International conference shows impact of research

Monday, 28 January 2013

Colleagues in the Department of Economics hosted a very successful one-day international workshop recently on modelling and forecasting inflation.

The conference was an excellent example of University research informing public policy as amongst the 80 participants were representatives from the UK Government; specifically HM Treasury, the Departments of Defence, Education, Work and Pensions, and the UK Office for National Statistics.

Academics from several other universities also attended as did members of the central banks of Austria, Belgium, England, Germany, Sweden and the European Central Bank.

The topic of the conference is a critical one from the perspective not only of academic economists, but also from the viewpoint of public policy, where modelling and forecasting inflation is vital to the formation and implementation of sound economic policy.

The topics discussed reflected the econometric modelling of inflation especially faced with either abrupt or gradual changes, and the potential of structural economic models to improve forecasting by using theoretically informed restrictions.

The presentations were given by a truly international list of economists and econometricians and the responses to the workshop illustrated the quality of the presentations and the positive responses of participants to the University of Reading.

The conference arose from a Research Grant from the British Academy to Dr Alexander Mihailov and Professor Kerry Patterson of the Department of Economics and Fabio Rumler of the Austrian National Bank. The workshop was ably supported by the Head of Department, Professor Nigar Hashimzade, and student ambassadors from the current group of Economics PhD students.