Bank Stability and Regulation Conference in Sweden and Small Academic World

Today and tomorrow I am taking part in a Finance conference here at the School of Business, Economics and Law at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden on Bank Stability and Regulation.

One of my finance colleagues here in Gothenburg, Professor Ted Lindblom, invited me and I have been enjoying the talks and meeting people very much. Below he is standing with another Finance colleague of mine here in Gothenburg, Professor Stefan Sjogren.

The academic world is so small - even though Finance is not my primary discipline (but I have co-authored the Financial Networks book and quite a few papers on multitiered financial networks and even the integration of financial and social networks),  I still find it very easy to talk to people and there is only "one ddegree of separation."

For example, Professor Deborah Lucas of MIT, with me below, knows my Isenberg School colleague, Professor Mila Sherman, very well, And Professor Manju Puri of Duke, who is also here, went to grad school at NYU with my colleague at Isenberg, Professor Nikunj Kapadia.

Plus, the first speaker today, Dr. Jiao Santos of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, who gave a fabulous talk, has as his co-author on the paper, Matthew Plosser, whose father, Charles Plosser, is the President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia. He is stepping down and Pat Harker, the President of the University of Delaware, an INFORMS Fellow, and former Editor of the journal, Operations Research, and whom I know, is becoming the next President and CEO of this institution.

Below I have posted some photos of the speakers and discussants and some of the papers have been made available and are accessible from the conference website:
 
Papers available:
Joao A.C. Santos, Federal Reserve Bank of New York and Nova School of Business and Economics; "Banks' Incentives and the Quality of Internal Risk Models"
Giorgia Piacentino, Washington University in St Louis; "Bank Capital, Bank Credit, and Unemployment"
Piero Gottardi, European University Institute and University of Venice; "Capital Structure, Investment, and Fire Sales"
Nittai K. Bergman, MIT; "Financial Accelerator at Work: Evidence from Corn Fields"
Paolo Fulghieri, University of North Carolina; "Uncertainty Aversion and Systemic Risk"

 I have enjoyed the diversity of topics and approaches, from empirical studies to theoretical general equilibrium models.  The presentations and discussions have been excellent and it would be interesting to apply such ideas as aggregate risk and aversion to uncertainty that I heard about today to supply chain networks.

The full program for the conference can be accessed here.

And, although I see many New York Yankees caps on  residents of Gothenburg, Professor Nittal Bergman of MIT brought his Red Sox cap, so I had to photograph it below. Nice to see folks from Massachusetts here in Sweden!

 Many thanks to the organizers of this great conference.