SFU Beedie partners with Bank of Canada and Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco to host conference

from Dr. Tobias Adrian, the Financial Counsellor and Director of the Monetary and Capital Markets Department of the International Monetary Fund, speaking at the event at SFU Beedie

Senior central bankers and leading academic researchers in finance from around the world congregated at the SFU Beedie School of Business’s Segal Graduate School in downtown Vancouver on August 17 and 18, to participate in a conference examining Advances in Fixed Income and Macro-Finance Research.

SFU Beedie hosted the conference in partnership with the Bank of Canada and the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, and welcomed several senior figures from those institutions, including Carolyn Wilkins, Senior Deputy Governor, and Lynn Patterson, Deputy Governor of the Bank of Canada, and Glenn Rudebusch, Executive Vice President and Senior Policy Advisor, from the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.

“The conference was tremendously useful for the Bank of Canada,” says Deputy Governor Lynn Patterson. “It also reaffirmed our commitment to engaging with the broader research community of academics and policy-makers in order to gain insights, share research and foster a constructive, ongoing dialogue on key policy questions.”

The conference also featured a keynote address from Dr. Tobias Adrian, the Financial Counsellor and Director of the Monetary and Capital Markets Department of the International Monetary Fund, as well as presentations by researchers from schools including the London School of Economics, University of Chicago, NYU Stern, Imperial College Business School, and University of Toronto.

Dr. Adrian discussed the puzzle facing policymakers, that many developed countries are now experiencing low unemployment and high capacity utilization, yet inflation remains low. He noted that, as a result, the market anticipates a very shallow path for tightening of the monetary conditions in most countries. While this stimulates economic growth, it also creates the potential for financial instability and asset bubbles, he concluded.

“It was a great honour to partner with such highly-respected institutions as the Bank of Canada and the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, and to welcome so many leading thinkers in the field to Beedie,” says Andrey Pavlov, professor of finance at SFU Beedie, and a part of the conference’s organizing committee. “It was also a fantastic opportunity for our students to hear firsthand from some of the most influential researchers and practitioners in fixed income and central banking.”

Students from SFU Beedie’s M.Sc. in Finance program, including those who are involved in managing the fixed income portfolio in Beedie’s $17 million graduate student-managed Student Investment Advisory Service (SIAS) fund, volunteered to ensure the event ran smoothly, as well as taking part in the conference.