"One of the problems we've seen is that high-income households have really boosted their savings [with CARES Act funding]. And when you're saving, you're not spending and that's part of what's caused the economy to contract."
Read the full Law...
Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers have launched a new podcast, called "Think Like an Economist."
In a series of tweets on August 19, @JustinWolfers explained:
We’re calling it Think Like an Economist because we want to teach you to,...
The devastating GDP numbers announced at the end of July—a decline of 9-and-a-half percent—are the worst in American history, according to Ford School economics professor Justin Wolfers. The way the numbers are reported, that at an annualized rate...
A historic $2 trillion relief package has just been approved by Congress in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, and subsequent economic crisis. Professors Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers have weighed in on the relief package and the economic...
“‘Pay for Success’ Projects: financing interventions that address social determinants of health in 20 countries,” a journal article by Ford School researchers Samantha Iovan and Paula Lantz, along with student Shoshana Shapiro (PhD ‘21), was...
Two new partnership between U-M’s Poverty Solutions and Harvard University’s Equality of Opportunity Project (EOP), announced last week, will integrate high-level research with the applied scholarship U-M’s initiative is known for to tackle the...
Earlier this week, Marina v.N. Whitman’s work was published by The Conversation, an independent not-for-profit media company.Her op-ed, “Corporate America needs to get back to thinking about more than just profits,” discussed the importance of big...
In the International Monetary Fund’s December 2015 issue of Finance and Development, Catherine Hausman co-authors “The Power of the Atom” with Lucas Davis. The article explores how the global presence of nuclear power has changed since its...
Joan and Sanford Weill Hall Annenberg Auditorium (1120)
Federal Reserve Bank Vice Chair for Supervision Michael S. Barr, former dean of the Ford School, will discuss the workings of the Fed, his work on banking reform, and the lessons of leadership he has learned in his career in and out of government service.
Professor Jeffery Zhang from Michigan Law will be speaking at our February blue bag lunch talk on Wednesday, February 1 at 12pm. The talk will be virtual on Zoom. Please register here by January 31.
Professor Nejat Seyhun will discuss a new paper on "insider giving," as a potent substitute for insider trading due to lax reporting requirements and legal restrictions.
More than a decade after the 2008 financial crisis, U.S. policymakers still have not adequately addressed one of the primary causes of the crash: foreign banks.
Join Ford School professors Betsey Stevenson, Justin Wolfers, and Ford School Dean Michael S. Barr for a discussion on the challenges of navigating an economic crisis during the COVID-19 public health emergency.
The Data Privacy and Portability in Financial Technology Symposium celebrates the Michigan Technology Law Review’s 25th Anniversary by hosting an event dedicated to cutting-edge scholarship at the intersection of technology and the law. Specifically, this symposium is designed to examine the inherent tensions between securing privacy rights and the ease at which transactions occur, facilitated by new innovative technologies.
This will be a presentation of two large-scale field experiments designed to test the hypothesis that group membership can increase participation and pro-social lending for an online crowdlending community, Kiva. The first experiment uses variations on a simple email manipulation to encourage Kiva members to join a lending team, testing which types of team recommendation emails are most likely to get members to join teams as well as the subsequent impact on lending. We find that emails do increase the likelihood that a lender joins a team, and that joining a team increases lending in a short window following our intervention. The impact on lending is large relative to median lender lifetime loans. We also find that lenders are more likely to join teams recommended based on location similarity rather than team status. Our results suggest team recommendations can be an effective behavioral mechanism to increase pro-social lending. In a second field experiment, we manipulate forum messages to explore the underlying mechanisms for teams to be effective.
Historically, public infrastructure systems such as roads, water utilities, and schools are financed using a combination of tax revenue, government and revenue-backed bonds. This system has repeatedly fallen short due to insufficient tax revenue and political aversion towards funding “social infrastructure”. Especially for schools, the access to quality infrastructure is highly correlated (in the US) to poverty, stemming from property values, credit worthiness and other factors. A recent bill (not passed) required a 1:6 leverage of federal with state and private finance, compared to 1:12 in Europe and 1:30 proposed under the Climate accords. Either infrastructure has not been built or upgraded, or private capital has stepped in the breach. At the Center for Smart Infrastructure Finance, we're asking whether data-driven models can close the gap by taking advantage of the internet of things (IoT): smart sensors that deliver information which can be monetized. This seminar will explore how private financing models that leverage digital data supply chains to attract 'efficient capital' (e.g. insurance, options trades, debt securities, variable interest rate bonds) can be adapted to financing public infrastructure while limiting recourse to the citizens that use it, and leveling the economic disparities of access.
The Federal Office of Financial Research and the University of Michigan are co-hosting this conference to bring together regulators, policymakers, financial market participants, and academic researchers to explore ways of bolstering financial stability.
Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy
5th Floor Seminar Room
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.
Federal Reserve Bank Vice Chair Michael Barr, former dean of the Ford School, discusses the workings of the Fed, his work on banking reform, and the lessons of leadership he has learned. March, 2024.
Jeffery Zhang presents his research, co-authored with Jeremy Kress, which argues that using the term “macroprudential” to describe modern financial regulation is a myth. February, 2023.
In this talk, H. Luke Shaefer reviews research on the impacts of the largest and most comprehensive expansion of the social safety net in modern times, and where the nation goes from here.
“Insider giving” is a potent substitute for insider trading. Professor Seyhun and co-authors S. Burcu Avci, Cindy A. Schipani, and Andrew Verstein show that insider giving is far more widespread than previously believed.
Barr spoke at the annual New Markets Tax Credit (NMTC) Coalition conference, sharing his experience as a Clinton administration official as the Community Renewal Tax Relief Act was established and signed into law in December, 2
