IMF Conference

Registration (IMF HQ2 Atrium)

Continental Breakfast (IMF HQ2 Conference Hall 1)

Introductory Remarks

Louis Marc Ducharme, Director, Statistics Department, IMF

Louis Marc Ducharme was appointed Director of the IMF’s Statistics Department in 2013. Before joining the IMF, he spent 30 years at Statistics Canada where he held various positions in the areas of economic statistics. His last tenure was Assistant Chief Statistician responsible for all economic statistics. During his career he provided extensive technical assistance to a number of countries in Latin America. He also taught macroeconomics at the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Ottawa.

He has a Ph.D. in Economics and Science Policy from the University of Sussex, United Kingdom, and both a Master’s and Bachelor’s Degree in Economics from the University of Montreal in Canada.

Opening Remarks

Christine Lagarde, Managing Director, IMF

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.

After being admitted as a lawyer to the Paris Bar, Christine Lagarde joined the international law firm of Baker & McKenzie as an associate, specializing in Labor, Anti-trust, and Mergers & Acquisitions. A member of the Executive Committee of the Firm in 1995, Christine Lagarde became the Chairman of the Global Executive Committee of Baker & McKenzie in 1999, and subsequently Chairman of the Global Strategic Committee in 2004.

Christine Lagarde joined the French government in June 2005 as Minister for Foreign Trade. After a brief stint as Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries, in June 2007 she became the first woman to hold the post of Finance and Economy Minister of a G-7 country. From July to December 2008, she also chaired the ECOFIN Council, which brings together Economics and Finance Ministers of the European Union, and helped foster international policies related to financial supervision, regulation, and strengthening global economic governance. As Chairman of the G-20 when France took over its presidency for the year 2011, she set in motion a wide-ranging work agenda on the reform of the international monetary system.

On July 5, 2011, Christine Lagarde became the eleventh Managing Director of the IMF, and the first woman to hold that position. On February 19, 2016, the IMF Executive Board selected her to serve as IMF Managing Director for a second five-year term starting on July 5, 2016.

Christine Lagarde was named Officier in the Légion d'honneur in April 2012.

A former member of the French national team for synchronized swimming, Christine Lagarde is the mother of two sons.

Video

Keynote Speech

Ravi Kanbur, T. H. Lee Professor of World Affairs and Professor of Economics, Cornell University

Ravi Kanbur researches and teaches in development economics, public economics and economic theory. He has published in the leading economics journals, including Journal of Political Economy, American Economic Review, Review of Economic Studies, Journal of Economic Theory, and Economic Journal. He is also well known for his role in policy analysis and engagement in international development. He has served on the Senior Staff of the World Bank including as Chief Economist for Africa. He is President-Elect of the Human Development and Capabilities Association, Past-President of the Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, Chair of the Board of the United Nations University World Institute for Development Economics Research, Co-Chair of the Scientific Council of the International Panel on Social Progress, member of the OECD High Level Expert Group on the Measurement of Economic Performance, and a member of the Core Group of the Commission on Global Poverty.

Video

Presentation

Session I. Access for Everyone: Statistics and Financial Inclusion

Financial inclusion has at least two dimensions: access to microfinance, and universal access to an account providing payment services and safekeeping of savings. Here we ask what the data show about progress in achieving financial inclusion and about what works and what doesn’t. Also, what role has statistics played in microfinance? And how has mobile banking affected the lives of the poor?

Video

Chair:

Haishan Fu, Director of Development Data Group, World Bank

Haishan Fu is the Director of the World Bank’s Development Data Group, overseeing its development monitoring and open data initiative, statistical capacity building and global statistical programs. As an Ex-Officio member of the World Bank Group Data Council and Co-Chair of the Development Data Directors group, Fu leads and coordinates the development and implementation of development data agenda at the Bank. She is an active leader in the global statistical community, serving on UNSG’s Independent Expert Advisory Group on a Data Revolution for Sustainable Development, Council of the International Statistical Institute, Executive Committee of PARIS21, and chairing various global steering committees and management groups. Prior to joining the World Bank in 2014, Fu was Director of UNESCAP’s Statistics Division, leading the strategic development of Regional Statistics Programs in Asia and the Pacific. During her time as Chief of Statistics of UNDP’s Human Development Report between 1999 and 2005, Fu led the transformation of the Report’s statistical quality and credibility. She holds a Ph.D. in Demography from Princeton University and a B.A. in Economics from Peking University.

Speakers:

Jonathan Morduch, Professor of Public Policy and Economics, NYU

Jonathan Morduch is Professor of Public Policy and Economics at the Wagner Graduate School of Public Service at New York University. Morduch’s research focuses on poverty and finance. His current work studies the financial lives of low-income families in the United States, a focus that extends the approach of Portfolios of the Poor: How the World's Poor Live on $2 a Day (Princeton 2009).

Morduch is the co-author of The Economics of Microfinance (MIT Press 2010) and Economics, an introductory text from McGraw-Hill. He is a coeditor of Banking the World: Empirical Foundations of Financial Inclusion (MIT Press).

Morduch is also a founder and Executive Director of the NYU Financial Access Initiative. He has taught on the Economics faculty at Harvard, and has held visiting positions at Stanford, Princeton, Hitotsubashi University and the University of Tokyo. He received a B.A. from Brown and a Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard. He was awarded an honorary doctorate from the Free University of Brussels for his work on microfinance. In 2016-17, Morduch is at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, focusing on the economics of social business.

Presentation

Paper

Thorsten Beck, Professor of Banking and Finance, Cass Business School, City University London

Thorsten Beck is professor of banking and finance at Cass Business School in London. He is also a research fellow of the Centre for Economic Policy Research and the Center for Economic Studies-Ifo Institute (CESifo). He was professor of economics from 2008 to 2014 at Tilburg University and the founding chair of the European Banking Center from 2008 to 2013. Previously, he worked in the research department of the World Bank and has also worked as consultant for – among others – the Bank for International Settlements, the European Central Bank, the European Commission, the German Development Corporation, and the IMF. His research, academic publications and operational work have focused on two major questions: What is the relationship between finance and economic development? What policies are needed to build a sound and effective financial system?

Recently, Beck has concentrated on access to financial services, including small and medium enterprises finance, as well as on the design of regulatory and bank resolution frameworks. In addition to numerous academic publications in leading economics and finance journals, he has co-authored several policy reports on access to finance, financial systems in Africa and cross-border banking. His country experience, both in operational and research work, includes Bangladesh, Bolivia, Brazil, China, Colombia, Egypt, Mexico, Russia and several countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. In addition to presentation at numerous academic conferences, including several keynote addresses, he is invited regularly to policy panels across Europe. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Virginia and an M.A. from the University of Tübingen in Germany.

Presentation

Paper

Discussants:

Martin Čihák, Advisor, Monetary and Capital Markets Department, IMF

Martin Čihák is an Advisor and Unit Chief in the IMF’s Monetary and Capital Markets Department. His work has focused on monetary and financial topics, such as financial inclusion and deepening, stress testing, financial regulation, and the role of the state in finance. Čihák has covered these and other topics in a range of publications and IMF missions. From 2011 to 2013, he worked at the World Bank Group as team leader for the Global Financial Development Report. Before joining the IMF in 2000, he was a chief analyst in a commercial bank, a university lecturer, and a government advisor. He has a Ph.D. in Economics and M.A. in Economics and in Law from Charles University, Prague.

Presentation

Leora Klapper, Lead Economist, World Bank

Leora Klapper is a Lead Economist in the Finance and Private Sector Research Team of the Development Research Group at the World Bank. Her publications focus on corporate and household finance, entrepreneurship, and risk management. Her current research studies the impact of digital financial services, especially for women.

She is a founder of the Global Findex database, which measures how adults around the world save, borrow, make payments, and manage risk. Previously, she worked at the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System and Salomon Smith Barney. Klapper holds a Ph.D. in Financial Economics from New York University Stern School of Business.

Presentation

Coffee Break and Exhibition Visit (IMF HQ2 Conference Hall 1 and Atrium)

Session II: Tracking and Tackling Rising Inequality

Rising inequality and stagnating growth have led to a resurgence of interest in questions about the distribution of income, saving, and wealth and a renewed appreciation of the benefits of integration of micro and macro data. At the same time, quality problems with survey data are growing. The session will investigate what we can learn from the existing distributional data, potential new approaches to collecting and using distributional data, and strategies for improving the availability and quality of distributional data.

Video

Chair:

Shaida Badiee, ‎Managing Director and Co-founder, Open Data Watch

Shaida Badiee is a co-founder and managing director of Open Data Watch, an NGO focused on monitoring and promoting open data in national statistical offices. She has been an active member of the UN Secretary General’s advisory group on data revolution, co-chairs the Sustainable Development Solutions Network Data Network, and has played a key role with the startup of the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data. Badiee brings several decades of experience in managing global development statistics as the long-time Director of the World Bank’s Development Data Group. During her tenure, flagship global statistical products were launched such as the World Development Indicators, Global Development Finance, and the Atlas of Global Development. In 2010, she led the World Bank’s Open Data Initiative, a ground-breaking program to provide full and free access to the World Bank’s extensive statistical databases. Prior to that, she played a key role in the creation and operation of PARIS21 as well as leading international efforts to coordinate technical and financial support for statistics through initiatives such as the Marrakech Action Plan.

Speaker:

Sabina Alkire, Director, Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative, and Professor of Economics, George Washington University

Sabina Alkire is the director of the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative, a research center within the Department of International Development, University of Oxford. Her research interests and publications include multidimensional poverty measurement and analysis, welfare economics, Amartya Sen’s capability approach, the measurement of freedoms, and human development. She holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Oxford.

Presentation

Discussants:

Pali Lehohla, Statistician General, Statistics South Africa

Pali Lehohla is the Statistician General of South Africa since 2000. He is the Chair of Africa Symposium for Statistical Development and the Chair for the Sub-Group on Harmonization of Statistics in Africa. From 2005 to 2016, he served in a variety of international functions. He is one of the nine-member Independent Accountability Panel of the UN Secretary-General for the Health of Mothers, Adolescents and Children. He was a member of the UN Secretary General Independent Expert Advisory Group on Data Revolution, Chair of the United Nations Statistics Commission, Chair of Statistics Commission Africa and Chair of PARIS21 as well as Vice President of the International Statistical Institute. He has extensive experience as an advisor to in-conflict, post-conflict and fragile political environments. In this regard, he was Chief Advisor to the Monitoring and Evaluation Committee of the 2008 Population and Housing Census of Sudan, which was part of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement signed in 2005. In addition, he undertook a Population Census readiness mission in Afghanistan in 2008 and another in Iraq in 2009, and served as a UN envoy to the Census of Cambodia in 1998.

Lehohla holds a double major in Statistics and Economics from the National University of Lesotho. He holds a postgraduate degree in Demography from the Regional Institute for Population Studies at the University of Ghana, and a Senior Executive Programme jointly awarded by Wits and Harvard University. The University of Stellenbosch conferred an Honorary Doctorate to him in December 2015.

Presentation

Conchita D’Ambrosio, Professor of Economics at University of Luxembourg

Conchita D’Ambrosio is Professor of Economics at University of Luxembourg. She is an economist, with a Ph.D. from New York University that she obtained in 2000. Her research interests have revolved around the study of individual and social well-being and the proposal of various measures that are able to capture its different aspects. Two main points were underscored: individual well-being depends on comparisons with a reference situation; and individual well-being depends both on one’s own life course and on the histories of others. She has proposed a number of different indices, which have been axiomatically characterized. She has applied these indices to the study of different societies and she analyzed their empirical links with subjective well-being, via their correlations with self-reported levels of satisfaction with income and life overall.

She has published in Economica, Economics Letters, International Economic Review, Review of Economics and Statistics, Social Choice and Welfare, and Review of Income and Wealth, among other academic journals. She has been member of the editorial board of the Review of Income and Wealth since 2001 and editor of the same journal since 2007. She joined the editorial board of the Journal of Economic Inequality in 2013.

Presentation

Lunch (IMF HQ2 Conference Hall 2)

Session III: What Are We Missing? Activity Outside the Boundary

Some production and consumption takes place outside the boundary of legally registered businesses, and also outside the boundary of what is included in our statistical measurement frameworks. In the former case, the informal sector has long been a source of employment in many economies, but difficulties in collecting data may lead to underestimation of its contribution to an economy’s employment and output. In the latter case, the recent growth of the digital economy has brought large benefits from free online services of information, entertainment, and social connection. Despite calls from data users to measure these benefits, they do not seem to fit inside the boundaries of existing statistical frameworks.

Video

Chair:

Sharmini Coorey, ‎Director, Institute for Capacity Development, IMF

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. Ms. 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. Ms. Coorey holds Ph.D. and A.B. 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.

Speaker:

Roberto Olinto, Director of Surveys, Institute of Geography and Statistics of Brazil (IBGE)

Presentation

Martine Durand, Chief Statistician and Director of Statistics Directorate, OECD

Martine Durand is the Director of Statistics and Chief Statistician of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. She is responsible for providing strategic orientation for the institution’s statistical policy and oversees all of the OECD's statistical activities. In particular, she is responsible for the OECD’s work on the measurement of people’s well-being and societal progress, promoting the analysis and use of well-being and sustainability indicators for policy-making. This work features regularly in the flagship publication How’s Life? and related reports on well-being, inequalities and sustainable development. She was formerly Deputy-Director of Employment, Labor and Social Affairs where she was responsible for OECD's work on employment and training policies, health and social policies, and international migration published in OECD flagship reports such as the OECD International Migration Outlook, the OECD Employment Outlook, Pensions at a Glance, and Health at a Glance. Prior to that, she was Deputy-Head of the OECD Secretary-General's Private Office where she worked on a number of national and international policy issues requesting the attention of the Secretary-General and his Deputies.

Durand also worked for many years in the Economics Department on OECD Economic Surveys and the OECD Economic Outlook as well as on policy issues related inter alia to international competitiveness, European integration and labor market performance. She graduated in mathematics, statistics and economics from the Paris VI University, the French National School of Statistics and Economic Administration (École Nationale de la Statistique et de l' Administration Économique) and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is married with three children.

Presentation

Paper

Discussants:

Sugata Marjit, Reserve Bank of India, Professor of Industrial Economics, Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta India

Sugata Marjit currently holds the Reserve Bank Chair of Industrial Economics at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, in Calcutta, India. Dr. Marjit has previously held positions as Vice Chancellor of Calcutta University, Professor at the Indian Statistical Institute, and he was the first Sukhamay Chakravorty Professor at the Centre for Economic Studies and Planning, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. He also taught at the Universities of Erasmus at Rotterdam, City University of Hong Kong, Cornell, Dresden, Innsbruck, Konstanz, Queensland, Monash, Penn State, and Rochester, among other places. He was a visiting scholar at the Asian Development Bank, International Monetary Fund, and Federal Reserve in St. Louis.

He has more than 100 papers in well-known international journals including the American Economic Review, Journal of Economic Theory, European Economic Review, Journal of Development Economics, International Economic Review, Journal of International Economics, and International Economic Review. He has published books, edited volumes, and contributed in publications for the Oxford University Press, Princeton University Press, and Springer-Verlag. He is the Editor of the South Asian Journal of Macroeconomics and Public Finance and serves in editorial boards of national and international journals. He is the recipient of the coveted Mahalanobis Gold Medal of the Indian Econometric Society (2002) and V.K.R.V. Rao National Prize (2003) as a young social scientist (among only three until now to receive both awards) and the Best Paper Award from the Global Development Network (World Bank) in 2003.

Presentation

Marshall Reinsdorf, Senior Economist, Statistics Department, IMF

Marshall Reinsdorf has been a Senior Economist in the IMF Statistics Department since 2014. Prior to joining the IMF, he was Chief of the National Economic Accounts Research Group at the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, a Financial Economist at the U.S. Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, and a Research Economist specializing in price statistics at the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Reinsdorf has been an associate editor of theJournal of Productivity Analysis, and a member of the editorial boards of the Review of Income and Wealth and the International Productivity Monitor. He has published numerous papers in the academic literature on economic measurement topics and co-edited the books Measuring Wealth and Financial Intermediation and their Links to the Real Economy (2015, with Charles Hulten) and International Trade in Services and Intangibles in the Era of Globalization (2009, with Matthew Slaughter). At the IMF, he has worked on guidelines for measuring the digital economy in macroeconomic statistics, on a compilation guide for natural resources in national accounts, and on capacity development in national accounts and price statistics. He holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Maryland.

Presentation

Coffee Break (IMF HQ2 Conference Hall 1)

Panel Discussion on Emerging Data Demands

Some questions for discussion by the panel are:

(1) Are existing statistics adequate to monitor progress on inclusive growth and other focuses of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)?

(2) Does the digital economy create a need for new kinds of statistics or changes in existing statistics?

(3) How can we handle trade-offs between developing new statistics to support evolving policy needs, and improving the quality of existing statistics? What is the role of non-traditional statistics or approaches, such as big data?

Video

Moderator:

J. Steven Landefeld, ‎Distinguished Visiting Professor, United States Naval Academy and Consultant to the United Nations and Former Director of the US Bureau of Economic Analysis

For nearly twenty years, Dr. Steven Landefeld was Director of the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA). During that period, the BEA introduced a number of statistics that improved the accuracy, timeliness, and relevance of its statistics. Landefeld also led a number of managerial and organizational innovations at BEA that resulted in consistently high ratings from employees and external groups. Through his work with international organizations, he helped to develop standards that led to improvements in global economic statistics. He has authored and co-authored numerous articles and books on economic measurement. Before coming to BEA, he held a number of positions, including Chief of Staff for the President’s Council of Economic Advisers. He has received numerous awards for his statistical work, including a Presidential Distinguished Executive Award. Recently, he was selected as a Fellow of the National Association for Business Economics. Landefeld is currently a Distinguished Visiting Professor at the U.S. Naval Academy and a consultant to the United Nations.

Presentation

Panelists:

Stefan Schweinfest, Director, United Nations Statistics Division

Stefan Schweinfest was appointed Director of the Statistics Division (STAT/DESA) in July 2014. Schweinfest studied Mathematical Economics at the Universities of Wuerzburg and Bonn, Germany. He holds a Diplome D’Etudes Approfondies from the University of Paris (Sorbonne/Pantheon) in these fields. During his Ph.D. studies at the London School of Economics, he also held a position as teaching assistant.

Schweinfest joined UN DESA in 1989 and worked in various areas, such as national and environmental accounting, statistical capacity building programs, and indicator frameworks. He was also responsible for external relationships of the Division, both with member countries as well as with international partner organizations. In this context, he has been the substantive Secretary of the United Nations Statistical Commission since 2002. He was also closely involved since the beginning in the establishment of the United Nations Global Geospatial Information Management (UN-GGIM) program and acted as the key liaison between the Division and the UN Economic and Social Council during the negotiations of the UN resolution that formally launched UN-GGIM in 2011.

In his private time, he likes to sing and has performed numerous concerts with his chorus in Carnegie Hall. He is also a passionate marathon runner and loves to hit the road all over the world.

Presentation

Claire Melamed, Executive Director, the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data

Claire Melamed has worked throughout her career to elevate the importance of data for understanding and addressing development challenges. She currently serves as Executive Director at the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data. Prior to this, she worked as the Managing Director of Growth, Poverty and Inequality Cluster at the Overseas Development Institute (ODI), heading the U.K.-based think tank’s work on the post-2015 global sustainable development agenda, focusing on measuring poverty and inequality and on using these insights to improve policy and outcomes.

Melamed was previously the Head of Policy at ActionAid UK. She has also worked for Christian Aid, the United Nations in Mozambique, and taught at the University of London and the Open University. She led ODI's work on the post-2015 agenda, looking at sectoral and cross-cutting issues, tracking the political negotiations, co-leading the 'MY World' survey with UNDP which gathered 8.6 million responses from participants around the world about their development priorities. She also helped to convene the Cartagena Data Festival and is continuously working on the ‘data revolution’.

Presentation

Julio Santaella, President of National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI), Mexico

Julio A. Santaella received his Bachelor Degree in Economics from the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México (ITAM). He holds a Master´s Degree and Ph.D. in Economics from the University of California. Santaella is President of the Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Geografía.

From 2001 to 2014, Mr. Santaella served at the Bank of Mexico as the Executive Coordinator of the Mexican Petroleum Fund, Manager of Information and Analysis, Director of the Central Bank Operations Support, Researcher for the General Direction of Economic Research and for the Central Bank Governing Board. In the academic field, he has been a researcher and professor at the ITAM (1985-86; and 1997-2003), Coordinator of the Applied Economics Center, Chairman of the Economics Department, and Deputy Director of the Economic Research and Analysis Center. From 1992 to 1997, he served as an Economist of the Research Department and of the European Department of the International Monetary Fund, and from 1984 to 1987, he served as Department Chief of Macroeconomic Policy in the General Direction of Treasury Planning at the Mexican Ministry of Finance.

Presentation

Questions and Discussion from the Floor

Cocktail Reception (IMF HQ2 Conference Hall 2)

Continental Breakfast (IMF HQ2 Conference Hall 1)

Session IV: Measurement in a World of Globalized Production

Global supply chains and the fragmentation of the production process into multiple functions such as design, sourcing, assembly, testing, marketing and oversight pose new challenges to measurement of the output of individual economies and traditionally defined industries. Effects of tax incentives on the actual or purported distribution of production of multinational corporations across the locations in which they operate compound the measurement problems. Globalization of production has also had major implications for labor markets worldwide. Are new kinds of statistics or statistical methods needed to cope with these challenges and to track economic developments in a globalized world?

Video

Chair:

Maurice Obstfeld, Economic Counsellor and Research Department Director, IMF

Since September 2015, Maurice Obstfeld 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 University (1979-86) and the University of Pennsylvania (1986-89), and a visiting appointment at Harvard University (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 (2002-14) 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 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. 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.

Speaker:

Robert Feenstra, C. Bryan Cameron Distinguished Chair in International Economics, University of California

Robert C. Feenstra holds the C. Bryan Cameron Distinguished Chair in International Economics at the University of California, Davis. He directed the International Trade and Investment program at the National Bureau of Economic Research, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, from 1992 to 2016. Feenstra has published over 100 articles in international trade and fifteen books, including the graduate textbook Advanced International Trade: Theory and Evidence (Princeton University Press, 2^nd ed., 2015), and an undergraduate textbook jointly with Alan M. Taylor, International Economics (Worth Publishers, 3^rd ed., 2014). His research been supported by grants from the National Science Foundation, the Ford Foundation and the Sloan Foundation. He specializes in U.S. and global trade patterns, and he has lectured in Canada, Europe, China, and throughout Asia.

Presentation

Paper

Discussants:

Marcel Timmer, Professor and Director of the Economic Growth and Development Centre, University of Groningen, Netherlands

Marcel Timmer is professor at the University of Groningen and director of the Groningen Growth and Development Centre. He is currently leading a large research program titled “Modelling Global Value Chains: a new framework to study trade, jobs and income inequality in an interdependent world” funded by the Dutch Science Foundation (NWO, VICI scheme, 2015-2020). This work is building on major international research projects including theEU KLEMS productivity project and the World Input-Output Database project. Timmer is the lead author of the book Economic Growth in Europe, and has extensively published in national and international journals, including the American Economic Review, Review of Economics and Statistics, Economic Journal, Journal of Economic Perspectives, Journal of Development Economics, Economic Policy and the Journal of Economic History. He has been a consultant and advisor for various organizations including the OECD, the World Bank, Japanese Ministry of Economics, Trade and Industry, Asian Development Bank, and Statistics Netherlands.

Presentation

J. Steven Landefeld, Distinguished Visiting Professor, United States Naval Academy and Consultant to the United Nations and Former Director of the US Bureau of Economic Analysis

For nearly twenty years, Dr. Steven Landefeld was Director of the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA). During that period, the BEA introduced a number of statistics that improved the accuracy, timeliness, and relevance of its statistics. Landefeld also led a number of managerial and organizational innovations at BEA that resulted in consistently high ratings from employees and external groups. Through his work with international organizations, he helped to develop standards that led to improvements in global economic statistics. He has authored and co-authored numerous articles and books on economic measurement. Before coming to BEA, he held a number of positions, including Chief of Staff for the President’s Council of Economic Advisers. He has received numerous awards for his statistical work, including a Presidential Distinguished Executive Award. Recently, he was selected as a Fellow of the National Association for Business Economics. Landefeld is currently a Distinguished Visiting Professor at the U.S. Naval Academy and a consultant to the United Nations.

Presentation

Coffee Break (IMF HQ2 Conference Hall 1)

Roundtable Discussion

The conclusions of the individual sessions will be discussed with the focus being on the way forward for statistics to meet evolving demands for data, remain relevant as IT changes the way we live and work, and better serve the needs of policy makers and other data users.

Video

Chair:

Tao Zhang, Deputy Managing Director, IMF

Mr. Tao ZHANG assumed the role of Deputy Managing Director at the IMF on August 22, 2016. He brings extensive international economic expertise and experience in policymaking, including with international financial institutions, from his previous appointments as the Deputy Governor of the People’s Bank of China and IMF’s Executive Director for China from 2011 to 2015.

Prior to his position as the Deputy Governor, Mr. Zhang held a number of high-level positions in the People’s Bank of China: Director-General of the Legal Affairs Department; Director-General of the International Department; and, Director-General of Financial Survey and Statistics Department. Mr. Zhang also worked at the World Bank from 1995 to 1997 and at the Asian Development Bank from 1997 to 2004.

Mr. Zhang holds an M.A. and Ph.D. in International Economics from the University of California, Santa Cruz, as well as a B.S. in Electrical Engineering and an M.S. in Finance from Tsinghua University in Beijing.

Panelists:

Abebe Selassie, Director of the African Department, IMF

Abebe Selassie was appointed Director of the African Department (AFR) at the International Monetary Fund on 19 September 2016.

In a Fund career spanning 22 years, Mr. Selassie has worked in various parts of the institution. Most recently as Deputy Director of AFR, he was a key member of AFR’s senior management team, including overseeing the Fund’s highly successful effort to assist the three Ebola-stricken countries.

In other AFR positions, he was senior resident representative in Uganda; mission chief for South Africa; has led work on AFR’s Regional Economic Outlook, and has worked closely with policymakers from many of the region’s frontier markets (Cote D’Ivoire, Ghana, and Kenya) to its more fragile countries (Burkina Faso, Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone).

Mr. Selassie has worked also in the IMF’s Strategy, Policy, and Review Department (SPR), and in the European Department (EUR). In SPR, he worked on low-income country and emerging-market program and policy design issues as well as gaining extensive operational experience on a number of high-profile crisis cases. In EUR, he worked on Turkey and Poland between 1999 and 2003. In a second stint more recently, he was Assistant Director and mission chief for Portugal during the Eurozone crisis.

Before joining the Fund, Mr. Selassie worked for the Economist Intelligence Unit, specializing in sovereign credit risk issues, and then for the Ethiopian Government as Principal Economist in the Office of the President. He holds a B.A. in Economics from the City of London Polytechnic and a Masters in Economic History from the London School of Economics.

Julio Santaella, President of INEGI, Mexico

Julio A. Santaella received his Bachelor Degree in Economics from the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México (ITAM). He holds a Master´s Degree and Ph.D. in Economics from the University of California. Santaella is President of the Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Geografía.

From 2001 to 2014, Mr. Santaella served at the Bank of Mexico as the Executive Coordinator of the Mexican Petroleum Fund, Manager of Information and Analysis, Director of the Central Bank Operations Support, Researcher for the General Direction of Economic Research and for the Central Bank Governing Board. In the academic field, he has been a researcher and professor at the ITAM (1985-86; and 1997-2003), Coordinator of the Applied Economics Center, Chairman of the Economics Department, and Deputy Director of the Economic Research and Analysis Center. From 1992 to 1997, he served as an Economist of the Research Department and of the European Department of the International Monetary Fund, and from 1984 to 1987, he served as Department Chief of Macroeconomic Policy in the General Direction of Treasury Planning at the Mexican Ministry of Finance.

Barry Bosworth, Senior Fellow, Economic Studies Program, Robert V. Roosa Chair in International Economics, Brookings Institution, USA

Barry Bosworth is a Senior Fellow in the Economic Studies Program (the Robert V. Roosa Chair in International Economics) at the Brookings Institution in Washington D.C. His research has involved work on the determinants of economic growth in developing countries, saving, capital formation, productivity growth, and the economic condition of the aged.

Bosworth has been a Senior Fellow since 1979 and served as a research associate during 1971-77. He was Director of the President’s Council on Wage and Price Stability during 1977-79; Visiting Lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley from 1974-75; and Assistant Professor at Harvard University during 1969-71. He received his Ph.D. degree from the University of Michigan in 1969.

Some of his recent publications include:

Later Retirement, Inequality in Old Age, and the Growing Gap in Longevity between Rich and Poor (with Gary Burtless and Kan Zhang), Brookings Institution web volume, 2016.

Transpacific Rebalancing: Implications for Trade and Economic Growth (editor with Masahiro Kawai), Brookings Institution Press, 2015.

Income Inequality in Korea: An Analysis of Trends, Causes, and Answers (with Chong-Bum An). Harvard Press, 2013.

The Decline in Saving: A Threat to America’s Prosperity?, Brookings Institution Press, 2012.

The Economy of Puerto Rico: Restoring Growth (with Susan Collins and Mike Soto) Brookings Institution, 2006.

Jaana Remes, Partner at McKinsey Global Institute

Dr. Jaana Remes is an economist and a partner at the McKinsey Global Institute (MGI), McKinsey & Company's business and economics research arm, based in San Francisco.

Since 2003, Remes has led MGI's research on productivity, urbanization, competitiveness, and growth. Her most recent research looks at global growth prospects in an era of demographic decline, as well as growth of cities. She leads MGI’s Urban World research series that includes shifting economic power of cities, the rising urban consuming class, and mapping of the global company landscape; as well as the patterns of urban growth and renewal across the Americas. Her long term research interests also include analyses of how different policies have contributed to industry competitiveness and growth; the impact of multinational companies on emerging economies; as well as in-depth assessments of the barriers to competitiveness and growth across a range of economies, including the US, Mexico, Brazil, Canada, UK, Finland, Sweden, and South Korea. Remes has led MGI's research on energy, with a focus on understanding the microeconomic underpinnings of global energy demand and the opportunity to reduce energy consumption through higher energy productivity.

Remes advises global business and government leaders on related topics and frequently contributes to policy debates through articles and conference presentations. She is a member of OECD’s Science, Technology, and Innovation Directorate’s advisory group, a nonresident senior fellow with the Strategic Foresight Initiative of the Atlantic Council, and serves on the Board of directors of Girl Scouts Heart of Central California.

Closing Remarks

Louis Marc Ducharme, Director, Statistics Department, IMF

Louis Marc Ducharme was appointed Director of the IMF’s Statistics Department in 2013. Before joining the IMF, he spent 30 years at Statistics Canada where he held various positions in the areas of economic statistics. His last tenure was Assistant Chief Statistician responsible for all economic statistics. During his career he provided extensive technical assistance to a number of countries in Latin America. He also taught macroeconomics at the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Ottawa.

He has a Ph.D. in Economics and Science Policy from the University of Sussex, United Kingdom, and both a Master’s and Bachelor’s Degree in Economics from the University of Montreal in Canada.