Webinar: Macroeconomic developments and digital markets, June 18, 12:00 – 13:00 (Central European Summer Time)
Webinar with Alex Fazel from SwissBorg in Lausanne. SwissBorg is a wealth management platform focused on cryptocurrency, designed to simplify investing and offer secure access to the crypto market. It has grown fast, with 220 employees as of 2024.”
Digital assets have become increasingly important and are relevant from a general economic perspective. It has been argued in the past that these innovations in the financial sector could potentially spur productivity growth in the financial and general economy. Other voices are more cautious and question the usefulness of digital assets or crypto markets. How do macroeconomic developments affect digital markets? Alex Fazel will tell us more about this topic. He is the Chief Partnerships Officer and Founding Partner of SwissBorg.
- Time: June 18, 12:00 – 13:00 (Central European Summer Time)
- Online via Zoom, the meeting link will be sent
- Presentation and discussion in English
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Will the United States enter a recession? Economists are divided about this question. In the first quarter of 2025, gross domestic product contracted by 0.1% (annualized 0.3%). This was likely distorted downward. High imports before the “liberation day” on April 2 – import growth was 9.0% in Q1 – were probably not fully reflected in higher private consumption, firm investment, and inventories due to measurement issues. It will be interesting to see the revisions by the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) in a few days. Nevertheless, the US economy seems to be weakening somewhat according to various indicators. In a recent poll within our community, a slight majority thinks that the US economy will avoid a recession this year. While imports surged to the United States, exports from other countries increased. In particular, higher German export growth in March contributed to a relatively strong increase in GDP in the first quarter of 2025 (+0.4%). China also experienced a similar pattern, while the Japanese economy contracted during the first months of the year.
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Here is what our network liked (selection): Tariffs, the FOMC’s monetary policy strategy, household inflation expectations, and much more…
Wow, super interesting!“The Optimal Macro Tariff“ by Oleg Itskhoki and Dmitry Mukhin“What is the optimal macroeconomic tariff when trade is imbalanced and the policy objectives go beyond social welfare and also include fiscal revenues, increasing the number of manufacturing jobs, and closing a trade deficit? We study these questions in an environment which allows for long-run bilateral and aggregate trade deficits that reflect the country’s net foreign asset position and differential returns on foreign assets and liabilities (the “exorbitant privilege”). Only in special cases does the optimal tariff emerge as an increasing function of a trade deficit and for reasons unrelated to trade competitiveness.“
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Super interesting!
Markus‘ Academy: William Dudley and Carolyn Wilkins on „The Federal Reserve Monetary Policy Framework Review: A Comprehensive Approach to Improve Robustness„
„The Fed’s 2020 Framework was designed for a low inflation world, and it turned out to be poorly suited for the rapid demand recovery and supply shocks we saw after Covid““The new framework should be robust to risks on both sides of the dual mandate. The report has 6 main proposals, including ending flexible average inflation targeting, a more balanced approach to the dual mandate, and developing a comprehensive cost-benefit framework for QE/QT“
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Thought-provoking!
„Lessons for the FOMC’s Monetary Policy Strategy“ by Carl E. Walsh
„The current 5-year review of the FOMC’s Statement on Longer-Run Goals and Monetary Policy Strategy provides an opportunity to assess the revisions made in 2020. I review the rationale behind the 2020 revisions and then discuss the new operational objectives: asymmetric average inflation targeting and a shortfalls from maximum employment. Macroeconomic developments since 2020 led to an environment that was very different than the one anticipated when the 2020 policy framework was adopted. In this new environment, the 2020 changes created a risk that the US would suffer a repeat of the 1970s, a risk compounded by the FOMC’s slow reaction as inflation rose during 2021-2022. I illustrate the consequences of such a delay in addressing high inflation.“
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Very insightful!
„Food prices matter most: sensitive household inflation expectations“ by Nikoleta Anesti, Vania Esady and Matthew Naylor
„We construct a novel data set to investigate the sensitivity of household inflation expectations to personal experienced inflation, testing whether households weigh price changes differently across items in the consumption basket. Across households of all age, income, gender, work status, UK region, and house tenure groups, food prices matter significantly more for inflation expectations dynamics than other components, including energy.““Our results imply that the risk of household expectations contributing to persistent inflationary dynamics are greatest following large and inflationary shocks to, specifically, food prices. Moreover, our findings can rationalise a number of empirical regularities related to household expectations…“
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This seminar presentation by Pierpaolo Benigno (University of Bern) was super interesting and challenging food for thought!
„Pierpaolo Benigno – Monetary economics and policy: A foundation for modern currency systems„
By the way, his book is available here: “Monetary Economics and Policy: A Foundation for Modern Currency Systems”
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Call for papers: The future of global trade and implications for monetary policy10th Joint Bank of Canada and European Central Bank conferenceMonday, 22 and Tuesday, 23 September 2025, Bank of Canada, Ottawa, Canada
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