Biographies
Viral V. Acharya is a professor of finance at New York University Stern School of Business. Prior to joining Stern, he was a professor of finance at the London Business School, where he also served as academic director of the Collier Institute of Private Equity from 2007 to 2009. His research focuses primarily on the regulation of banks and financial institutions, corporate finance, credit risk and valuation of corporate debt, and asset pricing with a focus on the effects of liquidity risk. Acharya's work has been published in a number of academic journals, including the American Economic Review, Journal of Financial Economics, Review of Financial Studies, Journal of Finance, and Journal of Money, Credit and Banking. He serves as editor of the Journal of Financial Intermediation and associate editor of Review of Corporate Finance, Journal of Finance, and Review of Finance. Acharya's work has received numerous awards and recognitions, including the best paper award on asset pricing from the Journal of Financial Economics in 2005 and the inaugural Rising Star in Finance award in 2008. He received a BTech from the Indian Institute of Technology and a PhD from NYU Stern.
Anat R. Admati is the George G.C. Parker Professor of Finance and Economics at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Primarily a financial economics theorist, her work focuses on issues related to the dissemination of information in financial markets and corporate governance. Admati also has been active in the ongoing policy debate over financial regulation, especially pertaining to capital regulations. Admati has served in a number of editorial positions and written extensively about portfolio management, venture capital contracting, corporate governance, and banking. Currently she is associate editor of the Journal of Finance and advisory editor of the Journal of Financial Markets. A fellow of the Econometric Society, she has served on the board of the American Finance Association and is involved with the Rock Center for Corporate Governance at Stanford Law School. Admati received a BS in mathematics and statistics from Hebrew University in Jerusalem and a PhD from Yale University.
David E. Altig is senior vice president and director of research at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. His responsibilities include advising the Bank president on monetary policy and related matters, overseeing the Bank's research department and regional executives, and sitting on the Bank's management and discount committees. Altig also serves as an adjunct professor of economics in the graduate school of business at the University of Chicago. Previously, he was vice president and associate director of research at the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, which he joined in 1991 as an economist. Prior to joining the Cleveland Fed, Altig was a faculty member in the department of business economics and public policy at Indiana University. His research focuses primarily on monetary and fiscal policy and has been published in such journals as the Journal of Money, Credit, and Banking; the American Economic Review; and the Journal of Monetary Economics. Altig received a BA in business administration from the University of Iowa and an MA and a PhD in economics from Brown University.
Ben S. Bernanke began a second term as chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System on February 1, 2010. He also serves as chairman of the Federal Open Market Committee. Before being appointed as chairman in 2006, Bernanke was chair of the President's Council of Economic Advisors. Previously, he held several roles in the Federal Reserve System: as a member of the Board of Governors, a visiting scholar at the Federal Reserve Banks of Philadelphia, Boston, and New York; and a member of the New York Fed's academic advisory panel. Bernanke's academic career included teaching positions at Princeton University, Stanford University, New York University, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He served as director of the Monetary Economics Program of the National Bureau of Economic Research and was a member of its business-cycle dating committee. He received a BA in economics from Harvard University and a PhD in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Richard B. Berner is a managing director, cohead of global economics, and chief U.S. economist at Morgan Stanley. In this role, he codirects the firm's forecasting and analysis of the global economy and financial markets and coheads its strategy forum. Prior to joining Morgan Stanley in 1999, Berner was executive vice president and chief economist at Mellon Bank, where he served on the senior management committee. Previously, he was a principal and senior economist for Morgan Guaranty Trust Company and director of the Washington, DC, office of Wharton Econometrics. He spent seven years on the research staff at the Federal Reserve Board, where he helped lead its model-based forecasting efforts and served on the team that developed the Fed's first multicountry model used for international policy analysis. He also has served as an adjunct professor of economics at Carnegie-Mellon University and George Washington University. Currently, Berner is a member of the Economic Advisory Panel of the New York Fed, the panel of economic advisers of the Congressional Budget Office, and the executive committee of the National Bureau of Economic Research, where he is also director at large. He is past president and fellow of the National Association for Business Economics (NABE) and received the group's William F. Butler Award for excellence in business economics. He has won forecasting awards from the Wall Street Journal, Market News, and the NABE. Berner received a BA from Harvard College and a PhD from the University of Pennsylvania.
Arnoud Boot is a professor of corporate finance and financial markets at the University of Amsterdam, director of the Amsterdam Center for Law and Economics, and founder and director of the Amsterdam Center for Corporate Finance, a think tank dedicated to improving the interaction between theory and practice. Previously, he was on the faculty of the J.L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University. From 2000 to 2001, he was a partner in the finance and strategy practice at McKinsey & Co. In addition to his academic activities, Boot is a frequent adviser on ownership structure issues, particularly those related to the public/private domain. He also serves as an expert witness in legal cases and consults several financial institutions and corporations on issues related to the regulation and strategic positioning of financial institutions, corporate finance, governance, and anti-trust. He has held visiting appointments at a number of universities, including the Stockholm School of Economics in Sweden and Cornell University. Boot's research focuses on corporate finance and financial institutions, and he has written extensively on a number of topics, such as the regulation of financial institutions, the design of securities, and capital structure. His work has been published in major academic journals, including the Journal of Finance, American Economic Review, Economic Journal, and the International Economic Review. Boot received a BA in economics, an MA in business, and an MA in economics, all from Tilburg University in the Netherlands. He also received an MBA and a PhD from Indiana University.
Michael A. Callen is chairman of Ambac Financial Group Inc. and a member of the faculty of Georgetown University's Master of Science in Foreign Service program. In January 2011, he retired from the executive chairman post at Ambac, where he has been a member of the board since 1991. He also served on Ambac's compensation and audit committees until 2008, when he was appointed CEO and chairman of the board. Callen is also audit chairman of Intervest, a $2 billion bank with branches in New York and Florida. Previously, he was CEO of Avalon Argus LLC and served as a consultant to institutions and investors in Korea, the Middle East, East Asia, and Australia. From 1965 until 1992, Callen enjoyed a successful career at Citicorp, where his experience spanned many countries and disciplines, including vice chairman and member of the board of directors. Currently, he is a board member of the Institute of Diplomacy at Georgetown University and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Callen received a BA from the University of Wisconsin.
Stephen G. Cecchetti is the economic adviser and head of the Monetary and Economic Department at the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) in Basel, Switzerland. He also is a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research and a research fellow of the Centre for Economic Research. Prior to joining the BIS in 2008, Cecchetti held a number of positions, including the Barbara and Richard M. Rosenberg Professor of Global Finance at the International Business School of Brandeis University, executive vice president and director of research at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and editor of the Journal of Money, Credit and Banking. In addition to writing a textbook titled Money, Banking and Financial Markets, Cecchetti has written numerous articles in top scientific and policy journals and is a regular contributor to the Financial Times and VOX. He received a BS from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an MA and PhD from the University of California, Berkeley.
Giovanni Dell'Ariccia is an adviser in the research department of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), where he is responsible for coordinating the activities of the macrofinancial linkages unit. Previously, he worked in the Asia and Pacific Department at the IMF. Dell'Ariccia's research interests include banking, the macroeconomics of credit, international finance, and conditionality in international lending and aid programs. His work has been featured in such publications as the Journal of Finance, Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Economic Journal, and the Journal of Banking and Finance. Dell'Ariccia is a research fellow of the Centre for Economic Policy Research. He received a PhD in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Gerald P. Dwyer is director of the Center for Financial Innovation and Stability at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. He also serves as an adjunct professor at the University of Carlos III in Madrid. Dwyer has been on the faculty at Texas A&M University, Emory University, the University of Houston, and Clemson University, and has worked with the Federal Reserve Banks of St. Louis and Chicago. His research is focused on banking and financial markets—especially the implications of the digital revolution for financial and economic growth—and has been published in many leading economic and finance journals. Dwyer sits on the editorial boards of the Journal of Financial Stability and Economic Inquiry. He is president of the Association for Private Enterprise Education and previously served as president of the Society for Nonlinear Dynamics and Econometrics. Dwyer received a BA in business, government, and society from the University of Washington, an MA in economics from the University of Tennessee, and a PhD in economics from the University of Chicago.
Robert A. Eisenbeis is managing director and chief monetary economist at Cumberland Advisors. He advises Cumberland's asset managers on developments in U.S. financial markets and the domestic economy and their implications for investment and trading strategies. Eisenbeis was formerly executive vice president and director of research at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, where he was in charge of basic research and policy analysis and advised the Bank's president on monetary policy for deliberations of the Federal Open Market Committee. Before he joined the Atlanta Fed, Eisenbeis was the Wachovia Professor of Banking at the Kenan-Flagler School of Business at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He has also held senior positions at the Federal Reserve Board of Governors and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. He is currently a member of the Shadow Financial Regulatory Committee and Financial Economist Roundtable and a fellow of the National Association of Business Economics. Eisenbeis has a B.S. from Brown University and a masterâ??s degree and doctorate from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Larry Hatheway is managing director, chief economist, and chief strategist at UBS Investment Bank. He serves on the fixed income, currency and commodities, and commodities executive committees. Hatheway also sits on the research management board and is a nonvoting member of the UBS global investment committee. During his nineteen years at UBS, Hatheway has served as global head of asset allocation, global head of fixed income and currency strategy, senior currency strategist, and senior international economist. Prior to joining UBS, Hatheway was an economist at Citibank and an analyst/proprietary trader at Manufacturers Hanover Trust. In 1990, he spent time at the Federal Reserve Board's Division of International Finance conducting dissertation research. He holds a BA from Whitman College, an MA from Johns Hopkins University, and a PhD in economics from the University of Texas.
Peter Hooper is managing director and chief economist for Deutsche Bank Securities. He has been with this company since the fall of 1999, first as chief international economist and shortly thereafter as chief U.S. economist. He became chief economist and co-head of global economics in 2006. Before joining Deutsche Bank, Hooper enjoyed a distinguished 26-year career at the Federal Reserve Board in Washington, DC. While rising to senior levels of the Fed staff, he held numerous positions, including economist on the Federal Open Market Committee and deputy director of the Division of International Finance. Hooper produces weekly and quarterly publications for Deutsche Bank with a focus on U.S. and global economic developments and Fed policy. He also comments on U.S. and global economic and financial developments in the news media. His U.S. economics team was ranked number one in fixed income research by Institutional Investor in 2010. Hooper currently serves as a member of the Economic Advisory Panel of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and is a member and former chairman of the Economic Advisory Committee of the American Bankers Association, a founding member of the U.S. Monetary Policy Forum, a member of the Economic Leadership Council for the University of Michigan, and a member of the Forecasters' Club of New York. Hooper earned a bachelor's degree, cum laude, in economics from Princeton University and a master's degree and doctorate in economics from the University of Michigan. He has published numerous books, journal articles, and reviews on economics and policy analysis.
Simon Johnson is the Ronald A. Kurtz Professor of Entrepreneurship at MIT Sloan School of Management. He also is a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, a cofounder of BaselineScenario.com, and a member of the Congressional Budget Office's Panel of Economic Advisers. Previously, from March 2007 to August 2008, Professor Johnson was the International Monetary Fund's economic counselor and director of its research department. In addition to writing opinion pieces for a number of publications, including BusinessWeek and the Atlantic, Johnson is a weekly contributor to NYT.com's Economix blog and has a monthly column with Project Syndicate, which runs in publications around the world. In January 2010, he joined the Huffington Post as contributing business editor. Along with James Kwak, Johnson authored 13 Bankers: The Wall Street Takeover and the Next Financial Meltdown, a bestselling assessment of the dangers now posed by the U.S. financial sector. Currently, Johnson is codirector of the National Bureau of Economics Research's Africa Project and works with nonprofits and think tanks around the world. He received a BA from the University of Oxford, an MA from the University of Manchester, and a PhD in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
George G. Kaufman is the John F. Smith Professor of Finance and Economics at the School of Business Administration at Loyola University, where he also is director of the Center for Financial and Policy Studies. Prior to joining Loyola, he was the John Rogers Professor of Banking and Finance and director of the Center for Capital Market Research at the University of Oregon's College of Business Administration. Previously, he was a research fellow, economist, and research officer at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. Kaufman's teaching and research interests are in financial economics, institutions, markets and regulations, and the Fed and monetary policy. Most recently, he has focused on ways to prevent bank crises and reform deposit insurance. In addition to writing several books, Kaufman has published extensively in the American Economic Review, Journal of Finance, Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, and others. He was a founding co-editor of the Journal of Financial Services Research and the Journal of Financial Stability, and is on or has served on the editorial boards of several other publications. He is cochair of the Shadow Financial Regulatory Committee and executive director of the Financial Economists Roundtable. Kaufman received a BA from Oberlin College, an MA from the University of Michigan, and a PhD in economics from the University of Iowa.
Randall S. Kroszner is the Normin R. Bobins Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. From March 2006 to January 2009, he served as a governor of the Federal Reserve System, where he chaired the Committee on Supervision and Regulation of Banking Institutions and the Committee on Consumer and Community Affairs. Prior to joining the Federal Reserve Board, Kroszner was a professor of economics at the University of Chicago and director of the George J. Stigler Center for the Study of the Economy and the State. From 2001 to 2003, he was a member of the President's Council of Economic Advisers, where he was heavily involved in formulating the policy response to corporate governance scandals and advised on a wide range of domestic and international issues. Additionally, he has served as the editor of the Journal of Law & Economics and associate editor of several other academic and policy journals. Currently, Kroszner is a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research and serves on the committees for economic statistics and economic education of the American Economics Association. His research interests include the regulation of financial institutions, international financial crises, the Great Depression, monetary economics, corporate governance, debt restructuring and bankruptcy, and the political economy. Kroszner received a BS in applied mathematics from Brown University and an MA and a PhD in economics from Harvard University.
Dennis P. Lockhart is president and chief executive officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. In this role he is responsible for all of the Bank's activities, including monetary policy, bank supervision and regulation, and payment services. He also chairs the Bank's management committee and serves on the Federal Open Market Committee. Prior to joining the Atlanta Fed in March 2007, Lockhart served on the faculty of Georgetown University's Walsh School of Foreign Service, teaching in the master's program and chairing the program's concentrations in international business-government relations and global commerce and finance. He was also an adjunct professor at Johns Hopkins University's Nitze School of Advanced International Studies. Prior to his academic career Lockhart was managing partner at the private equity firm Zephyr Management LP. He also worked at Heller Financial, where he served as executive vice president and director of the parent company and as president of Heller International Group. Previously Lockhart held various positions, both domestic and international, with Citicorp/Citibank. In addition to his professional activities, Lockhart was a member of the boards of directors of several companies and was chairman of the Small Enterprise Assistance Funds, a not-for-profit operator of emerging markets venture capital funds. He holds a BA in political science and economics from Stanford University and an MA in international economics and American foreign policy from the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies.
Charles I. Plosser is president and chief executive officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia. Prior to joining the Philadelphia Fed in 2006, he was the John M. Olin Distinguished Professor of Economics and director of the Bradley Policy Research Center at the William E. Simon Graduate School of Business Administration at the University of Rochester, where he served as dean from 1993 to 2003. Plosser also was a professor of economics and a senior research associate at the University of Rochester, a research associate at the National Bureau of Economics, and a visiting scholar at the Bank of England and the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. His research interests include monetary policy, fiscal policy, long-term economic growth, banking, and financial markets. Plosser was chairman of the board of directors for the Consortium for Graduate Study in Management, and a member of the board of directors of ViaHealth, Inc., where he was also secretary, member of the executive committee, and chair of the governance committee. He received a bachelor's degree in engineering from Vanderbilt University and an MBA and a PhD from the University of Chicago.
Vince Reinhart is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. From 2001 to 2007, he was director of the Division of Monetary Affairs at the Federal Reserve Board and secretary and economist of the Federal Open Market Committee. Prior to that, he held positions of increasing responsibility at the Federal Reserve Board, including deputy director of the Division of International Finance. Reinhart also served as senior economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. In his more than two decades working on domestic and international aspects of U.S. monetary policy, his research has included economic bubbles and monetary policy, U.S. Treasury security auctions, alternate strategies for monetary policy, and efficient means of communicating monetary policy decisions. He received a BS from Fordham University and an MA and an MPhil from Columbia University.
Anthony M. Santomero is the Richard K. Mellon Professor Emeritus of Finance at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Previously, he was a senior advisor at McKinsey & Company, where he worked closely with clients and partners in the company's financial institutions and risk management practices. Prior to joining McKinsey, he was president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, where he also served on the Federal Open Market Committee. The author of approximately 150 articles, books, and monographs on issues ranging from financial sector regulation to economic performance, his latest works are Financial Markets, Instruments, and Institutions and Challenges for Modern Central Banking. Santomero is on the boards of Citicorp, Citibank NA, Renaissance Reinsurance Company Ltd, the Penn Mutual Life Insurance Company, and the Columbia Funds mutual fund family. He is a member of the Financial Economists Roundtable and serves on the advisory board of the Italian Bankers Association's European Banking Report. Santomero received a BA in economics from Fordham University and a PhD in economics from Brown University.
Moritz Schularick is a professor of economics at the John F. Kennedy Institute of the Free University of Berlin, Germany. He has also been a visiting scholar at Cambridge University in the United Kingdom and a partner at Amiya Capital, a London-based emerging markets fund. Schularick's current work focuses on credit cycles, the determinants of financial crises, and the international monetary system. Together with Niall Ferguson, he coined the term "Chimerica," which describes the intimate financial relations between the United States and China. His research has been published in many leading economic journals, including the Global Economy Journal, the Review of Economics, International Finance, and the Journal of Economic History. Schularick received an MA from Humboldt University of Berlin and a PhD in economics from the Free University of Berlin.
Chester Spatt is the Pamela and Kenneth B. Dunn Professor of Finance at the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon University. He also directs the school's Center for Financial Markets, where he has taught since 1979. From 2004 to 2007, Spatt served as chief economist of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and director of its office of economic analysis. His research centers on financial markets, with particular interest in market structure, pricing and valuation, and the impact of information in the marketplace. A paper he coauthored on asset allocation won the Paul Samuelson Award for best publication on lifelong financial security from TIAA-CREF. Additionally, he is associate editor of several finance journals and was executive editor and a founding editor of the Review of Financial Studies. A fellow of the TIAA-CREF Institute, Spatt serves as a research associate with the National Bureau of Economic Research, a senior economic advisor to Kalorama Partners, and is a member of the Shadow Financial Regulatory Committee and the Financial Economists Roundtable. Spatt received a BA from Princeton and an MA and a PhD in economics from the University of Pennsylvania.
Angel Ubide is the director of global economics at Tudor Investment Corporation, a global funds management company, and a visiting fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. An active member of several international economic policy organizations, Ubide serves on the European Central Bank's Shadow Governing Council, the steering committee of the Euro50 Group, and the board of directors of the Reinventing Bretton Woods Committee. He also is a member of the Atlantic Council of the United States and the Center for European Policy Studies. He has written extensively on international macroeconomics, banking, and exchange rates, and his work has been published in major international journals and leading newspapers. Previously, he was an economist at the International Monetary Fund and a management consultant with McKinsey & Co. He received a PhD in economics from the European University Institute in Florence, Italy.
Larry D. Wall is a financial economist and senior policy advisor at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. He joined the Bank in 1982 and was promoted to his present position in 2001. In addition to pursuing research in the areas of finance and banking, he gives policy advice, evaluates staff research, and provides counsel on research and professional activities. A certified public accountant, Wall is on the academic advisory panel for the International Association of Deposit Insurers and is past president and chairman of the trustees of the Eastern Finance Association. He also serves on the editorial boards of the Financial Review, Journal of Banking and Finance, Journal of Financial Services Research, Journal of Financial Stability, and Review of Financial Economics. Wall received a BA in business administration from the University of North Dakota and a PhD in business from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Peter J. Wallison is the Arthur F. Burns Fellow in Financial Market Studies and codirector of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) program on financial market deregulation. Prior to joining AEI, he practiced banking, corporate, and financial law at Gibson, Dunn, & Crutcher in Washington, DC, and New York. Wallison has held a number of government positions, including general counsel of the United States Treasury Department, general counsel to the Depository Institutions Deregulation Committee, and White House counsel to President Ronald Reagan. Between 1972 and 1976, he served first as special assistant to New York's Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller, and subsequently as counsel to Rockefeller during his vicepresidency. In addition to authoring several books, including Ronald Reagan: The Power of Conviction and the Success of His Presidency and many others on financial and regulatory matters, he is a frequent contributor to the op-ed pages of the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Financial Times. He is a member of the Shadow Financial Regulatory Committee and the Council on Foreign Relations. A member of the District of Columbia Bar Association, Wallison received a BA from Harvard College in 1963 and a JD from Harvard Law School.