Asian Monetary Policy Forum

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The Asian Monetary Policy Forum (AMPF) is an annual flagship event co-organised and co-funded by the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, the National University of Singapore (NUS) Business School and the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS). Since its inception in 2014, the Forum has steadily acquired a profile as a valuable platform for central bankers, policymakers, academics, and private sector analysts to discuss the evolving monetary policy challenges confronting Asian policymakers, with the aim of raising the level of intellectual discourse.

This year, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the 7th AMPF took place in the form of recorded videos provided by the speakers. Questions and comments on the Keynote Speech and Commissioned Paper were received via an online form. The presentation videos and accompanying materials as well as the speakers’ responses to the questions and comments are available on the ABFER AMPF webpage .

 

Agenda

Welcome Remarks by Mr Edward S. Robinson

Deputy Managing Director (Economic Policy) and Chief Economist, Monetary Authority of Singapore and Member of ABFER Council
Opening Address by Dr Gita Gopinath

Economic Counsellor and Director of Research Department, International Monetary Fund

 

“The IMF Assessment of the COVID Impact on the Global Economy and Asian Region”
Keynote Speech by Dr Adam S. Posen

President, Peterson Institute for International Economics

 

“Realistic Global Coordination in the Economic Policy Response to COVID-19”
Commissioned Paper by Professor Markus K. Brunnermeier

Edwards S. Sanford Professor of Economics and Director of the Bendheim Center for Finance, Princeton University

 

“A Safe Asset Perspective for an Integrated Policy Framework”

 

Co-authors:

Dr Sebastian Merkel

Postdoctoral Research Associate, Department of Economics, Princeton University

 

Professor Yuliy Sannikov

The Jack Steele Parker Professor of Economics, Stanford University
Commissioned Paper Q&A with Professor Markus K. Brunnermeier


Moderated by Professor Bernard Yeung

Stephen Riady Distinguished Professor in Finance and Strategic Management, National University of Singapore and President of ABFER

 

With comments from:

Professor Viral V. Acharya

C.V. Starr Professor of Economics, New York University and former Deputy Governor, Reserve Bank of India

 

Professor Frank R. Smets

Director General Economics, European Central Bank and Professor of International Economics,

Centre for Economic Studies, KU Leuven
Closing Remarks by Professor Steven J. Davis

William H. Abbott Distinguished Service Professor of International Business and Economics, University of Chicago Booth School of Business, Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and Exco Member & Senior Fellow of ABFER

AMPF 2020 Speaker Bios

Edward S. Robinson

Deputy Managing Director (Economic Policy) and Chief Economist, Monetary Authority of Singapore and Member of ABFER Council

Mr Edward S. Robinson has been with the MAS since 1992 and has been involved in macroeconometric modeling and is responsible for heading a team engaged in the continuing developmental work for the suite of MAS models, which are used for policy analysis. He has also been involved in other areas of economic policy work including in various inter-agency workgroups which looked at the structural challenges facing the Singapore economy. He served on the Board of the Singapore Competition Commission between 2005 and 2007. He studied economics and applied econometrics at Monash University and the University of Melbourne. 

Gita Gopinath

Economic Counsellor and Director of Research Department, International Monetary Fund

Dr Gita Gopinath is the Economic Counsellor and Director of the Research Department at the International Monetary Fund (IMF). She is on leave of public service from Harvard University’s Economics department where she is the John Zwaanstra Professor of International Studies and of Economics. Dr Gopinath’s research, which focuses on International Finance and Macroeconomics, has been published in many top economics journals.

Dr Gopinath has authored numerous research articles on exchange rates, trade and investment, international financial crises, monetary policy, debt, and emerging market crises. She is the co-editor of the current Handbook of International Economics and was earlier the co-editor of the American Economic Review and managing editor of the Review of Economic Studies. She had also previously served as the co-director of the International Finance and Macroeconomics program at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), a visiting scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, and member of the economic advisory panel of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. From 2016-18, she was the Economic Adviser to the Chief Minister of Kerala state in India. She also served as a member of the Eminent Persons Advisory Group on G-20 Matters for India's Ministry of Finance.

Dr Gopinath is an elected fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and of the Econometric Society, and recipient of the Distinguished Alumnus Award from the University of Washington. In 2019, Foreign Policy named her one of the Top Global Thinkers, in 2014, she was named one of the top 25 economists under 45 by the IMF and in 2011 she was chosen a Young Global Leader (YGL) by the World Economic Forum. The Indian government awarded her the Pravasi Bharatiya Samman, the highest honour conferred on overseas Indians. Before joining the faculty of Harvard University in 2005, she was an assistant professor of economics at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business.

Dr Gopinath was born in India. She is a U.S. citizen and an Overseas Citizen of India. She received her Ph.D. in economics from Princeton University in 2001 after earning a B.A. from Lady Shri Ram College and M.A. degrees from Delhi School of Economics and University of Washington.

Adam S. Posen

President of Peterson Institute for International Economics

Dr Adam S. Posen is the President of the Peterson Institute for International Economics. The author, co-author, or editor of eight books, Dr Posen has contributed to research and public policy on G20 monetary and fiscal policies, European economic integration since the euro, Japan’s recovery from its Great Recession, and China-US economic relations. From 2009 to 2012, Dr Posen served as an external voting member of the Bank of England's rate-setting Monetary Policy Committee (MPC).

Dr Posen co-authored Inflation Targeting with Bernanke, Laubach, and Mishkin while at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (1994-97). He received his B.A. and Ph.D. from Harvard University.

Markus K. Brunnermeier

Edwards S. Sanford Professor of Economics and Director of the Bendheim Center for Finance, Princeton University

Professor Markus K. Brunnermeier is the Edwards S. Sanford Professor at Princeton University. He is a faculty member of the Department of Economics and director of Princeton's Bendheim Center for Finance. He is also a research associate at NBER, CEPR, and CESifo and a member of the Bellagio Group on the International Economy.

He is a Sloan Research Fellow, Fellow of the Econometric Society, Guggenheim Fellow and the recipient of the Bernácer Prize granted for outstanding contributions in the fields of macroeconomics and finance. He is/was a member of several advisory groups, including the IMF, the Federal Reserve of New York, the European Systemic Risk Board, the Bundesbank and the U.S. Congressional Budget Office. Professor Brunnermeier was awarded his Ph.D. by the London School of Economics (LSE).

His research focuses on international financial markets and the macroeconomy with special emphasis on bubbles, liquidity, financial and monetary price stability. To explore these topics, his models incorporate frictions as well as behavioral elements. He has been awarded several best paper prizes and served on the editorial boards of several leading economics and finance journals. He has tried to establish the concepts: liquidity spirals, CoVaR as systemic risk measure, the Volatility Paradox, Paradox of Prudence, ESBies, financial dominance, the redistributive monetary policy, the Reversal Rate, and Digital Currency Areas.

Bernard Yeung

Stephen Riady Distinguished Professor in Finance and Strategic Management, National University of Singapore and President of ABFER

Professor Bernard Yeung is the Stephen Riady Distinguished Professor in Finance and Strategic Management at the National University of Singapore Business School. He is also the President of the Asian Bureau of Finance and Economic Research. He was Dean of NUS Business School from June 2008 to May 2019.

Before joining NUS, he was the Abraham Krasnoff Professor in Global Business, Economics, and Management at New York University (NYU) Stern School of Business. He has also served as the Director of the NYU China House, the honorary co-chair of the Strategy Department of the Peking University Guanghua School of Management. From 1988 to 1999, he taught at the University of Michigan and at the University of Alberta from 1983 to 1988.

Professor Yeung has published widely in academic journals covering topics in Finance, Economics, and Strategy; his writing also appears in top-tier media publications such as The Financial Times, The Economist, and The Wall Street Journal.

He won the Public Administration Silver Medal (2018) in Singapore, Irwin Outstanding Educator Award (2013) from the Academy of Management and is an elected Fellow of the Academy of International Business.

Professor Yeung was a member of the Economic Strategies Committee in Singapore (2009), a member of the Social Science Research Council (SSRC) in Singapore (2016-2018) and a member of the Financial Research Council of the Monetary Authority of Singapore (2010 -2013).

Professor Yeung sits on the 3rd Advisory Board of the Antai College of Economics and Management at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, the Advisory Council of the Economics and Management School of Wuhan University and the Advisory Committee of the Institute of Economics, Academia Sinica.

Professor Yeung also serves as an independent Non-Executive Director of the Bank of China (BOC) Aviation Limited since 2016. Professor Yeung received his Bachelor of Arts in Economics and Mathematics from the University of Western Ontario and his MBA and Ph.D. degrees from the Graduate School of Business at the University of Chicago.

Steven J. Davis

William H. Abbott Distinguished Service Professor of International Business and Economics, University of Chicago Booth School of Business, Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and Exco Member and Senior Fellow of ABFER

Professor Steven J. Davis studies business dynamics, hiring practices, job loss, the effects of economic uncertainty and other topics. His research appears in the American Economic Review, Journal of Political Economy, Quarterly Journal of Economics and other leading scholarly journals. He is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, senior academic fellow with the Asian Bureau of Finance and Economic Research, advisor to the U.S. Congressional Budget Office, visiting scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, senior adviser to the Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, and past editor of the American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics. He is also an elected fellow of the Society of Labor Economists.

Professor Davis is known for his influential work using longitudinal data on firms and establishments to explore job creation and destruction dynamics and their relationship to economic performance. He is a co-creator of the Economic Policy Uncertainty Indices, and he co-organizes the Asian Monetary Policy Forum, held annually in Singapore. He has received research grants from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Ewing Marion Kauffmann Foundation, John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and other organizations, including several grants from the U.S. National Science Foundation. In 2013, he received the Addington Prize in Measurement, awarded by the Fraser Institute for Public Policy, for his research on “Measuring Economic Policy Uncertainty.”

His teaching experience includes Ph.D. courses in macroeconomics and labor economics at the University of Chicago, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the University of Maryland; MBA courses in macroeconomics, money and banking, business strategy, and financial institutions for Chicago Booth; and executive MBA courses in macroeconomics for Chicago Booth in Barcelona, London, and Singapore. Professor Davis has also taught undergraduate courses in microeconomics, econometrics, and money and banking at Brown University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

In commercial consulting activities, Professor Davis has developed new labor market indicators, advised a leading financial institution on its capital planning decisions and the macroeconomic outlook, and consulted and testified as an expert witness in many litigation matters. In antitrust matters, he has testified and consulted on market definition, dominance, competitive relationships, exclusionary practices, price discrimination and collusive conduct. In mortgage lending and consumer finance matters, he has testified and consulted on class certification, liability and damages. He has also offered testimony and analysis on damages in breach of contract, credit market discrimination, and other issues. Engagements include matters involving auto loans and leases, containerboard and corrugated products, microprocessors, mortgage loans, pharmaceuticals, software products and markets, trade shows, viatical and life settlements, and workers’ compensation insurance.

Professor Davis has written for the Atlantic, Bloomberg View, Financial Times, Forbes, Los Angeles Times, Wall Street Journal and other popular media. He has appeared on BBC, Bloomberg TV, Channel News Asia, CNBC, CNN, Fox News, NBC Network News, and the U.S. Public Broadcasting System, among others.
Please click here for details on past AMPF events.

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