Prof. Finn E. Kydland
Nobel Laureate for Economics at the Department of Economics of the University of California in Santa Barbara/USA, March 2024
Biography:
Professor Finn Erling Kydlandis a 2004 Nobel Laureate for Economics at the Department of Economics of the University of California in Santa Barbara and a Member of the Advisory Board of the International Peace Foundation.
Finn E. Kydland received his B.A. in Economics from the Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration and his Ph.D. in Economics from Carnegie Mellon University. He joined the faculty of the University of California in Santa Barbara in 2004 where he holds the Jeff Henley Chair in Economics, after previous appointments at Carnegie Mellon University, the University of Texas at Austin and the Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration. He is a Research Associate for the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas and a Senior Research Fellow at the IC2 Institute at the University of Texas at Austin. He has held visiting scholar and professor positions at, among other places, the Hoover Institution and the Universidad Torcuato di Tella in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He was elected a Fellow of the Econometric Society in 1992.
Professor Kydland was awarded the 2004 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences jointly with Professor Edward C. Prescott of Arizona State University. Professors Kydland and Prescott received the Nobel Prize for their research on business cycles and macroeconomic policy, specifically the driving forces behind business cycles and the time consistency of economic policy. Their awarded work established the foundations for an extensive research program on the credibility and political feasibility of economic policy. This research shifted the practical discussion of economic policy away from isolated policy measures towards the institutions of policymaking, a shift that has largely influenced the reforms of central banks and the design of monetary policy in many countries over the last decade.
Research by the Laureates also transformed the theory of business cycles by integrating it with the theory of economic growth. Whereas earlier research had emphasized macroeconomic shocks on the demand side of the economy, Professors Kydland and Prescott demonstrated that shocks on the supply side may have far-reaching effects. In their business-cycle model realistic fluctuations in the rate of technological development brought about a co-variation between GDP, consumption, investments and hours worked close to that observed in actual data. Previous business-cycle models had typically been based on historical relations between key macroeconomic variables. But models that had functioned quite well during the 1960s began to break down under the more turbulent economic conditions of the 1970s, with oil-price shocks and concurrent inflation and unemployment. The Laureates laid the groundwork for more robust models by regarding business cycles as the collective outcome of countless forward-looking decisions made by individual households and firms regarding consumption, investments, labor supply, etc. The methods of Professor Kydland and Professor Prescott have been widely adopted in modern macroeconomics.
More recently Professor Kydland has conducted research on the role of monetary policy for the business cycle. He has studied Ireland and Argentina in the belief that there is a lot for other nations’ policy makers to learn from the respective successes and failures of these two nations.
Topics of keynote speeches:
- Consistent economic policy and economic development
- Peace and economic development in the age of globalization
Schedule:
Saturday, March 9, 2024:
14:00 Public keynote speech and dialogue at Meiji University in Tokyo
– Further information and free seat reservation: phone 03-3296-2398, email guroken@mics.meiji.ac.jp (www.meiji.ac.jp/cip/english)
Monday, March 11, 2024:
14:00 Public keynote speech and dialogue at Kasetsart University in Bangkok
– Further information and free seat reservation: phone 02-579-2800, email ecia@ku.ac.th (www.ecia.eco.ku.ac.th)
Tuesday, March 12, 2024:
14:00 Public keynote speech and dialogue at Srinakharinwirot University in Bangkok
– Further information and free seat reservation: phone 02-169-1004, email admin.econ@g.swu.ac.th (www.econ.swu.ac.th)
Wednesday, March 13, 2024:
14:00 Public keynote speech and dialogue at Siam University in Bangkok
– Further information and free seat reservation: phone 096-859-0450, email yhing@siam.edu (www.siam.edu)