MEA 2008 Annual Conference

About the Speakers

Örn Bodvarsson is a professor of economics in the College of Social Sciences and chair of the department of management in the Herberger College of Business at St. Cloud State University. He is also a Research Fellow with the Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in Bonn, Germany. He is a labor economist whose research focuses on the economics of immigration and labor market discrimination. On these topics, he has published papers in such journals as Labour Economics, Journal of International Trade and Economic Development, Economic Inquiry, Contemporary Economic Policy, Public Finance Review, and Economics of Education Review. He recently contributed a chapter to a volume in the Research in Labor Economics series focusing on immigration and co-authored the chapter on labor economics in China's version of the Handbook of Economics, published by Peking University Press and distributed throughout China. This fall, Springer will publish The Economics of Immigration, Theory and Policy, which he co-authored. He received his Ph.D. in economics from Simon Fraser University.

Charles Engel is a professor of economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His research is in the area of international macroeconomics and international finance. His current projects focus on the behavior of foreign exchange rates, monetary and exchange rate policy, and the effects of exchange rates on consumer prices. His work has appeared in the American Economic Review, Journal of Political Economy, Journal of Monetary Economics, and Journal of International Economics. He is editor of the Journal of International Economics. He has frequently been a visiting scholar at the Federal Reserve Board, several regional Federal Reserve Banks, and the International Monetary Fund. He is also a research associate for the National Bureau of Economic Research and a senior fellow for the Globalization and Monetary Policy Institute at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. Engel received his Ph.D. in economics from the University of California-Berkeley.

Chris Farrell is economics editor for American Public Media's Marketplace Money and Marketplace Morning Report. He is also a contributing economics editor at Business Week magazine, where he was previously economics editor and, before that, corporate finance editor. He was host of public television's Right On The Money. Prior to that, he was finance editor at Business Times on ESPN and was heard on Business Times Radio. He is the author of Right on the Money!: Taking Control of Your Personal Finances. Farrell holds degrees from the London School of Economics and Stanford University.

Tom Gillaspy has served as the Minnesota state demographer since 1979. During that time, he has been involved with a wide-ranging set of issues, applying an understanding of demographic trends in such areas as the state's economy, health care for an aging population, welfare reform, rural population change, labor shortages, government spending, and the aging state workforce. The state demographer is part of the Minnesota Planning Agency, whose mission is to inform policy decisions through long-range planning and to provide policymakers and the public with accurate information and analysis about emerging and critical issues. Prior to moving to Minnesota, he held the position of demographer at the Andrus Gerontology Center, University of Southern California. Gillaspy received his Ph.D. in economics from Pennsylvania State University, specializing in economic demography.

Timothy Kehoe is the Distinguished McKnight University Professor in the Department of Economics at the University of Minnesota and adviser to the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. He has held teaching positions at Wesleyan University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the University of Cambridge in England. Kehoe's research and teaching center on the theory and application of general equilibrium models. He advised the Spanish government on the impact of joining the European Community and the Mexican government on the impact of joining the North American Free Trade Area. Kehoe's community outreach work includes a position on the Board of Economists of the Minneapolis StarTribune and a stint as a columnist for the St. Paul Pioneer Press. Kehoe is a fellow of the Econometric Society. He received his Ph.D. in economics from Yale University.

Christopher Phelan is a professor of economics at the University of Minnesota and adviser to the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. He has held teaching positions at the Kellogg Graduate School of Management, Northwestern University, and at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Phelan was also a visiting scholar at New York University. He is best known for his work in general equilibrium mechanism design and for his work at the intersection of game theory and macroeconomics. His published work includes papers in the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis Quarterly Review, Journal of Economic Theory, Review of Economic Studies, and Econometrica. Phelan received his Ph.D. in economics from the University of Chicago.

Thomas F. Stinson is a professor of economics in the Department of Applied Economics, University of Minnesota, teaching courses in macroeconomics and public finance. Since 1987 he has served as the Minnesota state economist, where his duties include preparation of the state revenue forecast. He frequently speaks to policymakers, business and community leaders, and the media about the Minnesota economy. In 2005 he received the University of Minnesota's Community Service Award that honors faculty, staff, and greater University community members who have made substantial, enduring contributions that improve public life and the well-being of society. Stinson received his Ph.D. in economics from the University of Minnesota.