MEA 2009 Annual Conference
About the Speakers
Scott Anderson is senior economist for Wells Fargo & Co. He is responsible for the analysis and forecasting of international, national and regional economic trends. He has also held positions at Moody’s Economy.com and the International Monetary Fund. He was recently named one of the Top Ten Economic Forecasters in the country by USA Today for his forecasting accuracy during 2008, the worst U.S. recession in 50 years. He provides daily analyses of U.S. economic releases and produces Wells Fargo’s macroeconomic forecasts. He has appeared in numerous media including: CNBC, Bloomberg, MSNBC, BBC, NPR, Wall Street Journal and New York Times. Anderson holds a doctorate in economics with an emphasis in monetary theory and international trade and finance from George Washington University.
King Banaian is professor and chairman of the department of economics at St. Cloud State University. He has consulted at the central banks of Ukraine, Egypt and Macedonia and the ministries of finance of Indonesia, Macedonia and Armenia. He is author of The Ukrainian Economy since Independence and co-editor of The Design and Use of Political Economy Indicators. He is senior policy fellow at the Minnesota Free Market Institute in Minneapolis and a fellow of the Armenian International Policy Research Group in Washington, D.C., and Yerevan, Armenia. He also directs the Center for Economic Education at SCSU and is co-author of the St. Cloud Quarterly Business Report. Banaian received his Ph.D. in economics from the Claremont Graduate School.
John H. Boyd holds the Kappel Chair in Business and Government at the Carlson School, University of Minnesota, where he is also chairman of the Finance Department. He is currently a consultant to the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis and the International Monetary Fund. His primary research interests include financial intermediation, finance and economic development, banking, bank regulation, optimal contracting and the economics of gun ownership. Previously, he has been consultant to the U.S. Treasury, the Government Accountability Office, the Council of Economic Advisers and the World Bank. Boyd received his Ph.D. in applied economics from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.
Ron Feldman is senior vice president for supervision, regulation and credit at the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. He joined the bank in 1995 in the supervision department, became an officer of the bank in 1999, a managing officer in 2004 and senior vice president in 2008. In addition to his supervisory responsibilities, he has published research on a wide array of banking and financial topics. He is the co-author of Too Big to Fail: The Hazards of Bank Bailouts, published by the Brookings Institution (2004). Feldman has a B.A. from the University of Wisconsin and an MPA from Syracuse University.
Eric Maskin is professor of social science at the Institute for Advanced Study and visiting lecturer with the rank of professor at Princeton University. In 2007 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics with Leonid Hurwicz and Roger Myerson. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Econometrics Society and the European Economic Association, and a corresponding fellow of the British Academy. His current research includes comparing different electoral rules, examining the causes of inequality and studying coalition formation. He is well known for his papers on mechanism design/implementation theory and dynamic games. Maskin received his Ph.D. in applied mathematics from Harvard University.
Louis Johnston is associate professor of economics at the College of Saint Benedict and Saint John’s University. He is special contributor to the 4th edition of Principles of Economics by Robert H. Frank and Ben S. Bernanke (2009), with responsibility for developing and writing the macroeconomics chapters. He also helped produce a “brief” version of the book suitable for one-semester survey courses. His recent projects focus on estimating U.S. GDP between 1790 and 1928 and analyzing the evolution of Minnesota’s economy over the past 60 years. He is also a regular guest on Minnesota Public Radio’s Midday program. Johnston received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkley.
Lee Ohanian is consultant to the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis and professor of economics at the University of California–Los Angeles. He has also taught at the University of Minnesota, the University of Pennsylvania, Arizona State University and the Stockholm School of Economics. He is a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research and, with Jeremy Greenwood, directs the NBER working group Macroeconomics Across Time and Space. His research focuses on macroeconomic policy, business cycle theory and economic growth. Recently he has examined the dynamics of major depressions and is writing a macroeconomics textbook with Thomas Cooley. Ohanian received his Ph.D. from the University of Rochester.
Timothy Taylor is managing editor of the Journal of Economic Perspectives, a quarterly academic journal produced at Macalester College and published by the American Economic Association. He also contributes a regular column, “Recommendations for Further Reading.” Prior to JEP, he worked as an editorial writer for the San Jose Mercury News. He has been a guest speaker at various locations, including talk-radio shows and community meetings, and has recorded five lecture series for the Teaching Company. Taylor received his master’s degree in economics from Stanford University.