Economics and finance

Special screening of State of Emergency, a new documentary play inspired by Michigan's controversial Emergency Manager Law. On Saturday, February 23 at 7:00 pm, we will live-stream the performance (taking place in Flint) in Rackham's 4th floor amphitheatre.

Presenting the findings on the system of funding of local government. About the Michigan Public Policy Survey The Michigan Public Policy Survey (MPPS) is a program of state-wide surveys of local government leaders in Michigan. The MPPS is designed to fill an important information gap in the policymaking process.

Free and open to the public: Reception to follow. The Center for Healthcare Research & Transformation (CHRT) will bring together key Massachusetts and Michigan business leaders along with University of Michigan experts to explore lessons from Massachusetts' experience with health reform and what may be ahead as the Affordable Care Act is implemented in Michigan. Join us for an interactive panel discussion including: Thomas Buchmueller

A conversation with Edwin (Ted) Truman, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute; the Ford School's Marina v.N. Whitman, a professor of public policy; and Susan M. Collins, Joan and Sanford Weill Dean of Public Policy.

Presenters: Margaret Dewar, Professor, Urban and Regional Planning, University of Michigan June Manning Thomas, Centennial Professor, Urban and Regional Planning, University of Michigan Commentator: John Gallagher, Author, Writer, Detroit Free Press About the panel: Many American cities, especially those in the Northeast and Midwest, have lost jobs and population for decades.

Free and open to the public. Preceded by a reception in the Great Hall at the Ford School at 5:00 PM. Join the conversation on Twitter: #FordPolicyUnion. About the event This Ford Policy Union event will feature a debate on the policy of free trade, which is the elimination of import tariffs and other artificial barriers to international trade. Professor Alan Deardorff, a noted international trade scholar, will argue that the U.S.

Free and open to the public Join the conversation on Twitter: #fordschoolbernanke About the event: Please join us as Chairman Bernanke visits the University of Michigan for a conversation with Ford School Dean Susan M. Collins on monetary policy, recovery from the global financial crisis, and long-term challenges facing the U.S.

Free and Open to the Public Panelists: Christopher Borick, Director, Muhlenberg College Institute of Public Opinion Jacquelyn Pless, Energy Policy Associate, National Conference of State Legislatures Erich Schwartzel, Editor of Pipeline, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Moderator: Barry Rabe, Director, Center for Local, State and Urban Policy (CLOSUP) See the presentations from the event: by Christopher Borick  

Policy Talks @ the Ford School Free and open to the public. Reception to follow. Join the conversation on Twitter: #policytalks About the lecture If we maintain our current spending and tax policies, the federal budget deficit will be so large that debt will continue to rise much faster than GDP. That cannot go on indefinitely. We will need at least to stabilize debt as a share of GDP, and we may decide to push debt back down toward the share of GDP it represented during the past several decades.

From the Oakland County City Managers Association monthly meeting – findings on the EVIP program.

CIERS: Causal inference in Education research seminar CIERS Mission: The objective of the Causal Inference in Education Research Seminar (CIERS) is to engage students and faculty from across the university in conversations around education research using various research methodies. This seminar provides a space for doctoral students and faculty from the School of Education, Ford School of Public Policy, and the Departments of Economics, Sociology, Statistics, and Political Science to discuss current research and receive feedback on works-in-progress.

From the Michigan Local Government Management Association (MLGMA) Winter Institute – findings on the Economic Vitality Incentive Project (EVIP).

From the South Oakland County Mayor's Association – Oakland County results from the Spring 2011 MPPS fiscal data and Fall 2011 data on the EVIP program findings.

Michigan Capital Area Chapter, American Society for Public Administration (ASPA) Conference – Spring 2011 MPPS fiscal data findings

Panelists: Kurt Metzger Director, Data Driven Detroit 'Demographic Changes and Opportunities in Detroit' Kami Pothukuchi Associate Professor, Wayne State University 'Food Systems in Detroit' Michael Tenbusch Vice President for Education Preparedness, United Way for Southeastern Michigan 'Education Reform in Detroit' Moderator: Reynolds 'Ren' Farley Professor Emeritus of Sociology, College of Literature, Science, and the Arts University of Michigan Institute for Social Research

Presenter: Katharina Ley, Financial and Operations Engineering CIERS Mission:The objective of the Causal Inference in Education Research Seminar (CIERS) is to engage students and faculty from across the university in conversations around education research using quantitative research methods.This seminar provides a space for doctoral students and faculty from the School of Education, Ford School of Public Policy, and the Departments of Economics, Sociology, Statistics, and Political Science to discuss current research and receive feedback on works-in-progress.

Abstract This event begins with a guided bus tour of the City of Detroit, to provide a first hand look at areas of the city that demonstrate the wide range of neighborhood experiences, from those in stress to those already undergoing extensive revitalization. After the tour, the panel discussion will focus on the Detroit Works Project, and the role of community groups in efforts to revitalize the city.

Presenter: Sara Goldrick-Rab, Assistant Professor of Education, University of Wisconsin-Madison CIERS Mission:The objective of the Causal Inference in Education Research Seminar (CIERS) is to engage students and faculty from across the university in conversations around education research using quantitative research methods.This seminar provides a space for doctoral students and faculty from the School of Education, Ford School of Public Policy, and the Departments of Economics, Sociology, Statistics, and Political Science to discuss current research and receive feedback on works-in-progres

Abstract: This paper shows that the mortgage credit boom has significantly affected urban and school racial segregation from 1995 to 2007. We develop a model of urban segregation with credit constraints that shows that easier credit can either increase or decrease segregation, depending on the race of the marginal consumer who benefits from the expansion of credit. We then use school demographics from 1995 to 2007, matched to a national comprehensive dataset of mortgage originations, to document the link between credit supply and schools' racial demographics.

11th Annual Lent Upson Lecture at Wayne State University – Spring 2010 MPPS fiscal data findings The Michigan Public Policy Survey (MPPS) is a program of state-wide surveys of local government leaders in Michigan. The MPPS is designed to fill an important information gap in the policymaking process. While there are ongoing surveys of the business community and of the citizens of Michigan, before the MPPS there were no ongoing surveys of local government officials that were representative of all general purpose local governments in the state.

Michigan Municipal League (MML) Annual Convention – Spring 2009 MPPS fiscal data findings The Michigan Public Policy Survey (MPPS) is a program of state-wide surveys of local government leaders in Michigan. The MPPS is designed to fill an important information gap in the policymaking process. While there are ongoing surveys of the business community and of the citizens of Michigan, before the MPPS there were no ongoing surveys of local government officials that were representative of all general purpose local governments in the state.

Michael Barr, University of Michigan Law School.

Kemal Dervis, Administrator, United Nations Development Programme. 2006 Citigroup Lecture. Co-sponsored with the International Policy Center and the Turkish Studies Colloquium. Kemal Dervis will give the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy's Citigroup Lecture on October 25, 2006. Kemal Dervis was Turkey's Minister for Economic Affairs and the Treasury and is now the head of the United Nations Development Programme, the UN's global development network.

'Perspectives on the WTO Doha Development Agenda Multilateral Trade Negotiations,' conference was hosted by the International Policy Center of the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, together with the Department of Economics and the Law School. The purpose of the conference was to provide a forum to discuss the most important issues to be addressed during the December 2005 Ministerial Meeting of the WTO in Hong Kong. Robert M.

A presentation by Daniel Hubbard, PhD student in Economics

Professor Shujiro URATA examines Japan’s current economic situation and identifies the problems, then he discusses the importance of adopting an activist international economic policy with a focus on its relationship with the United States, in order to overcome the problems and achieve sustained economic growth.  

David Atkin, MIT on A New Engel on the Gains from Trade.  Measuring the gains from trade and their distribution is challenging. Recent empirical contributions have addressed this challenge by drawing on rich and newly available sources of microdata to measure changes in household nominal incomes and price indices. While such data have become available for some components of household welfare, and for some locations and periods, they are typically not available for the entire consumption basket. In this paper, we propose and implement an alternative approach that uses rich, but widely available, expenditure survey microdata to estimate theory-consistent changes in income-group specific price indices and welfare. Our approach builds on existing work that uses linear Engel curves and changes in expenditure on income-elastic goods to infer unobserved real incomes. A major shortcoming of this approach is that while based on non-homothetic preferences, the price indices it recovers are homothetic and hence are neither theory consistent nor suitable for distributional analysis when relative prices are changing. To make progress, we show that we can recover changes in income-specific price indices and welfare from horizontal shifts in Engel curves if preferences are quasi-separable (Gorman, 1970; 1976) and we focus on what we term “relative Engel curves”. Our approach is flexible enough to allow for the highly non-linear Engel curves we document in the data, and for non-parametric estimation at each point of the income distribution. We first implement this approach to estimate changes in cost of living and household welfare using Indian microdata. We then revisit the impacts of India’s trade reforms across regions. 

Traditionally, central banks have served three policy functions – monetary policy, payments systems oversight, and financial institution supervision. This conference will convene international experts and practitioners to examine how these core functions contribute to financial inclusion, poverty alleviation, and a more inclusive economy – and what could be improved.The conference contributes to a research initiative undertaken by the University of Michigan’s Center on Finance, Law & Policy, in partnership with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to consider how the role of a central bank could evolve in the future and enable central banks to make greater contributions toward financial inclusion. Ultimately, the research intends to identify technologies, processes, or tools that could benefit a central bank in supporting public policy objectives related to inclusion, and consider whether other sectors, including philanthropy, might have a role to play in supporting the development of those tools. Registration to the event is free. Speakers and attendees will include individuals from  standards-setting bodies, central banks and other financial regulators, and policymakers, as well as futurists and technologists, and other financial ecosystem stakeholders.For more information visit http://financelawpolicy.umich.edu. 

Yususf Neggers will discuss about How Small Search Frictions Impact Bureaucratic Efficiency.

Economic Development Seminar presents Supreet Kaur (UC-Berkeley). Supreet will present "Scabs: The Social Suppression of Labor Supply" in the joint labor/development seminar on Friday, April 6, 1-2:30PM in Lorch 201.