10th ASIAN MONETARY POLICY FORUM

 
 

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The 10th Asian Monetary Policy Forum (AMPF) will be held at the Shangri-La Singapore on 26 May 2023. The forum brings together an exclusive group of high-level central bankers, academics and private sector analysts to share perspectives on pressing monetary policy issues in Asia. AMPF is organized under the auspices of ABFER, with support from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, NUS Business School and Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS). The AMPF will commence on 25 May 2023 with a joint dinner with ABFER.

Agenda

25
MAY
2023
Thursday
 
Venue: Jurong Ballroom
Shangri-La Singapore, 22 Orange Grove Road, Singapore 258350

6:00 pm
6:30 pm – 6:55 pm
Welcome Remarks by Mr Edward ROBINSON
Deputy Managing Director (Economic Policy) and Chief Economist, Monetary Authority of Singapore and Member of ABFER Council

and Professor Bernard YEUNG
Stephen Riady Distinguished Professor in Finance and Strategic Management, NUS Business School, National University of Singapore and President of ABFER
6:55 pm – 7:25 pm
Keynote Speech by Professor Amir SUFI
Bruce Lindsay Distinguished Service Professor of Economics and Public Policy, Booth School of Business, University of Chicago

“Housing, Household Debt, and the Business Cycle: An Application to China and Korea”
7:25 pm – 8:00 pm
Moderated Discussion, Q&A

Chair: Professor Bernard YEUNG
8:00 pm – 9:00 pm
9:00 pm


  
26
MAY
2023
Friday
 
Venue: Jurong Ballroom
Shangri-La Singapore, 22 Orange Grove Road, Singapore 258350

8:30 am
9:10 am – 9:40 am
Opening Remarks by Mr Ravi MENON
Managing Director, Monetary Authority of Singapore

"Everything, Everywhere, All at Once: Securing Monetary and Financial Stability in an Interconnected World"
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  • 9:40 am – 10:20 am
    Commissioned Paper by Professor Maurice OBSTFELD
    Class of 1958 Professor of Economics, University of California, Berkeley

    "Natural and Neutral Real Interest Rates: Past and Future"
    10:20 am – 10:40 am
    10:40 am – 12:20 pm
    Discussion of Commissioned Paper

    Discussants:
    Professor Giancarlo CORSETTI
    Professor of the Janeway Institute, Cambridge University and Pierre Werner Chair and Professor of Economics, European University Institute

    Professor Şebnem KALEMLI-ÖZCAN
    Neil Moskowitz Professor of Economics and Finance, University of Maryland, College Park

    Chair:
    Professor Bernard YEUNG
    Stephen Riady Distinguished Professor in Finance and Strategic Management, NUS Business School, National University of Singapore and President of ABFER
    12:30 pm – 1:30 pm
    1:30 pm – 2:45 pm
    Luncheon Address by Professor Michael SPENCE
    Recipient of 2001 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences; The Philip H. Knight Professor and Dean, Emeritus, Stanford Graduate School of Business, Stanford University

    "The Global Economy in the Next Generation: The Growth Report at 15”

    Dialogue, Q&A

    Facilitated and Chaired by:
    Professor Steven J. DAVIS
    William H. Abbott Distinguished Service Professor of International Business and Economics, University of Chicago Booth School of Business and Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Advisor - Economic Policy Group, Monetary Authority of Singapore and EXCO Member of ABFER

    Special Guest:
    Mr GOH Chok Tong
    Emeritus Senior Minister
    2:45 pm – 3:00 pm
    3:00 pm – 4:30 pm
    Policy Note on “Inflation Expectations and Implications for Monetary Policy”

    Assoc Professor Ethan ILZETZKI
    Associate Professor, Department of Economics, London School of Economics and Political Science

    "Fiscal Events and Anchored Inflation Expectations"

    Assoc Professor Michael WEBER
    Associate Professor of Finance, Booth School of Business, University of Chicago

    "Subjective Inflation Expectations and Monetary Policy Communication: The Role of Medium, Messenger, and Message"

    Chair:
    Professor Sumit AGARWAL
    Low Tuck Kwong Distinguished Professor, HOD Real Estate, Managing Director, Sustainable and Green Finance Institute, National University of Singapore and Senior Fellow of ABFER
    4:30 pm
    4:45 pm


    Programme is subjected to change. Updated 31 May 2023.

    Chronological Order of Speakers

    • Mr Edward S. Robinson

      Mr Edward S. Robinson

       

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

      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 work groups 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.

    • Professor Bernard YEUNG

      Professor Bernard YEUNG

       

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

      Bernard Yeung is 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, 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 PhD degrees from the Graduate School of Business at the University of Chicago.

    • Professor Amir SUFI

      Professor Amir SUFI

       

      Bruce Lindsay Distinguished Service Professor of Economics and Public Policy, Booth School of Business, University of Chicago

      Amir Sufi is the Bruce Lindsay Professor of Economics and Public Policy at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. He is also a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. He serves as an associate editor for the American Economic Review, the Journal of Finance, and the Quarterly Journal of Economics. Professor Sufi was awarded the 2017 Fischer Black Prize by the American Finance Association, given biennially to the top financial economics scholar under the age of 40. Professor Sufi's research focuses on finance and macroeconomics. His research on household debt and the economy forms the basis of his book co-authored with Atif Mian: House of Debt: How They (and You) Caused the Great Recession and How We Can Prevent It from Happening Again, which was published by the University of Chicago Press in 2014. He earned a PhD in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he was awarded the Solow Endowment Prize for Graduate Student Excellence in Teaching and Research. He joined the Chicago Booth faculty in 2005.

    • Mr Ravi MENON

      Mr Ravi MENON

       

      Managing Director, Monetary Authority of Singapore

      Ravi Menon began his career at MAS in 1987. During his 16 years in MAS, he was involved in monetary policy; econometric forecasting; organisational development; banking regulation and liberalisation; and integrated supervision of complex financial institutions. Mr Menon spent a year at the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, as a member of the secretariat to the Financial Stability Forum. A recipient of the Singapore Government's Meritorious Service Medal and Public Administration (Gold) Medal, Mr Menon has served on a variety of boards in the public, private, and people sectors in Singapore. On the international front, Mr Menon chairs the Network of Central Banks and Supervisors for Greening the Financial System. He is also a member of the Financial Stability Board (FSB) Steering Committee. Mr Menon holds a Master's in Public Administration from Harvard University and a Bachelor of Social Science (Honours) in Economics from the National University of Singapore.

    • Professor Maurice OBSTFELD

      Professor Maurice OBSTFELD

       

      Class of 1958 Professor of Economics, University of California, Berkeley

      Maurice Obstfeld is the Class of 1958 Professor of Economics at the University of California, Berkeley, and a senior nonresident fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. From 2015 through 2018, he served as Economic Counsellor and Director of Research at the International Monetary Fund. During 2014 and 2015, he was a Member of President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers. He co-authored International Economics (with Paul Krugman and Marc Melitz), Foundations of International Macroeconomics (with Kenneth Rogoff), and Global Capital Markets (with Alan M. Taylor). Prior to joining the economics department at Berkeley, he held faculty appointments at Columbia and the University of Pennsylvania, as well as a visiting appointment at Harvard. He is a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research and a distinguished fellow of the Centre for Economic Policy Research.

    • Professor Giancarlo CORSETTI

      Professor Giancarlo CORSETTI

       

      Pierre Werner Chair at the Robert Schumann Centre and Professor of Economics, European University Institute

      Giancarlo Corsetti is Pierre Werner Chair at the Robert Schumann Centre and Professor of Economics at the European University Institute, previously Professor of Macroeconomics, University of Cambridge, where he was director of the Keynes Fund and of the Cambridge-INET Institute. A Fellow of the British Academy, he is a consultant at the European Central Bank and the Bank of England and a regular visiting professor in central banks and international institutions. He is research fellow of the Centre for Economic Policy Research, where he served as co-director of the International Macroeconomic Programme. He is a member the European Economic Association, where he served as Program Chairman of the 2007 Annual Congress in Budapest. Since 2018, he is a member the United Nations High-level Advisory Board on Economic and Social Affairs. His contributions range from models of the international economy and open macro models; to empirical and theoretical work on currency, financial and sovereign crises; monetary and fiscal policy; and international finance.

    • Professor Sebnem KALEMLI-OZCAN

      Professor Sebnem KALEMLI-OZCAN

       

      Neil Moskowitz Endowed Professor of Economics at University of Maryland, College Park

      Şebnem Kalemli-Özcan 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). Currently, she is the co-editor of American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics and serves at the editorial board of American Economic Review. She also serves at the economic advisory panels of the NY Federal Reserve and the Bank of International Settlements. She was the Duisenberg Fellow at the European Central Bank in 2008 and held a position as Lead Economist/Adviser for the Middle East and North Africa Region at the World Bank during 2010-2011. She was the Houblon-Norman Fellow of Bank of England and CFR International Affairs Fellow during 2017-2018. She served as the Senior Policy Advisor and Assistant Director at the International Monetary Fund during 2019-2020. She is the first Turkish social scientist who has received the Marie Curie IRG prize in 2008 for her research on European financial integration. Her research focuses on capital flows, macroeconomic fluctuations, and financial frictions, using big data on global firms and banks. Currently, she works on the impact of COVID pandemic on supply chain bottlenecks, business failures, inflation, and fragmentation.

    • Professor Michael SPENCE

      Professor Michael SPENCE

       

      Recipient of 2001 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences; The Philip H. Knight Professor and Dean, Emeritus, Stanford Graduate School of Business, Stanford University

      Michael Spence is the Philip H. Knight Professor Emeritus of Management in the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University, a Senior Fellow of the Hoover Institution at Stanford and a Distinguished Visiting Fellow of the Council on Foreign Relations. He is an Adjunct Professor at Bocconi University in Milan, and an Honorary Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford University.

      In 2001, he received the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences for his work in the field of information economics.

      He is a Senior Advisor to Jasper Ridge Partners and a Senior Advisor to General Atlantic Partners, and chairs GA’s Global Growth Institute. He chairs the Advisory Board of the Asia Global Institute, and was the Chairman of The Independent Commission on Growth and Development (2006-2010). He is a member of the Advisory Council of the Luohan Academy in Hangzhou. He served as Dean of the Stanford Business School from 1990 to 1999 and Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University from 1984 to 1990.

      He was awarded the John Kenneth Galbraith Prize for excellence in teaching and the John Bates Clark Medal for a "significant contribution to economic thought and knowledge." The Clark Medal was awarded, at that time, every two years to an Economist under the age of 40.

    • Professor Steven J. DAVIS

      Professor Steven J. DAVIS

       

      William H. Abbott Distinguished Service Professor of International Business and Economics, University of Chicago Booth School of Business and Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Advisor - Economic Policy Group, Monetary Authority of Singapore and EXCO Member of ABFER

      Steven J. Davis studies working arrangements, business dynamics, economic fluctuations, the effects of policy 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 research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, IZA research fellow, senior academic fellow with the Asian Bureau of Finance and Economics Research, adviser 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, past editor of the American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, and an elected fellow of the Society of Labor Economists.

      He is a co-creator of the Economic Policy Uncertainty Indices, the Survey of Business Uncertainty, the U.S. Survey of Working Arrangements and Attitudes, the Global Survey of Working Arrangements, the Work-from-Home Map project, and the Stock Market Jumps project. He cofounded and 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, Templeton Foundation, John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, U.S. National Science Foundation, and other organizations. He received the Addington Prize in Measurement in 2013 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, Hong Kong, London, and Singapore. Davis has also taught undergraduate courses in microeconomics, econometrics, and money and banking at Brown University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

      Davis has served as an expert in many litigation matters. In the antitrust area, he has testified and consulted on market definition, dominance, competitive relationships, exclusionary practices, price discrimination, and collusive conduct. In mortgage lending and consumer finance, he has testified and consulted on class certification, liability, and damages. He has also offered testimony and analysis of damages in breach of contract and credit market discrimination. Past engagements include matters pertaining to auto loans and leases, containerboard and corrugated products, microprocessors, mortgage loans, pharmaceuticals, software products and markets, specialty grocery products, trade shows, viatical and life settlements, and workers’ compensation insurance. Outside of litigation matters, he has consulted on the macroeconomic outlook, capital planning in a large financial institution, the creation of labor market measures, and the use of text-based methods to quantify tax reform likelihoods.

      Davis has written for the Atlantic, Financial Times, Forbes, Harvard Business Review, Los Angeles Times, Time, Wall Street Journal and other media. He has appeared on BBC, Bloomberg TV, CGTN, Channel News Asia, CNBC, CNN, Fox News, NBC Network News, Sinclair Broadcast Group, and the U.S. Public Broadcasting System, among others.

    • Assoc Professor Ethan ILZETZKI

      Assoc Professor Ethan ILZETZKI

       

      Associate Professor, Department of Economics, London School of Economics and Political Science

      Ethan Ilzetzki is an Associate Professor in Economics at the London School of Economics. He is a member of the Centre for Macroeconomics and a Fellow of the Centre for Economic Policy Research. His research focuses on macroeconomics, international economics, and fiscal policy. Ethan heads the Centre for Macroeconomics panel of experts on the UK and EU economies. He serves on the editorial boards of the IMF Economic Review and the Journal of Monetary Economics. He holds a B.Sc. in Electrical Engineering from the Technion: Israel Institute of Technology, an M.A. in International Affairs from Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies, and a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Maryland. He has held policy and research positions at the International Monetary Fund and the U.S. Department of Treasury and visiting positions at the Federal Reserve Board, the World Bank, and the Bank of England.

    • Assoc Professor Michael WEBER

      Assoc Professor Michael WEBER

       

      Associate Professor of Finance, Booth School of Business, University of Chicago

      Michael Weber joined Chicago Booth in 2014 as an Assistant Professor of Finance and was promoted to Associate Professor in 2018. He is also a faculty research fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research in the Monetary Economics and Asset Pricing groups, Research Affiliate in the Monetary Economics and Fluctuations programme of CEPR, a member of the Macro Finance Society, a Research Professor at Ifo Institute and a research affiliate at the CESifo Research Network. He is also academic consultant for the European Central Bank, the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, and several other central banks. His research interests include expectations formation, asset pricing, macroeconomics, international finance, and household finance. His work on downside risk in currency markets and other asset classes earned the 2013 AQR Insight Award. He has published in leading economics and finance journals such as the American Economic Review, the Review of Economic Studies, the Journal of Political Economy, the Review of Financial Studies and the Journal of Financial Economics. Repec listed him as the best published researcher with less than 10 years after the first publication throughout 2022.

    • Professor Sumit AGARWAL

      Professor Sumit AGARWAL

       

      Low Tuck Kwong Distinguished Professor, HOD Real Estate, Managing Director, Sustainable and Green Finance Institute, National University of Singapore and Senior Fellow of ABFER

      Sumit Agarwal is the Low Tuck Kwong Professor at the School of Business and Professor in the departments of Economics, Finance and Real Estate at the National University of Singapore. Previously, he held positions as a Professor of Finance at Georgetown University, senior financial economist in the research department at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago and a senior vice president and credit risk management executive in the Small Business Risk Solutions Group of Bank of America.

      Dr. Agarwal's research interests include issues relating to financial institutions, household finance, behavioral finance, international finance, real estate markets, urban economics and capital markets. He has published over eighty research articles in journals like the American Economic Review, Quarterly Journal of Economics, Journal of Political Economy, Journal of Finance, Journal of Financial Economics, Review of Financial Studies, Management Science, Journal of Financial Intermediation, Journal of Money, Credit, and Banking among others. Additionally, he has co-written a book titled Kiasunomics and co-edited a collected volume on Household Credit Usage: Personal Debt and Mortgages.

      He is the co-editor of Real Estate Economics and an association editor at Management Science and Journal of Financial Services Research. He writes regular op-ed’s in the Straits Times and Forbes and is featured on various media outlets like the BBC, CNBC, and Fox on issues relating to finance, banking, and real estate markets. Sumit’s research is widely cited in leading newspapers and magazines like the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Economist, and the U.S Presidents Report to Congress. He also runs a blog on household financial decision making called Smart Finance.

      Dr. Agarwal has won various prestigious awards like the Distinguished Alumni Achievement Award at the University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee, Outstanding Researcher Award at the National University of Singapore, the Paul Samuelson TIAA-CREF certificate of excellence, the Terker Family Prizes in Investment Research Award from the Wharton School of Business, the Glucksman Institute Research Award from New York University and grants from the Russell Sage Foundation and the NBER/Sloan Foundation.

      Dr. Agarwal has been invited to present his research at many renowned universities such Columbia University, Northwestern University, University of California Berkeley, Johns Hopkins, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Maryland, as well as institutions and central banks namely the IMF, World Bank, European Central Bank, European Union, Dutch Central Bank, Riksbank, OCC, and the Federal Reserve Banks of Chicago, San Francisco, Atlanta, Boston, New York, and Philadelphia. He has consulted with the World Bank, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, OCC, the Reserve Bank of India and Bank of America.

      He has also served as an adjunct professor and a scholar at the finance department at George Washington University, DePaul University, the Indian School of Business, HKUST, BIS and the World Bank. Agarwal received a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

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