AI Summary
5 min read🎙️ The Voices & The Context
- The Format: This episode weaves hosts' on-site narration, economist interviews, and presentation clips to demystify a high-stakes academic conference on the US economy amid global shifts, delivering an immersive, insider-access tone that's eagerly inquisitive and revealing.
- The Format: A host discussion interspersed with interviews and audio clips from a research conference.
- The Key Players:
- Hosts Tracy Alloway and Joe Weisenthal, Bloomberg Odd Lots podcasters, whose sharp banter and wide-eyed curiosity about econ academia create electric chemistry while unpacking the event's policy undercurrents.
🗝️ Key Themes & Topics
The episode spotlights the Boston Fed's 69th annual research conference themed "US Economy in a Changing Global Landscape," covering tariffs, geopolitics, AI, and industrial policy through paper presentations, critiques, and chats.
- Topic 1: Conference Mechanics and Research Process: Hosts explain the setup—papers commissioned for the event, paired with discussants for public critique—highlighting how these gatherings birth macro ideas that shape Fed policy, contrasting it with glitzy Jackson Hole.
- Topic 2: US Vulnerability to Global Shocks via Networks: Shepnam Kalemli-Ozcan's paper challenges the view of America as insulated, arguing trade, production, and finance networks expose i
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What you'll learn
- 1 **(00:00) 🎙️ Pre-Conference Chat: Omar Barbiero on Tariffs Paper**
- 2 **(05:01) Conference Overview: Boston Fed's 69th Annual Event**
- 3 **(07:42) Interview: Giovanni Zakrajšek (Boston Fed Research Director)**
- 4 **(12:30) First Paper: Ĺžebnem Kalemli-Ă–zcan (Brown University) - "Global Networks Risks and the US Economy"**
- 5 **(16:46) Discussant Role: Aaron Flinn (Boston Fed Principal Economist)**
- 6 **(19:49) Second Paper: Tommaso Monacelli (Universita Bocconi) - "Supply Chain Uncertainty, Energy Prices, and Inflation"**
- 7 **(24:40) Discussant: Ludwig Straub (Harvard) Critiques Monacelli Paper**
+ Full timestamped outline available in the app
Show Notes
Every year, regional Federal Reserve banks host some of the most substantive — and under-the-radar — events in the central banking world: research conferences. Behind the formal papers and dense macro models, this is where much of the Fed’s intellectual groundwork for monetary policy first starts to take shape. On this episode, we take you inside the Boston Fed's 69th annual Economic Conference to hear what the economists are actually debating, how they choose the questions that matter most, and what happens when the evidence — or egos — clash. Along the way, we talk to Fed researchers, outside academics, and Boston Fed President Susan Collins about how this kind of work influences policy in the real world.
Watch all the presentations at the Boston Fed's website
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