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Conference
on Measuring and Managing Federal Financial Risk
February
8-9, 2007
General
Information
Sponsored
by the Zell Center for Risk Research and the National
Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)
Location:
The
James L. Allen Center
Directions
The U.S.
federal government is the world’s largest financial
institution. It provides credit and assumes financial risk
through such diverse activities as:
- guaranteeing
loans for housing, agriculture, education, small businesses,
and trade
- making
direct loans for education, housing , and rural utilities
- insuring
bank deposits, defined benefit pension plans, crops, and
real property
- implicitly
guaranteeing the obligations of government sponsored enterprises
such as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac
- promising
pensions to federal civilian and military employees and
surviving dependents
- promising
social security and other social insurance payments that
are contingent on future economic growth
- earning
uncertain royalty income from sales of mineral rights, spectrum,
and other natural resources
- acting
as a steward for environmental assets and liabilities
Despite
their size, the economic cost and risk of these activities
remains for the most part poorly understood and partially
measured. Government budgetary and financial accounting rules,
which largely determine the information available to federal
decision makers, are only beginning to address these issues,
and lag private financial accounting developments. Recently,
however, some progress has been made in applying modern valuation
methods -- options pricing, risk-adjusted discount rates,
and value at risk -- to these types of obligations, and there
has been increased recognition of the need to rethink how
these programs are accounted for.
This Conference
will bring together a diverse group of academics in the areas
of finance, economics, accounting, and public policy, as well
as a select group of policymakers, to present new research
directed at improving the measurement and management of these
costs and risks. Each paper will address a general issue of
valuation or budgeting, or apply existing methods to particular
obligations and claims of the federal government. There will
also be a distinguished panel discussion at lunch on the 9th,
and keynote speaker at dinner on the 8th.
The papers
presented at the conference, and the comments of discussants,
will be published as an NBER book.
Please
contact the organizer, Deborah
Lucas, if you have questions. |
