International Center for Futures and Derivatives

Press Release

Financial Markets: How Real?

On May 1 and 2, the second Chicago/London Conference on Financial Markets was held at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Sixteen papers were presented. They focused on the impact of finance and financial markets on a variety of real activities and can be viewed at https://web.cba.uic.edu/beta/Chicago_London_financial_markets_2009/index.html

The papers examined, among other topics, international dimensions of the financial crisis, the role of bank balance sheets, a variety of corrective policies, the economy-wide effects of financial shocks, several lessons from the Japanese experience in the 1990's, and the effects of finance and financial markets on business investment.

Conference participants were drawn from the academic communities on both sides of the Atlantic and policy organizations such as the IMF, the Federal Reserve Banks of Boston and San Francisco, and the European Central Bank.

The conference is part of a series being organized by Centre for Econometric Analysis (CEA) at the Cass Business School (http://www.cass.city.ac.uk/cea/index.html)and the International Center for Futures and Derivative (ICFD) at the University of Illinois at Chicago (http://www.uic.edu/cba/icfd/) with financial support from the Bank of England, the CEA, CME Trust, ESRC, ICFD, and the Journal of Applied Econometrics. The first Chicago/London Conferences on Financial Markets, What Went Wrong? Financial Engineering, Financial Econometrics, and the Current Stress, was held at Cass in December 2008 (http://www.cass.city.ac.uk/conferences/Chicago_London/ Conference1/index.html)

The conference series will continue, and new programs will be announced soon.