International Monetary Fund

Labor Markets through the Lens of the Great Recession

Thirteenth  Jacques  Polak  Annual  Research Conference Research  Department, IMF

The International Monetary Fund will hold the Thirteenth Jacques Polak Annual Research Conference at its headquarters in Washington DC on November 8-9, 2012.

The theme of this year's conference is “Labor Markets through the Lens of the Great Recession.” The conference is intended to provide a forum for discussing innovative research and to facilitate the exchange of views among researchers and policymakers. Peter Diamond (MIT) will deliver the Mundell-Fleming Lecture.

The conference is open to the public and registration is required. To register for the conference (registration will include all conference sessions, the Mundell-Fleming Lecture, and the Economic Forum) please complete the online registration form. Because of the hurricane, the deadline for registration has been extended to noon, Tuesday, November 6, 2012. Registered attendees will be required to present photo identification on entering the IMF at 1900 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W., Washington D.C. For questions regarding the conference, please send an email to ARC@imf.org.

Please note that, for this event, invitations for visa purposes will be extended only to the conference participants.

Disclaimer

The website contains papers and web links to papers that will be presented at the Thirteenth Jacques Polak Annual Research Conference (ARC). The views expressed in these papers are those of the authors only, and the presence of them, or of links to them, on the IMF website does not imply that the IMF, its Executive Board, or its management endorses or shares the views expressed in the papers.


Labor Markets through the Lens of the Great Recession

Program

Thursday, November 8, 2012
8:00–8:45am

Registration and Continental Breakfast

8:45–9:15am

Opening Remarks George Akerlof (Senior Resident Scholar, Research Department, IMF)

Watch the Opening Remarks

9:15–10:55am

Session 1:

Macro Policies and Inequality

Chair: Min Zhu (Deputy Managing Director, IMF)

Top Incomes and the Great Recession: Recent Evolutions and Policy Implications

Thomas Piketty (Paris School of Economics) and Emmanuel Saez (University of California, Berkeley)

Top Incomes and the Great Recession: Recent Evolutions and Policy Implications PresentationSee the presentation

Discussant: Gianluca Violante (New York University)

Innocent Bystanders? Monetary Policy and Inequality in the U.S.

Innocent Bystanders? Monetary Policy and Inequality in the U.S. PresentationSee the presentation

Olivier Coibion (University of Texas, Austin and IMF), Yuriy Gorodnichenko (University of California, Berkeley), Lorenz Kueng (Northwestern University) and John Silvia (Wells Fargo)

Discussant: Romain Ranciere (IMF)

Innocent Bystanders? Monetary Policy and Income Inequality in the U.S. PresentationSee the presentation

10:55–11:10am

Coffee Break


11:10–12:50pm

Session 2:

Basic Labor Market Facts

Chair: Gian Maria Milesi-Ferretti (Deputy Director, Western Hemisphere Department)

Okun’s Law: Fit at 50?

Okun’s Law: Fit at 50? PresentationSee the presentation

Okun’s Law: Fit at 50? CommentsSee the comments

Laurence Ball (Johns Hopkins University), Daniel Leigh (IMF) and Prakash Loungani (IMF)

Discussant: Paul Beaudry (University of British Columbia)

Beveridge Curve Shifts across Countries since the Great Recession

Bart Hobijn (Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco) and Ayşegül Şahin (Federal Reserve Bank of New York)

Beveridge Curve Shifts across Countries since the Great Recession PresentationSee the presentation

Discussant: Robert Shimer (University of Chicago)

Beveridge Curve Shifts across Countries since the Great Recession PresentationSee the presentation

1:00–2:45pm

Lunch

(By invitation only, Conference Hall 2)

3:00–4:30pm

Mundell-Fleming Lecture

“Cyclical Unemployment, Structural Unemployment”

Peter Diamond (MIT)

Cyclical Unemployment, Structural Unemployment PresentationSee the presentation

Introduction by: Olivier Blanchard (Economic Counsellor and Director, Research Department, IMF)

Watch the Mundell-Fleming Lecture


Friday, November 9, 2012
8:15–9:00am

Registration and Continental Breakfast

9:00–10:30am

Session 3:

Trade, Productivity and Labor Markets

Chair: Tamim Bayoumi (Deputy Director, Strategy, Policy, and Review Department, IMF)

Patterns of Convergence and Divergence in the Euro Area

Ángel Estrada (Bank of Spain), Jordi Galí (CREI) and David Lopéz-Salido (Federal Reserve Board)

Discussant: Martin Baily (Brookings Institute)

The Global Labor Market Impact of Emerging Giants: a Quantitative Assessment

Andrei A. Levchenko (University of Michigan) and Jing Zhang (University of Michigan)

The Global Labor Market Impact of Emerging Giants: a Quantitative Assessment PresentationSee the presentation

Discussant: Rafael Dix-Carneiro (University of Maryland)

Discussion of See the presentation

10:30–10:45am

Coffee Break


10:45–1:00pm

Session 4:

The Role of Credit Markets

Chair: José Vinãls (Financial Counsellor and Director, Monetary and Capital Markets Department, IMF)

How Firms Respond to Business Cycles: The Role of Firm Age and Firm Size

Teresa Fort (Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth), John Haltiwanger (University of Maryland), Ron S. Jarmin (U.S. Census Bureau) and Javier Miranda (Bureau of the Census

How Firms Respond to Business Cycles: The Role of the Firm Age and Firm Size PresentationSee the presentation

Discussant: Roberto Fattal Jaef (IMF)

How Firms Respond to Business Cycles: The Role of Firm Age and Size PresentationSee the presentation

Foreclosure Delay and U.S. Unemployment

Kyle F. Herkenhoff (University of California, Los Angeles) and Lee E. Ohanian (University of California, Los Angeles)

Foreclosure Delay and US Unemployment PresentationSee the presentation

Discussant: Sam Schulhofer-Wohl (Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis)

The Labor Market Consequences of Adverse Financial Shocks

The Labor Market Consequences of Adverse Financial Shocks PresentationSee the presentation

Tito Boeri (Bocconi University), Pietro Garibaldi (Collegio Carlo Alberto) and Espen R.Moen (Norwegian Business School)

Discussant: Amartya Lahiri (University of British Columbia)

Comments on The Labor Market Consequences of Adverse Financial Shocks PresentationSee the presentation

1:00–2:20pm

Lunch

(By invitation only, HQ2, Conference Hall 2)

2:30–4:45pm

Session 5:

Supply Side Reforms and Employment Miracles

Chair: Paolo Mauro (Assistant Director African Department, IMF)

Employment Miracles

Caroline Freund (The World Bank) and Bob Rijkers (The World Bank)

Employment Miracles PresentationSee the presentation

Discussant: Beth Anne Wilson (Federal Reserve Board)

Employment Miracles PresentationSee the presentation

Recall and Unemployment

Shigeru Fujita (Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia) and Giuseppe Moscarini (Yale University)

Discussant: Robert Valletta (Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco)

Recall and Unemployment PresentationSee the presentation

Macroeconomic Evaluation of Labor Market Reform in Germany

Tom Krebs (University of Mannheim) and Martin Scheffel (ETH Zuerich)

Macroeconomic Evaluation of Labor Market Reform in Germany PresentationSee the presentation

Discussant: Romain Duval (IMF and OECD)

Macroeconomic evaluation of labor market reform in Germany PresentationSee the presentation

4:45–5:00pm

Coffee Break


5:00–6:30pm Economic Forum:

Policies and Jobs

Moderator: Olivier Blanchard, Economic Counsellor and Director, Research Department, IMF

Panelists:

1. Ricardo Hausmann (Harvard University)

2. Lawrence Katz (Harvard University)

3. Adriana Kugler (U.S. Department of Labor)

The U.S. Labor Market Recovery PresentationSee the presentation

4. Martin Rama (The World Bank)

Watch the Economic Forum


Conference Organizing Committee: Luis Catão (Chair), Rudolfs Bems, Era Dabla-Norris, Marcello Estevão, Martin Evans, and Ayhan Kose, (all IMF), and Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas (Editor of the IMF Economic Review, University of California, Berkeley).

Conference Coordinator: Tracey Lookadoo