Carnegie-Rochester Conference on Public Policy

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McCallum-0820117Carnegie-Rochester Conference on Public PolicyThe Carnegie-Rochester conference series has a long record of generating and disseminating economic research by leading independent scholars that is genuinely policy-relevant. It is distinguished from other conference series by the extent to which it brings together academic researchers and analysts (and officials) from policymaking bodies such as the Federal Reserve system, foreign central banks (ECB, Bank of Japan, Bank of England, etc.), the U.S. Treasury and Commerce Departments, the IMF, and the World Bank. That it is effective in this role is evidenced by the number of past or future members of its formal Advisory Board that have recently (or currently) served in leading policymaking positions including Presidents of the Federal Reserve Banks of St. Louis and Philadelphia, Research Directors of the Federal Reserve Banks of Richmond and St. Louis, members of the Council of Economic Advisers, U.S. Treasury Undersecretary for International Economic Affairs, and Chair of the International Financial Institution Advisory Commission (U.S. Congress). Several non-Advisory Board authors have later taken similar positions, including four as Governors of non-U.S. central banks. Conference meetings are held twice each year, one at Carnegie-Mellon University (Pittsburgh) and one at the University of Rochester. About 40 participants (plus faculty and Ph.D. students of the host university) attend each meeting. Papers and discussants' comments were formerly published by Elsevier in a distinct series; currently each meeting's papers and discussions are published as special issues (two a year) of the Journal of Monetary Economics, a leading scholarly journal in economics. A web site is maintained by the University of Rochester. In terms of academic impact, the series of conference volumes has included numerous influential and widely-cited papers in monetary economics, macroeconomics, and international economics in addition to occasional volumes focusing on labor economics, public finance, and one on the economics of terrorism. Influential papers reflecting the conference?s emphasis on policy-relevant theoretical and/or empirical analysis include well-known items by Robert E. Lucas, Stanley Fisher, Michael Mussa, Torsten Persson and Guido Tabellini, Marvin Goodfriend, Kenneth Rogoff, and John B. Taylor. Two specific papers that deserve special mention are Lucas's "Econometric Policy Evaluation: A Critique" (1976) and Taylor's "Discretion versus Policy Rules in Practice" (1993), two of the most influential papers in monetary economics of the past 40 years. The editors and Advisory Board members actively promote participation by young members of the profession and outstanding scholars from institutions outside the group of leading departments. Recent conferences have made heavy and increasing use of an open Call for Proposals to generate papers for upcoming conferences. The ongoing trend toward economic research that is highly technical and abstract makes it increasingly important to provide an impetus, as the Carnegie-Rochester series does, for leading scholars to maintain and emphasize contact with actual policy problems faced in economies around the world.