Macro-Financial Division. Previously he worked in the Asia and Pacific Department with assignments on Thailand, Singapore, and Hong Kong. Giovanni received his undergraduate degree in economics from Università di Roma La Sapienza (1992) and a Ph.D. in economics from MIT (1997).
Ambrogio Cesa-Bianchi – Ambrogio Cesa-Bianchi works as Research & Policy Advisor in the Macro Financial Analysis Division of the Bank of England, where he provides scholarly expertise on international finance and international economics issues, with a focus on monetary policy. Previously, he spent four years as a Research Economist in the International Directorate of the Bank of England. His research interests include international economics and finance, monetary policy, and housing. Ambrogio received his PhD in Economics from Cattolica University (Milano); he also holds an MSc in Economics from Pompeu Fabra University, and a 5-year degree in Engineering from Politecnico di Milano. 
Gaston Gelos – Gaston Gelos, Assistant Director at the Monetary and Capital Markets Department of the International Monetary Fund, is the head of the Monetary and Macroprudential Policies Division in that department. Previously, he headed the Global Financial Stability Analysis Division, where he was in charge of the analytical chapters of the IMF’s Global Financial Stability Report. Recently he also led the IMF’s Financial Sector Assessment Program (FSAP) for Japan. In the past, he held a variety of positions in different departments at the IMF, including as the Fund's Resident Representative to Argentina and Uruguay. His research covers a range of topics including banking, firm-level investment, the behavior of international investors, financial contagion and crises, and inflation dynamics. Previous experience includes stints at the German Parliament, the Mexican Central Bank, and the World Bank. He has published widely in academic journals, including, among others, the Journal of Finance, the Journal of International Economics, and the Review of Economics and Statistics. Mr. Gelos holds a Ph.D. from Yale University.
Sebnem Kalemli-Ozcan – Sebnem Kalemli-Ozcan is Neil Moskowitz Endowed Professor of Economics at University of Maryland, College Park. She is a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) and a Research Fellow at the Center for Economic Policy Research (CEPR). A native of Turkey, Professor Kalemli-Ozcan received her BS in Economics from Middle East Technical University in 1995 and her PhD in Economics from Brown University in 2000.
Maria Soledad (Sole) Martinez Peria – Sole is Chief of the Macro-Financial Division in the IMF Research Department. She manages a team of economists responsible for conducting research and policy work on macroeconomic and financial issues critical to Fund surveillance activities, with a focus on macro-financial linkages, financial flows, and financial systems. Sole’s published research addresses questions related to financial crises, market discipline, foreign bank participation, bank regulation, SME financing, financial inclusion, and remittances. Prior to joining the Fund, Sole worked at the World Bank, the Brookings Institution, the Central Bank of Argentina, and the Federal Reserve Board. She holds a PhD in economics from the University of California, Berkeley and a BA from Stanford University.
Sharmini Coorey – Sharmini Coorey is the Director of the IMF’s Institute for Capacity Development. The Institute provides policy-oriented macroeconomics and finance training to government officials around the world. It also raises funding for the IMF’s technical assistance and training activities and manages their governance. Dr. Coorey was previously Deputy Director in the IMF’s African Department and headed the U.K./Nordic division in the IMF’s European Department. Her experience includes work on surveillance and IMF-supported programs in Europe, Asia, Africa, and North and South America, as well as on various IMF policy issues. She has served on the Editorial Committee of IMF Staff Papers and been a visiting researcher at George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs. Dr. Coorey holds Ph.D. and bachelor’s degrees in Economics from Harvard University. She has published papers on inflation and economic growth in transition and developing countries and edited a book on managing Central Africa’s oil wealth.
Atif Mian – Atif Mian is John H. Laporte, Jr. Class of 1967 Professor of Economics, Public Policy and Finance at Princeton University, and Director of the Julis-Rabinowitz Center for Public Policy and Finance at the Woodrow Wilson School. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Mathematics with Computer Science and Ph.D. in Economics from MIT. Prior to joining Princeton in 2012 he taught at the University of California, Berkeley and the University of Chicago Booth School of business. Professor Mian's work studies the connections between finance and the macro economy. His latest book, House of Debt, with Amir Sufi builds upon powerful new data to describe how debt precipitated the Great Recession. The book explains why debt continues to threaten the global economy, and what needs to be done to fix the financial system. House of Debt is critically acclaimed by The New York Times, Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal,The Economist, and The Atlantic among others. Professor Mian's research has appeared in top academic journals, including the American Economic Review, Econometrica, Quarterly Journal of Economics, Journal of Finance, Review of Financial Studies and Journal of Financial Economics.
Victoria Ivashina – Victoria Ivashina is the Lovett-Learned Chaired Professor of Finance at Harvard Business School. She is a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, and a Visiting Scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston and the European Central Bank. She serves on the editorial boards of the Review of Financial Studies, the Review of Corporate Finance Studies, and the Journal of Financial Intermediation. Professor Ivashina received the Harvard Business School’s Berol Fellowship and Hellman Family Fellowship awards for research excellence.
Davide Furceri – Davide Furceri is a senior economist at the IMF Research Department. He holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Illinois. Previously he was an economist in the Middle East and Central Asia Department. Prior to joining the Fund, he was an economist at the Fiscal Policy Division of the European Central Bank, and at the Macroeconomic Analysis Division of the OECD Economics Department. He has published extensively in leading academic and policy-oriented journals on a wide range of topics including macroeconomics, public finance, international macroeconomics, and structural reforms.
Mauricio Larrain – Mauricio Larrain is Commissioner of the Financial Market Commission of Chile and Professor of Finance at Catholic University of Chile. Prior to that, he was the Roger F. Murray Associate Professor of Finance at Columbia Business School. His research lies on the boundaries of corporate finance, international finance, and financial intermediation, with a particular focus on emerging markets. Larrain has published in the leading finance journals, including the Journal of Finance, Journal of Financial Economics, and Review of Financial Studies. He received the Rising Scholar Award from the Review of Financial Studies. Larrain studied a B.A. and M.A. in Economics from Catholic University of Chile and a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of California, Berkeley. Prior to graduate school, he worked at the Research Department of the Central Bank of Chile.
Alejandro Werner – Alejandro Werner assumed his current position as Director of the Western Hemisphere Department of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in January 2013. A Mexican citizen, Mr. Werner has had distinguished careers in the public and private sectors as well as in academia. He served as Undersecretary of Finance and Public Credit of Mexico (December 2006–August 2010) and Head of Corporate and Investment Banking at BBVA-Bancomer (August 2011 until end-2012). Previously, he was Director of Economic Studies at the Bank of Mexico and Professor at ITAM, Instituto de Empresa, and Yale University. He has published widely. Mr. Werner was named Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum in 2007. Mr. Werner received his Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1994.
Olivier Jeanne – Olivier Jeanne is a Professor of Economics at Johns Hopkins University, which he joined in 2008 after ten years at the Research Department of the International Monetary Fund. His research spans an array of applied and theoretical topics in international and domestic macroeconomics: capital flows, exchange rate regimes and currency crises, sovereign debt and defaults, international liquidity, and monetary policy. Olivier Jeanne is a nonresident Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics (Washinton DC), a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), and a Research Fellow at the Center for Economic Policy Research (CEPR). He graduated from Ecole Polytechnique and Ecole Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées in France, holds a MsC in Economics from the London School of Economics and a PhD in Economics from Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS, Paris). Before joining Johns Hopkins University, he taught economics at Ecole Polytechnique, UC Berkeley and Princeton University.
Gianluca Benigno – Dr Gianluca Benigno is Associate Professor in the Department of Economics at LSE. He gained his PhD in International Macroeconomics from the University of California, Berkeley. He has published on exchange rate economics, international monetary policy cooperation, monetary and fiscal policy. Dr Benigno has consulted for the Bank of England, IMF, and the Inter-American Development Bank. He was previously a senior economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and an economist at the Bank of England, visiting scholar at the ECB, and visiting professor at Princeton University. Gianluca Benigno’s current research interests include International Macroeconomics, International Finance, and Monetary Economics. He is currently Resident Scholar at the Research Department at the IMF.
Hanno Lustig – Hanno Lustig has worked at the intersection of macroeconomics and finance. Recently, his research has focused on understanding the forces that determine exchange rates in currency markets. His research has shown how currencies have different risk characteristics that are determined by a country's role in the global economy. These risk characteristics help to understand the behavior of exchange rates. In addition, Lustig has explored the impact of government guarantees on the pricing of tail risk borne by large financial institutions. More recently, Lustig has also worked on understanding the determinants of a firm's volatility (volatility of sales, cash flows, stock returns etc).
Enrique G. Mendoza – Enrique G. Mendoza is Presidential Professor of Economics and Director of the Penn Institute for Economic Research at the University of Pennsylvania, where he joined in 2013. Before that, he was Neil Moskowitz Professor of Economics at the University of Maryland, and held positions at the IMF, the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System and Duke University. He is a 1989 PhD from the University of Western Ontario, a Research Associate of the NBER, and member of the BIS Advisory Panel and of the Latin American Shadow Financial Regulatory Committee. He has served as panel member of the NSF Economics program and in the editorial boards of several journals, including the American Economic Review. In 2017, he was awarded the ECB’s Wim Duisenberg fellowship. His research focuses on international capital flows, financial crises, sovereign debt and international business cycles. His main publications include: “Optimal, Time-Consistent Macroprudential Policy,” with J. Bianchi, Journal of Political Economy, 2017, “A General Equilibrium Model of Sovereign Default and Business Cycles” with V. Yue, Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2012, “Sudden Stops, Financial Crises & Leverage,” American Economic Review, 2010, “Financial Integration, Financial Development and Global Imbalances," with V. Quadrini and J. V. Rios-Rull, Journal of Political Economy, 2009, and "Real Business Cycles in a Small Open Economy," American Economic Review, 1991.
Cristina Arellano – Cristina Arellano has been a senior economist with the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis since 2009. She has also been an assistant professor in the Department of Economics at the University of Minnesota (2004–2009). Cristina received her B.S. in economics from Indiana University in 1999 and earned a Ph.D. in economics in 2004 from Duke University. Since 2009 she has also served as a faculty research fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research. Her research focuses on international macroeconomics, sovereign debt, and financial crises.
Benoit Coeuré – Benoît Cœuré has been a member of the Executive Board of the European Central Bank since January 1, 2012. He is responsible for International and European Relations, Market Operations, and the Oversight of Payment Systems. He is the Chairman of the Committee on Payments and Market Infrastructures (CPMI) of the Bank for International Settlements, and has held this position since October 2013.
José De Gregorio – José De Gregorio is Full Professor at the Department of Economics of the Universidad de Chile and nonresident senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. He was Governor of the Central Bank of Chile from 2007 until 2011. He was formerly Vice-Governor from 2003, and member of the Bank's Board from 2001. During 2000 and 2001, Mr. De Gregorio was Minister of the combined portfolios of Economy, Mining and Energy. 
Rakesh Mohan – Rakesh Mohan is Senior Fellow at the Jackson Institute for Global Affairs, Yale University and Distinguished Fellow at Brookings India.
Hélène Rey – Hélène Rey, O.B.E., is the Lord Bagri 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 external imbalances, financial crises, the links between monetary policy and the financial sector, and the organization of the international monetary system. In 2006, she received the Bernácer Prize, in 2012, the inaugural Birgit Grodal Award, in 2013 the Yrjö Jahnsson Award jointly with Thomas Piketty, in 2014 the inaugural Carl Menger Preis and in 2016 the Prix Edouard Bonnefous of the Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques. She is a Fellow of the Econometric Society, of the British Academy, of the European Economic Association, and a Foreign Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Conference Organizing Committee: Mahvash S. Qureshi (IMF, Conference Chair), Jorge Alvarez (IMF), Emine Boz (IMF, Co-Editor of the IMF Economic Review), Raphael Espinoza (IMF), Giang Ho (IMF), Nan Li (Associate Editor of the IMF Economic Review), Leonardo Martinez (IMF), Camelia Minoiu (IMF), and Linda Tesar (Editor-in-Chief of the IMF Economic Review, University of Michigan)
Conference Coordinator: Tracey Lookadoo
Disclaimer: The website contains papers and web links to papers that will be presented at the Eighteenth Jacques Polak Annual Research Conference (ARC). The views expressed in these papers are those of the authors only, and the presence of them, or of links to them, on the IMF website does not imply that the IMF, its Executive Board, or its management endorses or shares the views expressed in the papers.