Meetings: Summer 2010

Japan Project Meets

The NBER together with the Center on the Japanese Economy and Business, The Center for Advanced Research in Finance, and the Australia-Japan Research Centre held a project meeting on the Japanese economy in Tokyo on June 25 and 26, 2010. The organizers were: Jennifer Corbett, Australia-Japan Research Centre; Charles Horioka, NBER and Osaka University; Anil K Kashyap, NBER and the Graduate School of Business, University of Chicago; and David Weinstein, NBER and Columbia University. The following papers were discussed:

• Mary Amiti, Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and David Weinstein, "Exports and Financial Schocks"
• Kazuo Ogawa, Osaka University; Elmer Sterken, University of Groningen; and Ichiro Tokutsu, Kobe University, "Financial Distress and Industry Structure: An Inter-Industry Approach to the 'Lost Decade' in Japan"
• Jennifer Corbett and Kazuki Onji, Australian National University, and David Vera, Kent State University, "Capital Injection, Restructuring Targets, and Personnel Management: The Case of Japanese Regional Banks"
• Yasushi Hamao and Pedro Matos, University of Southern California, and Kenji Kutsuna, Kobe University, "Foreign Investor Activism in Japan: The First Ten Years"
• Chad Steinberg, International Monetary Fund, "Shakedown: Economic Geography Meets the Kobe Earthquake"
• Takayuki Mizuno, Makoto Nirei, and Tsutomu Watanabe, Hitotsubashi University, "Closely Competing Firms and Price Adjustment: Evidence from an Online Marketplace"
• Yuki Hashimoto, University of Tokyo, and Ayako Kondo, Osaka University, "Long-Term Effects of Labor Market Conditions on Family Formation for Japanese Youths"
• Ayako Suzuki, Waseda University, "An Empirical Analysis of Entrant and Incumbent Bidding in Electric Power Procurement Auctions"

Economic Fluctuations and Growth Research Meeting

The NBER’s Program on Economic Fluctuations and Growth met in Cambridge on July 17. NBER Research Associates Erik Hurst, University of Chicago, and Matthew D.Shapiro, University of Michigan, organized the meeting. These papers were discussed:

• Christopher J. Nekarda, Federal Reserve Board, and Valerie A. Ramey, University of California, San Diego and NBER, "The Cyclical Behavior of the Price-Cost Markup"
• Olivier Coibion, College of William and Mary; and Yuriy Gorodnichenko and Johannes F. Wieland, University of California, Berkeley and NBER; "The Optimal Inflation Rate in New Keynesian Models" (NBER Working Paper No. 16093)
• Jeremy C. Stein, Harvard University and NBER, "Monetary Policy as Financial-Stability Regulation"
• Raj Chetty, Harvard University and NBER, "Bounds on Elasticities with Optimization Frictions: A Synthesis of Micro and Macro Evidence on Labor Supply"
• Jonathan Eaton, Pennsylvania State University and NBER, and Samuel S. Kortum, Brent Neiman, and John Romalis, University of Chicago and NBER, "Trade and the Global Recession" 
• Charles I. Jones and Peter J. Klenow, Stanford University and NBER, "Beyond GDP? Welfare across Countries and Time"

The Economics of Household Saving

NBER Research Associate Erik Hurst of the University of Chicago and NBER President James Poterba of MIT, who co-direct an NBER project on "The Economics of Household Saving", organized a meeting of that project on July 24, 2010. The following papers were discussed: 

• Dean Karlan, Yale University and NBER; Margaret McConnell, Harvard School of Public Health; Sendhil Mullainathan, Harvard University and NBER; and Jonathan Zinman, Dartmouth College, "Getting to the Top of Mind: How Reminders Increase Saving" 
• Mark A. Aguiar and Mark Bils, University of Rochester and NBER, "Has Consumption-Inequality Mirrored Income Inequality?" 
• Garry Barrett, University of Sydney; Thomas Crossley, Cambridge University, and Kevin Milligan, University of British Columbia and NBER, "Micro and Macro Based Saving Rates: What Explains the Differences?"
• John Sabelhaus, University of Maryland, and Jae Song, Social Security Administration, "The Great Moderation in Micro Labor Earnings" 
• Robert Townsend, MIT and NBER, "Saving and Risk in Developing Countries: Theory and Evidence"