Central bankers convene at Kellogg

For the third time, the Kellogg School hosted 35 banking and finance researchers from 20 central banks in Europe, Asia, Latin America, Africa, Canada and the United States, for the Advanced Workshop for Central Bankers at the James L. Allen Center in September.

In a week of intense study covering frontier research relevant to monetary policy, participants heard lectures by monetary economics specialists, such as Sergio Rebelo, the Tokai Bank Distinguished Professor of International Finance, and Professors Lawrence Christiano and Martin Eichenbaum from Northwestern University's Department of Economics, and attendees built stochastic dynamic general equilibrium models in a computer lab to study the interaction between monetary policy and the economy.

Additional lectures addressed topics such as the evolution of productivity in Europe and the U.S., by Northwestern Professor Robert J. Gordon, the use of forecasting techniques to guide monetary policy, how monetary policy affects the price setting rules followed by firms, the role of the financial sector in the monetary transmission mechanism, and how economic uncertainty affects monetary policy decisions.

"The workshop puts Kellogg and Northwestern on the map as a premier center for research on monetary economics," said Rebelo, one of the faculty members who coordinated the event at Kellogg. — MG