MESSAGE from the DIRECTOR

2018 - 2019

PIER CELEBRATES ITS’ 25th ANNIVERSARYAs you can tell from the special logo in the heading of this edition of our Newsletter, PIER turns 25 this academic year!

which included seminal contributions in various areas of Macroeconomics by prominent authors. The conference program is being put together by two distinguished Penn Econ PhD alumni, Johnathan Heathcote ('98) and Vincenzo Quadrini ('96), who will also serve as editors of the new “Frontiers” volume. The majority of the contributors are connected to PIER as current or former Penn faculty or PhD alumni, including Jesus Fernandez-Villaverde, Patrick Kehoe, Enrique Mendoza, Fabrizio Perri, Victor Rios-Rull, Richard Rogerson and Randall Wright. Watch for more details about the conference early in the Winter term!

The Penn Institute for Economic Research was established in 1994 with generous gifts from Larry Klein, who was also the first Director of the Institute, and from William P. Carey. To mark this special anniversary, PIER will be hosting a conference on "Frontiers of Business Cycle Research" in May of 2019, in the auditorium of our new location at the Perelman Center for Political Science and Economics (at 36th & Walnut Streets). The conference itself will also mark a noteworthy anniversary, namely the 25th anniversary of the publication of the famous volume "Frontiers of Business Cycle Research" edited by Tom Cooley,

As I begin my fifth year as Director of PIER, I am happy to report that with the continued support of our donors, particularly Martha and Jonathan Cohen, and the successful Workshops on Quantitative Tools for Macroeconomic Policy Analysis we started in 2015, PIER is well positioned to continue operating at a high level of activity, maintaining valuable programs (e.g. the Department’s Working Paper series and SSRN access, travel grants for our PhD students, support for

faculty conferences) and sustaining important new ones, like the RA Stipend Matching Grants introduced in 2015. I am looking forward to very enriching visits by our Cohen distinguished visitors this year. Finally, I am very pleased that we will be celebrating our 25th anniversary by hosting the "Frontiers” conference. We will have a reception to mark this anniversary with all our PIER friends, with details forthcoming next Spring. - Enrique G. Mendoza

www.economics.sas.upenn.edu/pier 133 S. 36th Street, Suite 639, Philadelphia, PA 19104

pier@ssc.upenn.edu215-898-9992

RECENT NEWS

PIER 2018 - 19 RA Stippend Matching Grants Awarded

CONGRATULATIONS Younjgsoo Heo & Sergio Villalvazoon receiving this award.

PIER 2018 - 19 Cohen Distinguished Visitor

We will WELCOME Guillermo Calvo as our first Cohen distinguished visitor this year. He will be visiting the week of Oct. 15, 2018 and will give a lecture on Wed., Oct. 17th at 4 pm to 5:30pm. in The Forum located on the 2nd floor of PCPSE.

NEW Location

Over the summer of 2018 PIER moved from the McNeil Building to Room 639 in the Ronald O. Perelman Center for Political Science and Economics (PCPSE), located at 133 South 36th St

NEW PIER Coordinator

On April 30, 2018, Cheryl Tracy was hired in PIER. Her office is located in Room 639 in PCPSE.

Philadelphia Workshop on Macroeconomics and Economic Policy

The workshop will be hosted on campus at the PCPSE auditorium on April 5 and 6, 2019.

DONATEPIER

Your SUPPORT makes the DIFFERENCE.

You can make your Tax-Deductible Donation by visiting our website at: https://economics.sas.upenn.edu/pier/donate

to

The Philadelphia Workshop on Macroeconomics and Economic Policy was held at Penn on April 6th and 7th. This Workshop is a joint venture with the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia. Last year was the second edition of the revamped version of this conference, which has been running since the 1990’s..

PHILADELPHIA WORKSHOP

PIER hosted Prof. Yeon-Koo Che from Columbia University from September 25 to 29, 2017. He delivered the Elias B.Cohen lecture, “Large Matching Markets” on Tuesday, September 26th. Our next distinuisghed speaker was Prof. Hugo Hopenhayn from UCLA. He visited from October 23 to 27, 2017 and delivered the lecture, “On the Direction of Innovation” on Wednesday, October 25th.

COHEN VISITORS

We issued 28 new PIER Working Papers, reaching a total of 799 since the start of the series in 1997. The series had 8,840 downloads through the SSRN site, adding up to over 149,000 since the start of our SSRN membership.

WORKING PAPERSSERIES

ITAM - PIERCONFERENCE

The 4th edition of the ITAM-PIER conference washeld at Penn on August 24th and 25th, 2017. This conference is co-organized with the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México. The location alternates between the two institutions..

PIER GRANTS

Tomas Larroucau and Eugenio Rojas received the PIER RA Stipend Matching Grants . We also continued to provide conference travel grants for PhD students..

4th PIERWORKSHOP on

QUANTITATIVE TOOLS for MACROECONOMIC POLICYThis year's workshop included participants from the central banks of Brazil, Canada, Italy, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru and the United States, as well as the European Central Bank and the Bank for International Settlements. among others

The five-day Tools Workshop ran from April 30th to May 4th, and featured three mini-courses taught by professors Frank Diebold, Jesus Fernandez-Villaverde and Enrique Mendoza on topics in their areas of expertise, and a mini workshop on Public Debt Sustainability. In addition, the Penn faculty lecture was given by Professor Jose Victor Rios-Rull, and two distinguished guest lectures were given by Professors Alan Blinder from Princeton and Guillermo Calvo from Columbia.

Workshop Participants

PIER Director Enrique Mendoza @ 2018 Workshop

Professor Fernandez-Villaverde

Professor Diebold

2017-2018 ACADEMIC YEAR HIGHLIGHTS