The School of Economics and Finance, Victoria University of Wellington, organised the 24th annual edition of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) East Asian Seminar in Economics in June.

The NBER is the world’s premier economic research organization, and this was the first NBER conference ever organised in New Zealand.

The topic of this year’s conference was “Crises in open economies”, attracting academics from the University of California at Berkeley, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of Michigan, University of Tokyo, Peking University, Hong Kong University of Sciences and Technology, National University of Singapore, Australian National University, National Taiwan University, Korean Development Institute, Thailand Development Institute, and others.

Professor Maurice Obstfeld was the conference keynote speaker, and presented a lecture titled “Finance at the Center Stage: Some Lessons from Euro Crisis”. The event was sponsored by Victoria University of Wellington, the Reserve Bank, and The Treasury.