12th Annual Conference
Master Class by Professor Steven Davis
Measuring Policy Uncertainty, Assessing its Consequences
We will review text-based approaches to measuring policy uncertainty and assessing its effects on business investment, employment growth, and national economic performance. We will show how to use similar methods to quantify and characterize the sources of stock market volatility. Throughout the discussion, we will attend to the role of simplicity, transparency, expertise, scalability, cost, and performance in selecting a text corpus and text-based methods for research purposes.
2025
Conrad Singapore Orchard, 1 Cuscaden Rd, Singapore 249715
Speakers
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Professor Steven DAVIS
Thomas W. and Susan B. Ford Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution; Senior Fellow, Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, William H. Abbott Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and Senior Fellow and Exco Member, ABFER
Steven Davis is the Thomas W. and Susan B. Ford Senior Fellow and Director of Research at the Hoover Institution, senior fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR), and distinguished service professor emeritus at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. He is an NBER research associate, IZA research fellow, senior academic fellow with the Asian Bureau of Finance and Economics Research, adviser to the Monetary Authority of Singapore, visiting scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, senior adviser to the Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, and an elected fellow of the Society of Labor Economists. He hosts Economics, Applied, a bi-monthly podcast series sponsored by the Hoover Institution.
In addition to his scholarly work, Davis has written for the Atlantic, Bloomberg View, Financial Times, Forbes, Los Angeles Times, Wall Street Journal and other popular media. He has appeared on BBC, Bloomberg TV, CGTN, Channel News Asia, CNBC, CNN, Fox News, NBC Network News, Sinclair Broadcast Group, and the U.S. Public Broadcasting System. -
Professor Shang-Jin WEI
N.T. Wang Professor of Chinese Business and Economy, and Professor of Finance and Economics, Columbia University; Former Chief Economist, Asian Development Bank and Vice President, ABFER
Shang-Jin Wei is N.T. Wang Professor of Chinese Business and Economy and Professor of Finance and Economics at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Business and School of International and Public Affairs.
During 2014-2016, Dr. Wei served as Chief Economist of Asian Development Bank and Director General of its Economic Research and Regional Cooperation Department. He was ADB’s chief spokesperson on economic trends and economic development in Asia, advised ADB’s President on economic development issues, led the bank’s analytical support for regional cooperation fora including ASEAN+3 (China, Japan, and Korea) and APEC, growth strategy diagnostics for developing member countries, as well as research on macroeconomic, financial, labor market, and globalization issues.
Prior to his Columbia appointment in 2007, he was Assistant Director and Chief of Trade and Investment Division at the International Monetary Fund. He was the IMF’s Chief of Mission to Myanmar (Burma) in 2004. He previously held the positions of Associate Professor of Public Policy at Harvard University, the New Century Chair in Trade and International Economics at the Brookings Institution, and Advisor at the World Bank.
He has been a consultant to numerous government organizations including the U.S. Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, United Nations Economic Commission on Europe, and United Nations Development Program, the Asian Development Bank, and to private companies such as PricewaterhouseCoopers. He holds a PhD in economics and M.S. in finance from the University of California, Berkeley.
Dr. Wei is a noted scholar on international finance, trade, macroeconomics, and China. He is a recipient of the Sun Yefang Prize for Distinguished Contributions to Economics (for the invention of the Competitive Saving Motive published in Journal of Political Economy), the Zhang Peifang Prize for Contributions to Economics of Development (for pioneering work on measurement of global value chains published in American Economic Review), and the Gregory Chow Award for Best Research Paper; some of his research was supported by a grant from the U.S. National Science Foundation.
Dr. Wei’s research has been published in top academic journals including American Economic Review, Journal of Political Economy, Quarterly Journal of Economics, Journal of Finance, Review of Financial Studies, Journal of International Economics, and Journal of Development Economics, and reported in popular media including Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, Economist, Business Week, Times, US News and World Report, Chicago Tribune, South China Morning Post, and other international news media.
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Session Format
90 minutes lecture followed by 30 minutes Q&A.