reflections on allan meltzer’s contributions to...
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REFLECTIONS ON ALLAN MELTZER’S CONTRIBUTIONS TO MONETARY ECONOMICS AND PUBLIC POLICY
January 4, 2018 Kimpton Hotel Palomar Philadelphia
Sponsored by the Institute for Humane Studies & the Mercatus Center at George Mason University
Welcome to the Policy Research Seminar on Reflection’s on Allan Meltzer’s
Contributions to Monetary Economics and Public Policy, sponsored by the
Institute for Humane Studies (IHS) and the Mercatus Center at George Mason
University. You have been invited to this event because we hold your work in
high esteem for both its scholarly contributions and for its practical application
to our understanding of a free society. We encourage you to join in what
promises to be an active and lively conversation, and to draw from your own
research and experiences throughout the discussion.
One of the primary goals for this program is to help facilitate scholarly
collaboration among the faculty, graduate students, policy experts, and IHS
and Mercatus Center staff members in attendance. I hope you see this as a
valuable opportunity to get to know dozens of like-minded scholars with similar
research interests. We are hosting several world-class speakers who can share
their experience and advice on how to flourish, as they have, in the world of
monetary economics and public policy. We have found that some of the best
conversations from our seminars occur spontaneously in the hallways and
during meals and receptions, so please be present for scheduled events.
Thank you again for joining us. We look forward to meeting each of you
individually over the course of the seminar, and we hope you benefit as much
from this seminar as we benefit from having you in attendance. Please don’t
hesitate to let us know if we may do anything to improve your experience.
Sincerely,
Ashley DonohueAcademic Talent Development, Director Institute for Humane Studies
Founded in 1961 by Dr. F.A. “Baldy” Harper, the Institute for Humane Studies is the leading institute in higher
education dedicated to championing classical liberal ideas and the scholars who advance them. Specifically,
we facilitate the impact of the academic community both on and beyond college campuses—partnering
with faculty to connect with students through campus programs, connecting scholars to opportunities to
further their careers both inside and outside of the academy, and offering current and aspiring professors
access to the foremost community of scholars working within the classical liberal tradition.
IHS Policy Research SeminarsIHS Policy Research Seminars seek to bridge the gap between academia and policy by encouraging the
use of academic research to influence policy change. Seminars give an audience of advanced graduate
students, policy experts, and faculty the chance to connect with like-minded individuals and help to facilitate
connections with our partner organizations with the goal of producing future research, speaking and
publishing opportunities.
The Mercatus Center at George Mason University is the world’s premier university source for market-oriented
ideas—bridging the gap between academic ideas and real-world problems. A university-based research
center, the Mercatus Center advances knowledge about how markets work to improve people’s lives by
training graduate students, conducting research, and applying economics to offer solutions to society’s most
pressing problems. Our mission is to generate knowledge and understanding of the institutions that affect
the freedom to prosper, and to find sustainable solutions that overcome the barriers preventing individuals
from living free, prosperous, and peaceful lives.
This full-day seminar is co-sponsored with the Mercatus Center at George Mason University and explores
Prof. Allan Meltzer’s contributions to academia and public policy. His recent passing affords a moment of
reflection on how the foundations of his research and thinking are relevant to our current Federal Reserve
system and frequently changing monetary policies. Featured speakers include experts such as Nobel
Laureate and Professor Robert Lucas Jr., and the President and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis,
James Bullard.
PROGRAM SCHEDULE
8:00-9:00 AM | Breakfast and Registration Cret Room
9:00-9:15 AM | Welcome and Seminar Introduction Burnham Ballroom
• Ashley Donohue, Institute for Humane Studies• Ben Klutsey, Mercatus Center at George Mason University
9:15-10:45 AM | Panel 1: Meltzer’s Contributions to the Monetary Transmission Mechanism Burnham Ballroom
• Edward Nelson, Federal Reserve System• Peter Ireland, Boston College• Josh Hendrickson, University of Mississippi • David Beckworth, Mercatus Center at George
Mason University Moderator
10:45-11:00 AM | Coffee Break Ballroom Foyer
11:00-12:30 PM | Panel 2: Meltzer’s Contributions to the History of the Federal Reserve Burnham Ballroom
• Michael Bordo, Rutgers University• George Selgin, Cato Institute• Robert Hetzel, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond• Scott Sumner, Mercatus Center at George Mason University Moderator
Thursday, January 4th
PROGRAM SCHEDULE
12:30-1:30 PM | LunchCret Room
1:30-2:20 PM | Keynote AddressBurnham Ballroom
• James Bullard, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis
2:20-2:45 PM | Coffee BreakBallroom Foyer
2:45-4:15 PM | Meltzer’s Contributions to Public Policy ThoughtBurnham Ballroom
• Gerald O’Driscoll Jr., Cato Institute• Robert Lucas Jr., University of Chicago• Charles Plosser, The Hoover Institution, Stanford University• George Selgin, Cato Institute Moderator
4:15-7:00 PM | Afternoon Break
7:00-7:45 PM | Dinner Burnham Ballroom
7:45-8:00 PM | Opportunities at the Institute for Humane Studies Burnham Ballroom
• Ashley Donohue, Institute for Humane Studies
8:00-10:00 PM | Reception Burnham Ballroom
SPEAKER BIOS
DAVID BECKWORTH [email protected]
David Beckworth is a Senior Research Fellow with the Program on Monetary Policy at the
Mercatus Center at George Mason University and a former international economist at the
U.S. Department of the Treasury. He is the author of Boom and Bust Banking: The Causes
and Cures of the Great Recession and formerly taught at Western Kentucky University.
His research focuses on monetary policy, and his work has been cited by the Wall Street Journal, the Financial
Times, The New York Times, Bloomberg Businessweek, and The Economist. He has advised congressional staff-
ers on monetary policy and has written for Barron’s, Investor’s Business Daily, the New Republic, The Atlantic,
and National Review.
MICHAEL BORDO [email protected]
Michael D. Bordo is Professor of Economics and Director of the Center for Monetary and
Financial History at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey. He has held previous
academic positions at the University of South Carolina and Carleton University in Ottawa,
Canada. He has been a visiting professor at the University of California Los Angeles,
Carnegie Mellon University, Princeton University, Harvard University, Cambridge University where he was Pitt
Professor of American History and Institutions, and a Visiting Scholar at the IMF, Federal Reserve Banks of St.
Louis and Cleveland, the Federal Reserve Board of Governors the Bank of Canada, the Bank of England and
the Bank for International Settlement. He also is a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic
Research, Cambridge, Massachusetts. He has a B.A. degree from McGill University, a M.Sc. (Econ) from the
London School of Economics and he received his Ph.D. at the University of Chicago in 1972. He has published
many articles in leading journals and written ten books on monetary economics and monetary history. He is
editor of a series of books for Cambridge University Press: Studies in Macroeconomic History.
JAMES BULLARD [email protected]
James “Jim” Bullard is the President and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. He
oversees the activities of the Eighth Federal Reserve District, including operations in the
St. Louis headquarters and its branches in Little Rock, Ark., Louisville, Ky., and Memphis,
Tenn. He also participates on the Federal Reserve’s Federal Open Market Committee, or
FOMC, which meets eight times each year to set the direction of U.S. monetary policy.
Bullard is a noted economist and scholar, and his positions are founded on research-based thinking and an
intellectual openness to new theories and explanations. He is often an early voice for change. In addition, he
makes public outreach and dialogue a priority to help build a more transparent and accessible Fed. He regu-
larly engages with many audiences—including academics, policy makers, business and labor organizations,
charities, students and media, among other public groups—to discuss monetary policy and the U.S. economy
and to help further the regional Reserve banks’ role of being the voice of Main Street.
Jim Bullard is active in the community. He is an honorary professor of economics at Washington University
in St. Louis, where he also sits on the advisory council of the economics department. In addition, he is a mem-
ber of the Greater St. Louis Financial Forum, the St. Louis Regional Chamber’s board of directors, the University
of Missouri-St. Louis (UMSL) Chancellor’s Council and the St. Cloud State University School of Public Affairs
advisory council. He is also chairman of the United Way’s U.S.A. Board of Trustees and a member of the United
Way Worldwide board. He is also a member of the Central Bank Research Association’s senior council.
A native of Forest Lake, Minn., Bullard received his doctorate in economics from Indiana University in Bloom-
ington. He holds Bachelor of Science degrees in economics and in quantitative methods and information
systems from St. Cloud State University in St. Cloud, Minn.
JOSH HENDRICKSON [email protected]
Josh Hendrickson is an associate professor at the University of Mississippi. His work
primarily centers around issues related to monetary theory, history, and policy. He has
written extensively on nominal GDP targeting and the political economy of bitcoin. His
work has appeared in the Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, the Journal of Economic
Dynamics and Control, Macroeconomic Dynamics, the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, Eco-
nomics & Politics, Economic Inquiry, the Journal of Macroeconomics, and the Southern Economic Journal.
ROBERT HETZEL [email protected]
Robert Hetzel received an AB degree in 1967 and a Ph.D. in 1975 both from the Universi-
ty of Chicago. While at Chicago, he was in the Money and Banking workshop and did his
thesis work under Milton Friedman. He joined the research department at the Federal
Reserve Bank of Richmond in 1975, where, as Senior Economist and Research Advisor, he
counseled the Bank’s president on matters concerning his participation in FOMC meetings.
His research agenda is the evolution of central banking in the modern regime of fiat money. He regularly
writes articles on monetary policy in which he continues the Friedman monetarist tradition. His two recent
books, both published by Cambridge University Press, are The Monetary Policy of the Federal Reserve: A History
(2008) and The Great Recession: Market Failure or Policy Failure? (2012).
PETER IRELAND [email protected]
Peter Ireland is the Murray and Monti Professor of Economics at Boston College, a Re-
search Associate in the Monetary Economics Program at the National Bureau of Econom-
ic Research, and a member of the Shadow Open Market Committee. Before joining the
faculty at Boston College, Professor Ireland held positions at Rutgers University and at the
Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond. He received his Ph.D. in economics from the University of Chicago in 1991.
Professor Ireland’s teaching and research focus on macroeconomics and monetary economics, particularly
Federal Reserve policy and its effects on the United States economy. His recent publications include Monetary
Policy, Bond Risk Premia, and the Economy, in the November 2015 issue of the Journal of Monetary Economics,
Money and Output: Friedman and Schwartz Revisited, in the September 2016 issue of the Journal of Money, Cred-
it, and Banking, and Targeting Money Growth at the Zero Lower Bound, forthcoming in the International Journal
of Central Banking.
BENJAMIN KLUTSEY [email protected]
Ben Klutsey is the Program Manager for the Financial Markets Working Group and the
Program on Monetary Policy at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. He re-
turns to the Financial Markets Working Group, where he previously worked as a research
fellow. Prior to his return, he worked with the Institute of International Finance, where he
focused on financial regulations, particularly related to liquidity risk management and risk governance. He re-
ceived his MA in International Commerce and Policy from George Mason University and his BA in Government
and Philosophy from Lawrence University.
ROBERT LUCAS JR. [email protected]
Robert E. Lucas Jr. is the John Dewey Distinguished Service Professor of Economics at the
University of Chicago. He is a Fellow of the Econometric Society, the American Acade-
my of Arts and Sciences, and the American Philosophical Society, and a member of the
National Academy of Sciences. He is a past president of the Econometric Society and the
American Economic Association. In 1995, he received the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences.
Lucas received his BA in History from the University of Chicago in 1959 and his Ph.D. in Economics in 1964.
He was a member of the faculty of the Graduate School of Industrial Administration at Carnegie-Mellon Uni-
versity from 1963 until 1974. He joined the Chicago faculty in 1975.
Among his books are Studies in Business-Cycle Theory (1981); Rational Expectations and Econometric Practice
(1981), co-edited with Thomas Sargent; Models of Business Cycles (1985); and Recursive Methods in Economic
Dynamics (1989), with Nancy Stokey and Edward Prescott. His Lectures on Economic Growth were published in
2002, and he published his Collected Papers on Monetary Theory in 2013.
EDWARD NELSON [email protected]
Edward Nelson is a Senior Adviser at the Division of Monetary Affairs at the Federal Re-
serve Board in Washington, DC. As well as working previously at the Board, he held prior
positions at the Bank of England, the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, and the University
of Sydney. He has published many articles in the field of monetary economics and is au-
thor of the books The U.K.’s Rocky Road to Stability (2009, with Nicoletta Batini) and Milton Friedman and Economic
Debate in the United States, 1932-1972 (forthcoming).
Nelson was a graduate student at the business school at Carnegie Mellon University starting in 1994 and
received his Ph.D. in 1998. Allan Meltzer was a member of Nelson’s doctoral dissertation.
GERALD O’DRISCOLL [email protected]
Gerald O’Driscoll is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute. He is a widely quoted expert
on international monetary and financial issues. Previously the director of the Center for
International Trade and Economics at the Heritage Foundation, O’Driscoll was senior editor
of the annual Index of Economic Freedom, co-published by Heritage and the Wall Street
Journal. He has also served as vice president and director of policy analysis at Citigroup. Before that, he was vice
president and economic adviser at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. He also served as staff director of the
congressionally mandated Meltzer Commission on international financial institutions.
O’Driscoll has taught at the University of California, Santa Barbara; Iowa State University, and New York Uni-
versity. He is widely published in leading publications, including the Wall Street Journal. He appears frequently
on national radio and television, including Fox Business News, CNBC, and Bloomberg. He is a member of the
Mont Pelerin Society, and is president of the Association of Private Enterprise Education. O’Driscoll holds a BA
in economics from Fordham University, and an MA and PhD in economics from the University of California,
Los Angeles.
CHARLES PLOSSER [email protected]
Charles I. Plosser served as president and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia
from 2006 to his recent retirement in 2015. It was a period of extraordinary turmoil and
challenge for the world economy and all policymakers, including the Federal Reserve. He is
currently a Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and a member of
the Board of Governors of FINRA (Financial Industry Regulatory Authority).
Before coming to Philadelphia, Plosser was the John M. Olin Distinguished Professor of Economics and Public
Policy and director of the Bradley Policy Research Center at the William E. Simon Graduate School of Business
Administration at the University of Rochester, where he also served as dean from 1993 to 2003. His research
interests include macroeconomics, monetary theory and policy, econometrics, and finance. He has published
articles in the major economic journals and served as co-editor with Robert King of the Journal of Monetary
Economics for 20 years. Plosser has been a Visiting Scholar at the Bank of England and the Federal Reserve
Bank of Minneapolis. He also has served a as Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research
in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
In the last decade, Plosser has given over one hundred talks around the world to audiences comprised of ac-
ademics, the business community and the general public on topics ranging from economics and public policy
to management education and forecasting. He earned a BA degree from Vanderbilt University in 1970 and an
MBA and Ph.D. in economics from the University of Chicago in 1972 and 1976, respectively.
GEORGE SELGIN [email protected]
George Selgin is a senior fellow and director of the Center for Monetary and Financial
Alternatives at the Cato Institute and Professor Emeritus of Economics at the University of
Georgia. He is the author of The Theory of Free Banking (Rowman & Littlefield, 1988), Bank
Deregulation and Monetary Order (Routledge, 1996), Less Than Zero: The Case for a Falling
Price Level in a Growing Economy (The Institute of Economic Affairs, 1997), Good Money: Birmingham Button
Makers, the Royal Mint, and the Beginnings of Modern Coinage (University of Michigan Press, 2008), and Money:
Free and Unfree (Washington, DC: The Cato Institute). Selgin holds a B.A. in economics and zoology from Drew
University, and a Ph.D. in economics from New York University.
SCOTT SUMNER [email protected]
Scott Sumner is the Ralph G. Hawtrey Chair of Monetary Policy at the Mercatus Center at
George Mason University, where he is the director of the Program on Monetary Policy. He
is also Professor Emeritus at Bentley University and Research Fellow at the Independent
Institute. In his writing and research, Sumner specializes in monetary policy, the role of
the international gold market in the Great Depression, and the history of macroeconomic thought.
Named by Foreign Policy magazine in 2012 as one of the “top 100 global thinkers,” Sumner has published
papers in academic journals including the Journal of Political Economy, Economic Inquiry, and the Journal of
Money, Credit and Banking. He is author of the popular economics blog The Money Illusion and a contributor
to EconLog.com His work has appeared in media outlets nationwide and beyond, including The New York
Times, Wall Street Journal, BBC, CNBC, The Economist, Financial Times, Politico, The National Interest, and The
American. Sumner received his PhD and MA in economics from the University of Chicago and his BA in eco-
nomics from the University of Wisconsin.
STAFF BIOS
EMILY CHAMLEE WRIGHT [email protected]
Dr. Emily Chamlee-Wright, President of the Institute for Humane Studies, joined IHS in November
2016 with an accomplished record as an academic leader, scholar and educator. From 2012 to
2016 she served as Provost and Dean at Washington College and was previously the Elbert H.
Neese Professor of Economics and Associate Dean at Beloit College. Emily earned her PhD in economics from
George Mason University and has published six books. She is a former W.K. Kellogg National Leadership Fellow
and received the Excellence in Teaching Award from Beloit College, a Distinguished Alumna Award from George
Mason University, and the 2014 Charles G. Koch Outstanding IHS Alum Award.
JUSTIN DAVIS [email protected]
Justin Davis serves as the Academic Talent Development Program Manager at IHS, where he
hopes to facilitate the advancement of classical liberal ideas by connecting the worlds of ac-
ademia and policy. He completed his M.A. in Economics at George Mason University in 2016
and previously attained his B.S. in Business Administration from The Citadel in Charleston, South Carolina. His
research interests include monetary institutions, entrepreneurship, and institutional development. Justin also
served in the United States Army’s Corps of Engineers for three years as the squad leader of a bridge erection
team. His army tenure stationed him in Fort Knox, Kentucky and included a deployment to Afghanistan with
the 502nd Engineer Company, where he was a part of the first multi-role bridge company in the country. Justin
currently lives in Capitol Hill with his wife Sarah, an interior and graphic designer, and their dog Max.
ASHLEY DONOHUE [email protected]
Ashley Donohue is the Academic Talent Development Director at IHS. In this role, she
oversees programs that provide networking, curriculum, and academic and policy research
support for faculty interested in the study and advancement of freedom. She holds a MA in
History as well as BAs in History and Government. Ashley has interned with the Cato Institute
and the U.S. Department of State and has previously taught U.S. History at the university level. She has two
Chihuahuas named Jack and Espresso, and enjoys practicing yoga, traveling, and drinking too much coffee.
EMILY RHORICK [email protected]
Emily Rhorick is an Events Manager with IHS. She graduated from the College of Charleston
in 2015 where she majored in Business Administration and Economics. While in school Emily
worked for the Bastiat Society and volunteered for Students For Liberty where she served as
a Campus Coordinator, Southeast Regional Director, and eventually the Co-Chair of the North American Execu-
tive Board. When not working to advance liberty she enjoys learning entirely too much about superheroes and
watching Buckeye football.
HOTEL FLOOR PLAN
Kimpton Hotel Palomar Philadelphia117 S 17th St, Philadelphia, PA 19103
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a general inquiry about the Institute for Humane Studies’s Policy Research
Seminars, please contact Justin Davis at [email protected].