August 28, 2009

Federal Reserve Bank official to discuss economy

by Andrea Hahn

CARBONDALE, Ill. -- Robert H. Rasche, executive vice president and senior policy adviser at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, comes to Southern Illinois University Carbondale to deliver the annual Vandeveer Chair Lecture in Economics.

Rasche’s lecture, “The Report of the Death of the Economy was an Exaggeration,” begins at 6 p.m. on Sept. 30 in the Student Center Auditorium. The lecture is free and open to the public.

Rasche, who is part of the research division of the Federal Reserve Bank, has an article forthcoming in the “International Journal of Central Banking.” He also has articles in the “Journal of Macroeconomics” and “Journal of Financial Services Research,” among others. He earned his doctoral degree from the University of Michigan in 1966. Rasche was professor of economics at Michigan State University for 24 years before joining the St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank.

The Vandeveer chair was endowed in 1960 through a gift from W. W. Vandeveer, a University alumnus. This is the seventh annual lecture sponsored by the endowed chair. Sajal Lahiri, professor of economics, holds the endowed chair and organizes the Vandeveer Chair Lecture and the Vandeveer Speaker Series. The Vandeveer Chair Lecture brings a noted economist to discuss economic topics of general interest. The series offers experts on more specific economic and social sciences topics.

The Vandeveer Speaker Series lectures begin at 3 p.m. in Faner Hall Room 4135. The schedule is:

• Sept. 18 -- George Deltas, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Topic: Welfare Enhancing Collusion and Trade

• Sept. 25 -- Takumi Naito, Tokyo Institute of Technology and University of California, San Diego

Topic: Aid for Trade and Global Growth

• Oct. 9 -- Scott Gilbert, SIUC

Topic: Prospects for Portfolio Tilting

• Oct. 16 -- Richard Akresh, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Topic: Armed Conflict and Schooling; Evidence from the 1994 Rwandan Genocide

• Oct. 30 -- Vitor Trindade, University of Missouri at Columbia

Topic: Openness and Productivity: Theory and Some Evidence on International Competition and Firm-Owners’ Effort

• Nov 13 -- Sajal Lahiri, SIUC

Topic: Blood Diamond: Policy Options for an International Community

• Dec. 4 -- A.K.M. Mahbub Morshed, SIUC

Topic: Elastic Labor Supply and Real Exchange Rate Dynamics