Cowles Hosts 17th Annual Conference on General Equilibrium

On April 28-29, a stellar cast of speakers and 60+ attendees came together for the 17th Annual Conference on General Equilibrium (GE) and its Applications. This is the first regular Spring GE conference since the onset of COVID-19, following the 16th edition held in the Fall to celebrate the 65th birthday of the conference's founder John Geanakoplos.

This year's conference explored a wide range of themes, showcasing the relevance of General Equilibrium for other fields, including macroeconomics, financial economics, international economics, and environmental economics.

Topics at this year’s conference included financial innovation, the economic implications of climate change, leverage and financial stability, currency choice, and asset prices bubbles. The presentations included work on how damaging the tardy response of the Federal Reserve to the Covid Relief Packages was for inflation, optimal taxation for promoting climate sustainability, how interest rates below growth rates are or are not efficient, a framework for understanding rational asset bubbles, and stablecoin crashes. The papers are available for download here. 

An important component in many of the papers was the role that individual heterogeneity plays in shaping macroeconomic and financial aggregates. While all papers had a theoretical component, many of the papers also used empirical methods and computational tools.

The conference attracted a diverse array of participants from top universities across the United States and abroad, as well as policy institutions, such as the Federal Reserve and the Office of Financial Research.

The speakers included:

• Sanjay R. Singh (University of California, Davis)
• Ana Babus (Washington University in St. Louis)
• Daniel Neuhann (University of Texas at Austin)
• Russell Tsz-Nga Wong (Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond)
• Haosui Duanmu (UC Berkeley)
• Alexandros P. Vardoulakis (Federal Reserve)
• Christopher Clayton (Yale University)
• Antonio Coppola (Stanford University)
• Tim Landvoigt (University of Pennsylvania)
• Alexis Akira Toda (University of California San Diego)
• Gaetano Bloise (Tor Vergata University of Rome)
• Adrien Bilal (Harvard University)

The program was organized by Eduardo Davila, Ana Fostel, John Geanakoplos, Felix Kubler, Herakles Polemarchakis, Paolo Siconolfi, and Alp Simsek. "The setting and organization of the 17th Annual Cowles General Equilibrium Conference in the new Economics Department was the best yet,” said John Geanakoplos.

The agenda and full conference details are available here: Cowles 17th Annual Conference on General Equilibrium and its Applications.