Manchester Economics Seminars (MES)
The aim of MES is to provide a forum for distinguished scholars to talk about their research to a general economics, rather than a specialist, audience.
2010-2011
November 24, 2010
Venue: G7 Humanities, Bridegford Street
Time: 2.30pm - 4pm
Dr Diane Coyle, Enlightenment Economics
Title: "Time horizons in economic policy"
Abstract
How much should policymakers take account of the welfare of future generations? And if they should, how can they do so given existing political and economic institutions? Questions about appropriate time frames have come to the fore as the result of a number of developments, from the evidence of climate change to the financial crisis and resulting debt increases. But in addition to well-known problems such as time inconsistency, longer term decision horizons are hampered by the inadequacies of conventional economic measurement and by the institutional framework within which the economy operates.
The issues discussed in the talk are further explored in Diane's new book "The Economics of Enough: How to run the economy as if the future matters" to be published in February 2011.
Bio
Diane Coyle has had a wide ranging career as an economist. She is Managing Director of Enlightenment Economics, an economic consultancy to large corporate clients and international organisations, specialising in new technologies and globalisation. Her other current appointments include being a member of the Executive Committee of the Centre for Economic Policy, a member of the BBC Trust, and, since 2005, as a visiting Professor at the Institute for Political and Economic Governance here at Manchester. In the past, she has served as an adviser to the UK Treasury and also as a member of the UK Competition Competition. She has also worked in journalism, serving as European Editor for “Investors Chronicle” and the economics editor of “The Independent” newspaper. Diane has written a number of books on economics, including “The Soulful Science: what economists do and why it matters” published in 2007. She was awarded the OBE for her services to economics in 2009.
December 8, 2010
Venue: G7 Humanities, Bridegford Street
Time: 2.30pm - 4pm
Professor Alan Manning, LSE
Title: The Success and Failures of Multiculturalism in Britain
Abstract
It has become common to argue that multiculturalism has failed, that some groups in society do not hold 'appropriate' values. However, we have little evidence on the topic. This paper presents evidence on the values held in Britain. It views values as norms about how one trades-off one's own utility against that of others - and argue that we can draw on the large literature on pro-social behavior for hypotheses on how people will choose values. Using data from the UK's Citizenship Survey we show how self-interest, fairness, reciprocity and identity, can explain many of the patterns that we observe in the data across a wide variety of values. We argue that multiculturalism has been successful for immigrant groups but has failed to carry a segment of the white population with it who now feel alienated and neglected.
Bio
Alan Manning is currently the Director of the Labour Markets Programme in the Centre for Economic Performance at the LSE. He is an editor of Journal of Labour Economics and on the editorial boards of Labour Economics and the Applied Economics Journal. His past editorial service includes being a co-editor of both the Review of Economic Studies and also Economica. He has published widely on various aspects of labour economics, including a book entitled “Monopsony in Motion: Imperfect Competition in Labor Markets” published by Princeton Press in 2003. From 2004-2007, he served as a member of the Nurses and Other Health Professionals Pay Review Board.
March 2, 2011
Venue: G7 Humanities, Bridegford Street
Time: 2.30pm - 4pm
Professor Marcus Miller, Warwick University
Title: "Riding for a fall? Concentrated banking and tail risk".
Abstract
The traditional theory of commercial banking explains maturity transformation and liquidity provision under assumptions of free entry, no asymmetric information and no excess profits. These assumptions seem entirely at odds with evidence from banking in the UK, as witness the Issues Paper issued by the Independent Commission on Banking. So we extend the traditional theory to allow for market concentration (monopoly banking) and principle-agent problems in the form of excess risk taking, via the use of derivatives to boost measured profits. In the context of the forthcoming Vickers’s report, we conclude with a brief discussion of possible regulatory changes to limit concentration and gambling.
Bio
Marcus Miller is currently Professor of Economics at Warwick University; he is also a Research Fellow at CEPR in London, a visiting Fellow at IIE in Washington DC, and a visiting lecturer at ICEF in Moscow. His past academic appointments include holding a professorship here at Manchester in the late 1970’s. Outside academia, his career has included working as an Economist at the Bank of England, acting as an advisor to the Treasury Committee of the House of Commons, and working as a consultant at the OECD, IMF, World Bank, European Central Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank. He has published widely in macroeconomics and international macroeconomics. His editorial work includes serving as a contributing editor to Exchange Rate Targets and Currency Bands (with Paul Krugman) and The Asian Financial Crisis (with P. Agenor et al.) both published by Cambridge University Press in the 1990’s.
March 15, 2011
Seminar only open to staff and PhD students in Economics.
Venue: Arthur Lewis Building 2.016-2.017
Time: 4.15-5.45pm
Professor Edward Prescott, The Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis and Arizona State University
Title: Efficiently Financing Retirement
Abstract
A problem facing the United States and many other countries is how to finance retirement consumption as the number of workers per retiree falls. The problem with savings for retirement systems is that there is a shortage of good savings opportunities given government’s highly limited ability to honor the debt it issues and the of nature the U.S. tax system. We find that eliminating capital income taxes will nearly double saving opportunities and make a savings for retirement system feasible with only modest amount of government debt. The switch from a system close to the current U.S. retirement system, which relies heavily on taxing workers and making lump-sum transfers to retirees, to one without capital income taxes will increase the welfare of all birth-year cohorts alive today and the welfare of the yet unborn cohorts. The equilibrium paths for the current and alternative policies are computed. The alternative entails transfers to current retirees and older workers, without which the alternative retirement system would not be Pareto superior.
Bio
Edward Prescott is currently the Arizona State University Regents’ Professor and holder of the W.P. Carey chair in economics at Arizona State University; he is also an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. He has published widely in the areas of macroeconomics, general equilibrium theory, business cycles, and monetary policy. His many contributions to economics include the eponymous Hodrick-Prescott filter used routinely these days by practitioners to smooth economic time series. In 2004, he received the Nobel Prize in Economics, sharing the award with Finn Kydland, "for their contributions to dynamic macroeconomics: the time consistency of economic policy and the driving forces behind business cycles". Visiting Manchester as a Hallsworth Visiting Professor
March 16, 2011
Venue: G7 Humanities, Bridegford Street
Time: 2.30pm - 4pm
Professor Sir David Hendry, Oxford University
Title: Empirical Model Discovery and Theory Evaluation
Abstract
Economies are so high dimensional and non-constant that many features of models cannot be derived by prior reasoning, intrinsically involving empirical discovery and requiring theory evaluation. Despite important differences, discovery and evaluation in economics are similar to those of science. Fitting a pre-specified equation limits discovery, but automatic methods can formulate much more general models with many variables, long lag lengths and non-linearities, allowing for outliers, data contamination, and parameter shifts; select congruent parsimonious-encompassing models even when there are more candidate variables than observations, while embedding the theory; then rigorously evaluate selected models to ascertain their viability. Interdependence makes it essential to tackle all the complications jointly, and automatic selection can do so on a scale well beyond the powers of humans alone. Live computer illustrations using Autometrics show the remarkable power and feasibility of this exciting approach.
Bio
Sir David Hendry is Professor of Economics at Oxford University and a Professorial fellow of Nuffield College, Oxford. His many professional awards include being made a Fellow of the British Academy, a Fellow of the Econometric Society, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and an honorary foreign member of both the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Economics Association.
Sir David has published widely in econometrics and is recognized for his many seminal contributions in the modelling of econometric time series. He was knighted for services to social science in 2009.
March 30, 2011
Venue: G7 Humanities, Bridegford Street
Time: 2.30pm - 4pm
Dr Paul Fisher, Bank of England
Title: Recent developments in the Sterling Monetary Framework | PPT slides
Bio
Paul Fisher is the Bank of England’s Executive Director for Markets and so, with his directorate, is responsible for all Bank operations in financial markets and their balance sheet consequences. He is also a member of the Monetary Policy Committee at the Bank. His previous appointments at the Bank include serving as head of the Foreign Exchange Division and Head of the Conjunctional Assessment and Projections Division. Prior to joining the Bank, Paul worked at the Macro-Model Building Bureau at Warwick University, and he has written extensively on economic models of the UK economy.
May 4, 2011
Venue: Humanities Bridegford G7
Time: 2.30pm - 4pm
Professor Robin Lumsdaine, American University
Title: How Survey Design Affects Inference Regarding Perceptions and Economic Behavior
Abstract
Empirical research on economic decision-making and behavior often relies on information gathered through surveys. Yet because of the importance of such research to policy debates, questions often arise as to the accuracy and validity of survey data. Such concerns are especially apparent when the survey data involve an individual’s subjective response; for example, earlier research that found a high degree of variation in these responses and showed that failure to control for optimism could result in overstated effects of economic variables on some outcomes. A number of new techniques for improving the quality of survey responses have emerged as a result of research that has identified biases, in the form of adjustments either to the survey design so as to elicit an improved response or to the collected data as a means of overcoming the inherent biases. These adjustments have been shown to be especially important in leading to improved ability to predict economic outcomes of interest in subsamples where the respondents may not fully have understood the question. Some of these methods will be presented, including results from a new paper that considers the influence of survey design on the responses individuals give to questions asking them to assess their health using a five-point scale.
Bio
Robin Lumsdaine is the Crown Prince of Bahrain Professor of International Finance in the Kogod School of Business at American University in Washington, DC. She is also a Senior Fellow in International Finance at the Centre for Financial Stability and a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. She has considerable experience as an economist outside academia, having worked as an Associate Director in the Division of Banking Supervision and Regulation and Head of the Quantitative Risk Management Group at the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System in the US and also serving as a Director in the Global Markets Research division of Deutsche Bank where she served as the Global Inflation-Linked Bond Strategist. She has published widely in leading journals in finance, economics and econometrics.