The Department of Economics is hosting the UConn Leafy LAEF Macro Conference in Storrs, CT, on October 25-26, 2024, jointly with the Laboratory for Aggregate Economics and Finance (LAEF) at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
LAEF was established in July 2005 to address important questions on growth and fluctuations in national, or aggregate, economies. It is directed by Professor Finn Kydland, Nobel Laureate (2004), Jeffrey Henley Professor of Economics at UCSB.
The conference will feature approximately 9 to 10 papers. Submissions from all areas of macroeconomics and adjacent fields are welcome. We hope you will find this conference of interest and will submit your work. The submission deadline is April 30, 2024.
You can find the call for paper and the submission portal here.
Professor Kanda Naknoi has been interviewed by the New York Times about her latest work on the Thai military as a business group, for the article, “Almost Like Clockwork, Talk of a Military Coup Follows Thai Protests”
Kanda Naknoi is a visiting scholar at the Department of Economics at UC Davis.
During the visit she will work on the dynamics of investment in emerging economies after the Global Financial Crisis. She will also attend seminars and will make a presentation. Her visit will end in mid June.
The UConn-Stamford FED Challenge team earned honorable mention in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York 2018 College FED Challenge competition. This marked the third consecutive year of participation in the competition by the Stamford Campus team and the first time advancing to the semi-final round. The competition started with 39 teams in the initial round on October 24. The UCONN-Stamford team advanced to the semi-final round held on November 14 among only eight teams. Rutgers University-New Brunswick placed first and advanced to the final round held in Washington DC November 29. Columbia University placed second. UConn-Stamford earned Honorable Mention along with Fairfield University, Fordham University, Siena College, and SUNY-Oneonta.
The College Fed Challenge is a team competition for undergraduate students. Teams analyze economic and financial conditions and formulate a monetary policy recommendation, modeling the Federal Open Market Committee. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York is one of four Federal Reserve Banks that host the College Fed Challenge Competition. The regional winners go to the final round at the Board of Governors in Washington D.C.
UCONN-Stamford team was comprised of 3 presenters: Ignacio Gonzalez, Jonathan Herrick, and Brendan Armburst-Mulcahey. The team coach was Di Yang, (Stamford Business School MBA). The researchers who helped prepare the team for the competition were Aditya Dadavai, Sijie Hu, Lingyi Zhu, and Roma Roma (all in the Stamford Business School BPMA Program). Faculty advisors were professors Natalia Smirnova, Steven Lanza, Kanda Naknoi, and Oskar Harmon. The team benefited from practice sessions of challenging questions with volunteer members of the Fairfield Business Community.
The team participants shown in the picture at the awards ceremony at the FRBNY are (from left to right): Brendan Armburst-Mulcahey, Di Yang, Natalia Smirnova, Jonathan Herrick, Ignacio Gonzalez, Oskar Harmon.
Professor Kanda Naknoi presented her work at the Department of Economics and Finance seminar at the City University of Hong Kong on September 20th. The title of her presentation was “Exchange Rate Pass-Through and Market Structure in Multi-Country World”.
The New York FED is one of five Federal Reserve Banks that host the FED Challenge Competition. The regional winners go to the final round at the FED in Washington D.C. College Fed Challenge is a team competition for undergraduate students. Teams analyze economic and financial conditions and formulate a monetary policy recommendation, modeling the Federal Open Market Committee.
The 5 team participants were:
Front row: Ryan Dodd, Olga Jaramillo; Middle row: Chris McLaughlin (a two time participant), graduate assistants PD Aditya and Gul-e-Rana; Back row: Esteban Peralta, Randall Giles.
The students were assisted in their preparations by Professors Oskar Harmon, Kanda Naknoi and Steven Lanza.
The team received invaluable assistance from three graduate student assistants (PD Aditya , Di Yang, and Gul-e-Rana from the Stamford Business School MBA.
Professor Kanda Naknoi presented her work at the UC Irvine Macroeconomics Seminar on May 17. The title of her presentation was “Why Are Exchange Rates So Smooth? A Household Finance Explanation”.
Abstract: When we classify factors of production by their tradability, the relative wage of nontraded labour influences the real exchange rate through the relative cost of distribution services. We confirm this prediction using monthly data on the sector-level US–Canada real exchange rate and the relative wage of service-producing labour. The relative wage accounts for 40% of the variability of the real exchange rate at a one-month horizon. Furthermore, when we use the effective nontraded labour content to classify goods into nontraded and traded ones, the variability of the price of the nontraded-goods basket accounts for more than half of the variability of the real exchange rate.
Kanda Naknoi is a visiting scholar at the Department of Economics at UC Davis.
m participants were:
