Columbia hosts first conference of research group co-organized with Harvard

The Politics and Economics of International Finance conference brought together about 50 scholars from political science and economics, as well as practitioners from the worlds of finance and economic policymaking.

The Center for Political Economy supported the one-day conference on May 7 jointly with the Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy, and the Institute of Global Politics. The research group – a collaboration of researchers at Columbia and Harvard universities – had met previously only at Harvard, but going forward will alternate conference locations between the two Ivy League universities each year.

^{— Photos by Barbara Alper}

The research group is led by professor Jeffrey Frankel of Harvard Kennedy School and Jeffry Frieden, professor in both Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs and the Department of Political Science, as well as a member of the advisory board for the Center for Political Economy.

At the conference, the scholars presented summaries of their ongoing research projects. 

Wenxin Du of the Harvard Business School delivered a presentation titled “Are U.S. dollar and Treasury bonds still special?,” which addressed the extent to which international investors and governments regard the dollar and Treasury securities to be as safe an asset as has been the case in the past.

Layna Mosley of Princeton University spoke on “The (Domestic and International) Politics of Sovereign Finance,” exploring recent political and economic developments in international lending by both private and public entities.

Jesse Schreger of the Columbia Business School presented an overview of his scholarship on “Geoeconomics,” the use of economic policies for geopolitical purposes. 

The three presentations were followed by a “policy panel,” a conversation between Professor Frankel and Emily Blanchard (Dartmouth), the former chief economist of the Department of State, and Brent Neiman (Chicago), the former Deputy Undersecretary of the Treasury for International Finance.