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Okay, so thank you all.
The next paper is going presented by Omar barbierro Us Firm's Exposure to import tariffs a comparison of the eighteen and twenty twenty five episodes.
Can I ask a personal question when you present a paper like this at a research conference like this Boston fed one, So you get nervous, and then I guess adjacent to that, like what's the best outcome for you when you present the paper? And what's the sort of nightmare scenario would it be someone like finding some fundamental error in the methodology and like standing up in the middle of the conference and being like, there's a serious problem here.
Yeah, I mean many many nightmare scenarios king randomly and then we went okay.
All right.
I would say the worst thing that can happen is that you just say something wrong that sounds dishonest, almost like you're trying to hide something like there's clearly a data flaw, and then you don't highlight it, or you don't you say in public, no, no, no, this is not a problem, and everybody knows no, no, no, it's it's a problem that's I think the profession is built on trust, and if you if you lose that trust, it's it's.
It's quite bad.
That's Omar Barbiero, a senior economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston. He's getting ready to stand up in front of a room full of other economists, journalist, academics, and his employer and present a research paper tracking the exposure of US businesses to import tariffs.
This is a paper written jointly with Slavic, Hillary and Alvaro, where there happened to be in the room our excellent research assistance Sophie and Lydia also who helped us with this paper. We're ready for the conference is still quite preliminary and therefore will really value your comments on this.
How many individual pieces of data would you say were involved in this particular study.
Okay, product code, they were around four hundred thousand, I would say, and then you have to multiply that by many different countries, and so you have to keep track of that metrix.
The supply chain that I said was also quite fun because it's kind of a network of companies and it gets big, very very fast, and you have to track it over time. I have to say, I mean we have excellent I mean I have excellent call thors, we have accidents.
It's a system.
We have excellent you know, computing power, Thank god that can help us with that. And I don't know millions, I ah, yes, millions.
Yeah.
We are at the Boston SAIDs annual Flagship Research Conference. The sixty nine year of the event, and the theme for twenty twenty five is quote the US economy and a changing global landscape, so focusing on how things like tariffs, geopolitical tensions, industrial policy, AI, et cetera are reshaping US growth, inflation, and the overall financial system.
Clearly, that is a very rich vein to mind for research, and the format is a classic central bank research conference. Economists and other researchers are invited to write a paper for the event, they're assigned an official discustant, and then they publicly present to a room full of their peers while the audience gets a chance to ask questions or sometimes critique.
Yeah, you say it's a classic central bank research conference, but we've never actually been to one. I don't think right, it felt like a totally new environment.
Yeah, it's true. We have gone to Jackson Hole for the past few years, which is probably the most famous FED research conference. But it's famous because the FED chair usually makes a speech and that gets all the attention. We've never actually been in the room at Jackson Hole where they discuss the research papers being presented, because the FED only allows a certain number of journalists into the room.
The room, the room, the room. Also, I think it's unfair Kansas City FED gets to hold their conference in the most beautiful place on.
Earth instead of Kansas it's in the middle of August.
And then the Boston FED. I mean it's their choice, but the Boston FED has theirs in Boston, which is lovely. We both had a great time, but November.
It was very cold. Well, the upshot is that this time we were actually in the proverbial room, so for the first time we got to really experience and learn what an economic research conference actually is.
Yeah, this is actually very key because if you sort of like wonder so okay, Jerome Poulos says something about, you know, the expected relationship between tariffs and inflationary but where did these ideas come from? Where do these assertions, predictions and so forth? It comes from academic research. It comes from the research backing that up. These conferences are where the macro ideas sort of actually collide with a real world data.
Yeah, another way of thinking about it. It is where the first serious drafts of tomorrow's policy debates are aired. And we're going to give you a front row seat to experience what those initial drafts and debates are actually like.
Welcome to the Boston FED sixty ninth Annual Flagship Economic Conference.
The research at the regional bank, at the board or at the BIS. You do policy by policy, we mean, you know, you advise your principles. In our case that Susan Collins the Presidency of the Boston Fed. Preparations for the FMC meeting or public engagements.
That is Egon sa Kreichek. He's director of the Research Department at the Boston Fed, and he's the one who actually puts this event.
Together and is Omar's boss.
Yeah, and he's an Omer's boss, right. He also gets to choose the broad theme of the conference.
We've lived in a particular global order, rules based international system, globalizations, trade integrations. We just took those things for granted for decades, and we're now grappling with monumental change, and we lack models, we lack theoretical frameworks to understand these changes. You've heard many debates about this data is no good, this is the sausage, don't need it right? And how as one
go about it? So I think it's just it's just really, I mean, it's an exciting time for researchers because we have great questions, but I think it also underscores of just how little we really know and and how challenging it is then to make policy recommendations in this in the period of such change. You know, the way the conference, a conference like that comes together is, you know, we sit together, my team of researchers. We we try to pick a topic that would obviously be timely relevant to
policy makers. We confer with Susan and so forth, We look you know, and so forth. So once we once we kind of zero in on what the topic is, we then have to identify the contributors to this. We have a certain idea of what we want different sessions to be. Then we get either academics or you know,
contributors to write papers for this. But you know, academics, researchers write what they want to write so sometimes there's a bit of a you know, so we're saying, you know, gentlemanlike distance between the blurb and the ultimate paper that gets written. But that's all right. We've always seen this.
This is very very standard, and you know, the idea is that needs to the discussing the role of a discuss and they needs to kind of bring that paper and provide some context and you know, try to try to fit it into the general theme.
So this particular conference, the theme has changed, right. And one of the things we keep saying, but I think it's true, is we're living through capital age history here. We have the tariffs from the Trump administration, reversal, globalization, new geopolitical risks, AI all of.
It right, And we're also still trying to figure out stuff like what happened in relatively recent years, why did inflation actually spike during the pandemic. We're also in this new era of industrial policy and we're trying to figure out what that means for the economy. If we actually want to do the stuff like make semiconductors or build small modular nuclear reactors, we have to have some idea of where we're going.
And we try to really keep it. You know, I would say somewhat more accessible. I would say a bit interdisciplinary. We try to reach a bit broader audience. Is somewhat a typical conference, you know, your typical economic research conference would feature slide after slide of equations graphs.
I'm laughing slightly because I saw some equations this morning and the speaker is like, oh, well, as you can see from the slide, and I'm thinking I cannot see no.
Right right, So you know, so this is I would say, this is very light on this. If you're you know, this is super light on this. And so forth, we urge authors to try to write something that's more I would say policy relevant. That the touches that can be communicated and stuff that rather than very very technical pieces. You know, that is what the academic journalistand to specialize that. Hopefully it sparks. It sparks the idea, It sparks a
new paper. You know, it says, ah, you know what, this is an interesting result, but I have maybe better data to do that, so let me actually or there was a there was a testable implication that somebody you know brought up. Let me see if I can fledge that out because I think I can provide sences. That's how knowledge and conferences, you know, advances. It's a very organic bit of a messy type of affair, and that you know, to be honest, many times don't things don't
they don't pan out. You know, I have files and folders full of research ideas that you know never went anywhere.
But do you try and if you want to get a sense of that process and the policy implications of some of this research. Take a listen to the first paper presented at the conference. It's by Shepnham Klumley Auskin. She's the Shreiber Family Professor of Economics over at Brown University.
I love economists and their their long title. The John Maynard Knees Chair of the Ludwig viin me seasoned dud See at the University of you know whatever.
Cane's chatt the Missus School would be an interesting mix. Anyway, here's Shepnam presenting her paper. It is called Global Networks, Risks and the US Economy.
You know, paper after paper, we realize the issue with the conventional macro open economy view.
What is this view?
This view takes US as a relatively closed economy because of the law, trade shares exports ten percent of GDP, imports fourteen percent of GDP, and that, of course combines with the fact that the US is governing the world in terms of dollar dominance and the financial markets. And on top of that, US has an amazing central bank. As we are all here right now, you know that Federal Reserve acts as a global lender of last resort
when things goes soup. The benchmark implication of this view is that US has limited exposure to glow all risks. It would like to revisit the issue in terms of asking directly have sensitive the US economy to global risks once we account for full global trade, production and finance networks and really think about trades off and counterfactuals, and basically revisit this issue that the fact that maybe your trade shares are long.
We caught up with Chevnham after her presentation to better understand exactly what she's trying to do here.
All right, So, yes, we found something different because we work with networks.
And let me explain what that is.
When you say networks again, the traditional we're first going to think about, of course, the trade networks. Why because the trade networks directly linked to supply chains, right, and we already realized you know it is that those are vulnerable.
I mean, you know, shock after shock, starting with the pandemic, you know told us that, yes, maybe kind of our final goods trade or just if I focus on manufacturing, not that big, but if I look at the supply chains, value chains, then US is integrated to that, and then that changes the thanks because that means even in the added number you might not see that big.
Of exports and imports, there might be indirect exporture through all those things. Because when you think a network, you know you are linked through trade. This is now where were also add a traditional view.
But you also have to think about the financing, right, I mean, so the networks to us is trade networks, yes, you know countries buying and selling, sectors buying and selling, firms buying and selling from each other, but also financial networks. I mean you know, investors investing in companies in other countries. You know, these supply chains finance by different investors in other countries. And on top of that, of course the
production right. I mean you know, so a product right now is assembled in one country, designed in another country, manufacturing in another country, with parts coming from many many countries, and skills and knowledge also coming from inny many countries. So when you have this start of the comprehensive view of the network global network as trade, production, and finance, then I think US becomes very vulnerable to global shocks and global risks.
So you can see why there should be an important area of research for the FED, right, Right.
And the conventional thinking has always been that the US is kind of insulated from global shocks because it's so big, because the dollar is so dominant. External factors it's thought, don't really affect the US economy.
So much, right, And also we don't actually export that much relative right speaking.
Right, we import. So that's the conventional view. But if per Shebnam's research, the US is in fact more exposed to global shocks than previously thought, if it's more intertwined with the network of the global economy through second order effects, then policy makers should be aware of that.
Right, It wasn't clear. This is an enormous body of work, expanding several papers, hundreds of pages, all with many applications and scenario.
That is Aaron Flahn, he's a principal economist at the Boston FED and he's also the discussion for this particular paper.
The discustant role is really interesting.
Yeah, this was probably one of the most fascinating sort of dynamics I knew existed but didn't quite appreciate how it works. So basically, every presenter gets paired with an official discussion whose job is just to interpret and critique, frankly, the paper for a wider audience.
So those are my main comments. I do just want to emphasize that what sometimes doing here is policy relevant research at its finance. It's our profession working at its finess fly answering these very timely questions in ways.
That authors are very close to the paper. You wrote these details, and you can see in the presentations, right, they know insight out and stuff that, so they provide a position. The Really what a discussing does is sort of essentially, let me translate what the author does for the broader audience. Right, A good discussing role is really to sort of reframe the paper, pull out key takeaways, and then provide some constructive comments.
But sometimes things get a little awkward.
Definitely awkward, but you know, everyone's still very polite, still.
Very polite, Yes, but more on that after this break. Let's go to another paper. This one is by Tamaso Monicelli. He's a professor of economics at Universita Butchoni, and his paper is called Supply chain Uncertainty, Energy Prices and Inflation, and it is actually about one of our favorite topics, Joe, supply chains.
Now that's right, because that's exactly right. So supply chain disruptions can sort of change state of the economy, so the environment, that's our idea where farms make production and pricing decisions, right.
And so the key idea is that.
The state of the world in which farms operate right can can change underlying So as economists we say that the state of the economy changes even starting from potentially minor events along the supply chain. So we make the example of this apparently small episode like in the Sewez Canal two years ago, sort of ship container shipping oil and other inputs got stuck for.
A few days.
We remember, well literally right, but that was the.
Episode sort of got resolved in a few days, but I didn't have the time to show the data. But then this the effect on transportation disruptions. Okay, along supply chains lasted four months. Okay. So the analogy here is think of an airport, okay, like a hub. Okay, what a lot of flights? So how many airports function as hubs? Okay, many flights coming from different directions, and right, you can have a disruption like a single delay on a single
flight in the in the in the hub. But then the propagates, you know, along the day and then across many different flights and amplifying the delay downstream.
A cascade effect.
Yees.
So at the heart of Tomas's research is the sort of very important question are supply chain disruptions real? Are they real thing? Or are they simply manifestations or symptoms of access demand may be caused by too much physcal stimulus.
Yeah, so after the pandemic, a lot of people criticize the government for handing out checks to people and businesses, helping supposedly to fan inflation. But actually, if small supply chain disruptions can reverberate for longer than previously thought through energy prices or whatever, then per Tomasa's research, they can be a pretty important source of inflation. And the important thing is that it's not the size of the supply
chain shock that matters. It's the actual volatility itself, the uncertainty that matters for inflation.
So again, I think, you know, you can see why this would be of interest to policymakers. Even five years after the pandemic, we're still trying to figure out exactly what happened, and we'll probably be researching that for years.
Totally.
Yes, so Tierra, in the in our search, we emphasize the interaction, So the complementarity between you know, shocks two, let's say the price of oil. Okay, that typically central banks look at, right, but they have a typical altitude let's say normal times. If there are all shocks, yes, we should monitor that those don't feed are not too persistent, they don't feed onto inflation expectations and so on. But their activist is typically let's look through Okay, this oil price.
All prior oil prices jump around very much in the markets. But here we're saying even the same original let's say oil price shocks or energy gas price shocks, they can have a very different amplified effects on inflation, Okay, depending on whether the state of supply chain is disrupted or not. Okay, So it's really the interract so it's not really that we believe that we emphasize supply chain shocks. We say typical supply shocks, like oil shocks or gas price shocks.
They can get really amplified and in a very persistent way if the underlying conditions of supply chains are disrupted, so that that state of the economy should be monitored, and in those states of the world, the central bent should be very, very reactive, way more reactive to oil shocks or energy price shocks than in periods where supply chain disruptions are minimal.
So that's the basic thrust of the paper, and the data seem to bear it to Masso's thesis out, but things got a little awkward when it was time for the discussion.
I'm Ludwig Straub. I'm a professor of economics at Harvard. I am a quantitative macroeconomist, so I try to build models that describe the macroeconomy and can be used for policy analysis and forecasting. I'm a discussion of a paper on supply chain uncertainty and energy shocks and how those two relate to the post COVID inflation episode.
Right as Ludwig puts it, being a discussiant is a pretty big commitment, and we should just mention here that neither the researchers nor the discussiants are getting paid for their time. They're doing this for other reasons. Obviously the contribute to policy, but there's another big motivation that we'll get into in a minute. So here's Lidvig.
So not everybody has time and energy to do this. In my case, I love being at the Boston FED and I'm close, so it's not a big travel to
come here. And yeah, so I said yes. And you know, about a month before the conference, you typically receive the paper and then you spend a significant amount of time I'd say maybe half a week a week, you know, of your research time with the paper and trying to understand the ins and outs, trying to understand the empirics the model, and then hopefully give a balanced view of the paper during the discussion.
And from what we saw at the conference, it feels like discussions can have different styles. Some basically summarize the paper and explain why it's relevant, and others others, you know, maybe pick it apart very critically. Here's Ludwig talking about the discussions.
Some tend to be more like what you just mentioned and more like the latter that you know, pick up hard papers and kind of come across as a little bit destructive rather than constructive. You know, the last discussing at the conference was a lot more constructive, for example, and would be you know, building off the author's results and you know, showing them what they could do next with with the paper. Some are very very kind and
just praise the results, which I tend to. I tend to try to be somewhere in between.
You know.
I tend to shed some critical light on the author's results if that, you know, is something that I think helps understand the paper. But I also want to be constructive and I want to be kind to the authors too, so you know, you want to kind of balance those two sides.
I guess and Loudveig did shed some critical light on Tamaso's research.
Suggestions for improvement, right, suggestions.
For improvement, right, that's a good way of putting it.
So as the economy reopened, as we had ample fiscal stimulus, and I tend to think that that means we ran up a marginal cost curve, meaning you know, costs went up just because there was a lot of demand, and so bottlenecks emerged, ports got clogged, and I think that alone can lead to an increase in what looks like supply chain issues, even though they're not really the root
cause of things. Now, I still think this paper has a lot of merits to it, but you know, I tend to think that not all that looks like an energy shock is really truly a shock, rather than just a consequence of increased demand.
TAMASO also use the Baltic Dry index as a proxy for shipping costs, which, as anyone who has spent a bit of time on finance Twitter will tell you, is an index that gets criticized a.
Lot, exactly. And then if it's just one episode in that time series that's kind of responsible for some of the results, then I would worry about that.
Now.
I don't know if that's exactly what's going on, but did play around a little bit and it was not as robust as you know, I was maybe hoping it or day, or maybe hoping it.
To be so tracy speaking of Twitter. You know, look, both you and I are used to getting criticism, right, but even if you're used to it, I think it would be pretty uncomfortable the hell of your work sort of publicly criticized by one of your peers in front of a big group of peers.
Yeah, I would think so too, although Tomasso actually seemed pretty fine with it.
No, okay, so that you learned learn out of experience through time, right, that you have to filter the reaction of the audience and get the good and the bad signals. So, first of all, I had great comments, very useful. I both myself and my coat are very happy. The discussion was fantastic.
I know him.
He is a fantastic researcher. He's one of the best macroeconomists. I admire his researchers. I was very happy that it was pleased with the with the with the paper, but also that the audience had that very interesting comments that only will be very useful for for keeping up with the research. And and again, uh, sometimes you get some
more aggressive comments. But you know, there's a there's a sort of there's an interesting role type of dynamics that happens in academic conferences that you have to internalize.
Cray, I really do. I want to go to one of those workshops that you hear about where the you know, the young the young student or the young professor, maybe someone applying for a job. They're presenting their paper, and then the old professor in the back of the room sort of puts on a big show and humiliates them.
At this point, that is a very interesting point because Tomaso says, the days of older professors publicly humiliating younger students are pretty much over.
That happens in sort of a behind secret doors in a way. No, but but especially as of late, the
profession is discussing that a lot. So we we we now are becoming much more aware that the climate, especially in economics, much more than in other social sciences or art sciences, that the climate during seminars, during presentations, especially within closed door seminars might be might be sort of not conducive for for for younger researchers to actually take risks and uh and and and learn from the art.
And so we are becoming way more mindful that it is very important to to keep it, to keep a civilized climate in in in in in research environments.
Speaking of civilized climates, we should just mention that things can get pretty heated in the public discussion too.
Right, So this is also part of it where it tend to get a chance to ask questions or often make their own points about the papers being questioned. Many many statements in the form of a question.
Yeah, lots of that, and things got a little well, I don't want to say combative, but loud or loud. Things got kind of loud. After a paper was presented on the idea of policy trade offs, so trade offs between geopolitical risks and economic risks.
Perhaps it's too early to tell. Standard models of the type that Shemnham talked about without the nominal rigidities would also predict optimal uniform tariffs that are very high twenty forty percent range. So the current environment looks pretty good.
The voice you hear is Paul Antris. He is a professor at Harvard giving the keynote address on the first day of the conference.
According to this models, we are in a sweet spot. I'm not so sure why, because the standard models are models that I think have features that I think I am not in line with many of the things that I see when I look at the data.
His presentation, the Evolving role of the United States and Global value chains, it touched on some of the same areas that Shevnham had covered earth And the beauty of a conference like this is that she was sitting right in the audience and she was able to weigh in right then and there.
You just raised couple issues and I realized maybe I wasn't clear during my presentation. I fully agree on the whole firm level and how the input output data we have is kind of this sausage, but I would disagree that you do want to understand how the sausage made so that we can do better.
Right, So the economists were fighting.
Well, actually I asked Shepnham about this later and here's what she said.
Well, actually, I characterized that is a very healthy debate and a little bit also, you know the artifact of these conferences where you have twenty five minutes to present, right, so I didn't have that much time. And then, of course because I didn't show the parts where we use the firm level data and more, you know, discipline the macro model with more you know, micro identified elasticities and all that.
Joe, all of this raises the question of why economists choose to do this in the first place. And you know, you spend a huge chunk of time writing a paper, you probably have a few research assistants that are working on it, and they could be doing something else, and.
Then it gets scrutinized in this very public way.
Maybe you felt that I was I was speaking on you. I didn't mean to do that. Now, of course, I take your point. Let me just push back though, in the.
Sense that obviously one of the motivations is the policy aspect economists. I think many of them want to inform policy in an accurate and useful way. That's pretty obvious. But there was also something that I didn't quite realize peer review and publishing. People want to be published.
Yeah, look, I get it, Believe me, I get it. Researchers, yes, they want to influence policy. Who doesn't, But they also want to get their papers rubber stamped by other economists
and then published in the most prestigious academic journals. And so one thing I wondered is whether there's a ten between, you know, just from the economist's perspective, is there some sort of tension between the goal of writing a paper is actually useful for making better policy or just sort of maximizing your chances of getting into a peer review journal.
Yeah, I think that is a very fair question, and Shepnam talked about that too.
Yes, this is the story of my life because this is this is a very uh serious tension, and I'm hoping we will make the best use of these times now we are living in to uh to change this because yes, unfortunately, academia UH publishing values very narrow research and very tightly defined specialized research.
UH.
And that's why economists are in silos right there are there are labor economists, there are macroeconomists, there are io economists, international economists, finance economists, and generally these groups don't talk to each other much and they just do one thing. But but then you want to do post relevant research, you talk to postmakers. And then the minute you start talking to postmakers and spend time in post institutions, you
realize these problems don't come like that. Oh, here's you know, a problem about you know, labors, I need labor economers. Here's a problem about like, you know, uh, financial markets. I mean the problem about mother post. The problems are linked. The problems are linked, and economics profession actually is is capable of you know, answering those problems, creating solutions for those problems if you know, these insights from these different sub fields come together, which is you know what I
try to do. Uh, And I'm hoping you know which kind of you know, Academy publishing you know doesn't value that much. But I am you know, I'm an optimist.
I'm hopeful.
I think these are the times people now coming together, writing with each other more and you know, realizing this more and more. So hopefully you know, we'll we'll all down to a better pattern this. Yeah.
So as I consumer, so if everything you're saying is right, so that's awesome. I would encourage you to kind of like obviously you want to come in and give some numbers, but give us like versions of the model that shut down this down And you're telling me the real not itself generates a lot of things that are not in standard models. So I'm really excited, and i'd like to say, and.
I think I agree, you can do this not thing as little as you want. That's where the data is going to help. You need data power. But you have to put this in a macro model. I mean, otherwise you are not going to go back to inflation, out to trade off and all these post questions, you have to put it on.
I agree with that, So all right, I will step in in here.
We have an iron cage in there, and I have things well, well, we'll put that on a on a YouTube. I'll have.
You know, Joe, there was in fact one major policymaker in the room along with everyone else, and that is Susan Collins.
That's right, directly. There are two prominent Susan Collins. This one is the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, and she was there the whole time, sitting in the front row. Susan herself actually was an academic. She taught at Harvard and Georgetown and the University of Michigan.
Right, there are lots of themes going on. I have to say that I'm struck by the sense that understanding some of the complexities may change traditional ways of thinking
about things. So that's a theme that I'm hearing. So the first paper it was really you if you account for the linkages through networks that include not only trade flows but also financial flows, and you know, and across sectors and countries, not just through country, but add the sector component in we may historically, with simpler, more traditional models have underestimated the potential for larger and more persistent
effects of different kinds of shocks. And then similarly, the second paper had kind of a similar theme that when you really focus on some of the supply chain connections, increases and uncertainty can make a shock have a bigger impact. So putting the different things making those connections, that's complicated work. I'm really glad that we have experts who are digging in and able to explain them and present them for us and have us ask questions and try to understand them better.
So Susan mentioned ideas, and one thing I'm very curious about is how the ideas being presented in these papers actually filter through into policy osmosis. Right, well, right, I'm sure there's some of that, But also, like, do you think Susan is taking the most interesting paper and attaching it to an email and sending it off to Tom Barkin at the Richmond and being like, you have to read book.
I would, Hey, Tom, here's something you might find interesting.
Yeah.
So, the lots of different ways. So sometimes you know, sometimes we have the time to go to each other's conferences, and it's hard, right, because we there's a lot going on. So sometimes people, sometimes my colleagues will actually be sitting in and hear from themselves. Some of their research teams are often tuning in, whether in person or virtually. Our research teams talk to each other, they're very active relationships.
They co author papers, they're engaged in that way, and certainly if they're things that are really informative for me, I will share them with colleagues in a variety of different ways. Maybe not as much attach the paper. You know, we have a lot to read and to go through. I would try to distill why I'm really interested, but you know, we're always looking for important ideas, trying to be better informed. That's something that's important to all of us.
And again, thank you for joining us for the sixty ninth conference. We're delighted to have odd lots here.
So that was the Boston Fed's Research Conference show.
It was great, But before we go, should tell people how Omar's presentation went.
Oh yeah, So we started this episode talking to Boston Fed economist Omar Barbiero, and I feel like he was under more pressure than most because he was presenting not just in front of its peers, but in front of his actual boss, actually multiple bosses, because there's Susan Collins, but also egon to Krys Check, so his boss and his boss's boss.
Yeah, and his was actually the last paper of the conference. I thought it went really well.
That's some interesting insights on that.
Thank you very much.
Exictarly what I have to say.
I think it's an exciting effort, very impressive.
Did a collection the reset of results.
It's a muscle.
I think it's a presentition was very interesting. I think the.
The effort is it's quite important.
This is really cool to see.
Have three quick Okay, this is a great paper, and I fully agree with Andrea that this is actually huge work. So you didn't even mention, but we are also now matching Panjia. It's the larger set.
Of for hoorai.
That's a good outcome. And you know, I should just mention Joe. We've obviously been summarizing all these papers because we're trying to compress a day and a half of discussion into I don't know, forty sixty minutes. But all of these papers are available online at the Boston Fed's website.
Totally and if you want to actually see the conference itself, if this episode if somehow this episode was not enough for you. Actually, the entire conference is on videos. You could see all of the presentations and the discussions and so forth. It's all available online.
But I'm so glad we went because I feel like I have a much better understanding of how policy actually develops, how research develops, and what economists are kind of aiming for totally.
So when we went to Boston, you know, in my mind, I was thinking that we're there to learn more about economics, which of course we did, and there are all kinds of interesting ideas on supply chains, inflation, all this stuff we talked about. But it was also and I hadn't
appreciated this, it was a sociology trip. Like I learned about the sociology of how academic work works, the relationship between academic work and policy and stuff, which is just one of these things that of course intuitively is very important, but I don't think like anyone really thinks about and when you think about, like how economists could be under this sort of dual pressure of like do I want to influence policy and is there some cost if I'm
focusing on maximizing total published output. You could see some real interesting tensions that emerge in that process.
Right, it's sort of a microcosm of academia. I guess which we got to study for a day and a half, so I don't know. Maybe maybe next year we'll be in the room at Jackson Hall.
We can hope if anyone at the Kansas City Fed is listening.
All right, shall we leave it there?
Let's leave it there.
This has been another episode of the Audthoughts podcast. I'm Tracy Alloway. You can follow me at Tracy Alloway.
And I'm Joe Wisenthal. You can follow me at the Stalwart. Big thanks to Susan Collins and the rest of the Boston FED for inviting us to observe and participate in their conference. And once again all the people who took the time to chat with us, We really appreciate them. You should go to the Boston Fed's website and really check out those papers and presentations, all of it excellent. Follow our producers Carmen Rodriguez at Carmen Armitt, dash Ol
Bennett who actually joined us on the trip. He's at Dashbod and Cal Brooks at Calebrooks. For more Odd Lots content, go to Bloomberg dot com slash odd Lots with a daily newsletter and all of our episodes, and you can chout about all of these topics twenty four to seven in our discord discord dot gg slash odline.
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