One of my ambitions with my blog has always been to be a facilitator in the sense of trying to get different people with interest in monetary policy issues together – whether we talk about financial sector professionals, professors, students or policy makers – yeah even journalists. This is also the reason why I have started the Global Monetary Policy Network (find GMNP on Linkedin here).

One of the people who have joined GMNP is Basil Halperin who is a student at the University of Chicago. Basil is one of the founding fathers of a new Monetary Policy Reading Group at UoC.

I think such reading groups is an excellent idea and I have therefore asked Basil to write a bit about the reading group at UoC and I hope that it will inspire people to join the group and most of all inspire students around the world to set-up similar reading groups.

This Basil on the UoC Monetary Policy Reading Group:

The UChicago Monetary Policy Reading Group is a group for students at the University of Chicago who are interested in monetary theory and policy. Each week the group goes over a paper related to monetary theory and discusses recent economic and monetary policy developments.

The group began as part of the University’s Federal Reserve Challenge team. The Federal Reserve Challenge is a competition sponsored by the Fed in which university teams play the role of monetary policymakers by analyzing current economic conditions and recommending a course for monetary policy to a panel of Fed economists who serve as judges.

As has been especially (and in some cases, painfully) clear over the past five years, smart monetary policy is absolutely crucial to a well-functioning economy. Any student who cares about economic progress and/or is interested in monetary theory should consider forming their own reading group! It would be great to have a network across schools to share ideas.

If you have any questions or would like to know more (or just have reading recommendations), please email uchicago.mprg@gmail.com. If you are an interested UChicago student or professor, we will be meeting this week on Tuesday April 16 at 8:00 in Harper 130 to discuss Milton Friedman’s (1968) seminal The Role of Monetary Policy!

I think Basil is completely right and I would very much hope that students around the world will follow the lead from Basil and the other students at UoC. In fact I plan to make the reading list from Basil’s reading group available on my blog and I will happily do the same for other Monetary Policy Reading Groups around the world. So if you plan to set up Monetary Policy reading groups or already have done so please drop me a mail (lacsen@gmail.com).