The NBER Reporter 2016 Number 1: Conferences

The 25th NBER-TCER-CEPR Conference, "International Finance in the Global Markets," took place in Tokyo on December 16–17. This meeting was sponsored jointly by the Centre for Economic Policy Research in London, NBER, the Tokyo Center for Economic Research, the Center for Advanced Research in Finance, and the Center for International Research on the Japanese Economy. Organizers Kosuke Aoki and Shin-ichi Fukuda of Tokyo University, Takeo Hoshi of Stanford University and NBER, and Takashi Kano of Hitotsubashi University chose these papers to discuss:

Gianluca Benigno, London School of Economics, "Contagious Sudden Stops"

Hiro Ito, Portland State University, and Masahiro Kawai, University of Tokyo, "Trade Invoicing in the Japanese Yen and the Deutsche Mark in the 1980s and 90s: Lessons for Renminbi Internationalization"

Anya Kleymenova, University of Chicago; Andrew Rose, University of California, Berkeley, and NBER; and Tomasz Wieladek, Bank of England, "Does Government Intervention Affect Banking Globalization?" (NBER Working Paper No. 21981)

Charles Engel, University of Wisconsin-Madison and NBER, "Macroprudential Policy under High Capital Mobility: Policy Implications from an Academic Perspective" (NBER Working Paper No. 20951)

Vahagn Galstyan, Philip Lane, and Rogelio Mercado, Trinity College Dublin, and Caroline Mehigan, OECD, "The Holders and Issuers of International Portfolio Securities"

Shin-ichi Fukuda, "Strong Sterling Pound and Weak European Currencies in the Crises: Evidence from Covered Interest Parity of Secured Rates" (NBER Working Paper No. 21938)

Ethan Ilzetzki and Keyu Jin, London School of Economics, "The Puzzling Change in the International Transmis-sion of U.S. Macroeconomic Policy Shocks"

Takashi Kano and Kenji Wada, Hitotsubashi University, "The First Arrow Hitting the Currency Target: A Long-Run Risk Perspective"

Matteo Cacciatore, HEC Montréal; Fabio Ghironi, University of Washington and NBER; and Yurim Lee, University of Washington, "Financial Market Integration, Exchange Rate Policy, and the Dynamics of Business and Employment in Korea"

Summaries of these papers are at: http://www.nber.org/confer/2015/TRIO15/summary.html

On December 18–20, the NBER, India's National Council for Applied Economic Research (NCAER), and the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations (ICRIER) sponsored a meeting in Neemrana, India, that included NBER researchers and economists from Indian universities, research institutions, and government departments.

NBER participants, listed in the order of their presentations, were: Martin Feldstein of Harvard University, Anne Krueger and John Lipsky of Johns Hopkins University, Stephen P. Zeldes of Columbia University, Richard Portes of London Business School, Sebnem Kalemli-Ozcan of the University of Maryland, Hélène Rey of London Business School, Ravi Bansal of Duke University, Gita Gopinath of Harvard University, Nobuhiro Kiyotaki of Princeton University, Varadarajan V. Chari of the University of Minnesota, Esther Duflo of MIT, Ryan Kellogg of the University of Michigan, Edward L. Glaeser of Harvard University, Matthew Kahn of the University of Southern California, Justin McCrary of the University of California, Berkeley, Robert W. Staiger of Dartmouth College, Abhijit Banerjee of MIT, and Karthik Muralidharan of the University of California, San Diego.

The topics discussed included: India and the world economy, global economic governance, international finance, monetary policy and exchange rate management issues, environmental regulation and climate change, urban economics and sustainability, international trade, manufacturing investment climate and jobs, and education and skill development.

An NBER Conference on the "Economics of Digitization" took place in Palo Alto on March 4. Research Associates Shane Greenstein of Northwestern University, Josh Lerner of Harvard University, and Scott Stern of MIT organized the program. These researchers’ papers were presented and discussed:

Garrett A. Johnson, University of Rochester; Randall A. Lewis, Netflix; and Elmar I. Nubbemeyer, Google, "Ghost Ads: Improving the Economics of Measuring Ad Effectiveness"

Timothy F. Bresnahan, Stanford University and NBER, and Xing Li and Pai-Ling Yin, Stanford University, "Paying Incumbents and Customers to Enter an Industry: Buying Downloads"

Alexander White, Tsinghua University, and Glen Weyl, Microsoft Research New England, "Insulated Platform Competition"

Leonard Nakamura, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, and Rachel Soloveichik, Bureau of Economic Analysis, "Capturing the Productivity Impact of the 'Free' Apps and Other Online Media"

Bo Cowgill, Columbia University, "Human Bias and Machine Learning: Evidence from Resume Screening"

Mitchell Hoffman, University of Toronto; Lisa B. Kahn, Yale University and NBER; and Danielle Li, Harvard University, "Discretion in Hiring" (NBER Working Paper No. 21709)

Jean-François Houde and Katja Seim, University of Pennsylvania and NBER, and Peter W. Newberry, Pennsylvania State University, "Sales Tax, E-commerce, and Amazon's Fulfillment Center Network"

Sree Ramaswamy, McKinsey Global Institute, "Digital America: A Tale of the Haves and Have-Mores"

Summaries of these papers are at: http://www.nber.org/confer/2016/EoDs16/summary.html