Brookings Inst. fellow to address Great Recession in Sichel talk

KALAMAZOO, Mich.—A fellow from the Brookings Institution will take a closer look at central banking and the Great Recession this month when he visits Western Michigan University as part of the 2014-15 Werner Sichel Lecture Series.

Dr. Donald Kohn, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C., will speak at 3 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 18, in 2028 Brown Hall. His presentation is free and open to the public and is titled "Central Banking in the Great Recession."

Donald Kohn

Kohn earned a doctoral degree in economics from the University of Michigan and is a 40-year veteran of the Federal Reserve System, serving on the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve from 2002-10, the last four years as vice chairman. He has also been appointed by the government of the United Kingdom to serve on the Financial Policy Committee at the Bank of England.

Kohn is on a number of advisory committees to U.S. government agencies, including the Office of Financial Research, the FDIC and the Congressional Budget Office. His research focuses on issues of monetary policy, financial regulation and macroeconomics.

Kohn has many research publications in academic and policy journals, some of which deal with monetary policy in the Great Recession. He has given several testimonies before congressional committees during the recent economic crisis, including before the Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs of the U.S. Senate; the Committee on Financial Services of the U.S. House of Representatives; and the Subcommittee on Securities, Insurance and Investment, Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs of the U.S. Senate.

He is also a member of an advisory committee at the International Monetary Fund's Monetary and Capital Markets Department and was chair of the Committee on the Global Financial System at the Bank for International Settlement.

Upcoming presentations

This year's Sichel Series carries the theme "Lessons from the Great Recession" and features leading economists from across the country. Other dates, presenters and topics in this year's series are:

• March 4: Dr. Kathryn Dominguez, professor of public policy at the University of Michigan, "International Dimensions of the Great Recession and the Weak Recovery."

• March 25: Dr. Barry Eichengreen, the George C. Pardee and Helen N. Pardee Professor of Economics and professor of political science at the University of California-Berkeley, "Hall of Mirrors: The Great Depression, the Great Recession and the Uses and Misuses of History."

• April 8: Dr. Till von Wachter, associate professor of economics at the University of California-Los Angeles, "Cleansing Effects from the Great Recession.

About the series

The Sichel Series is organized by the WMU Department of Economics and named in honor of Werner Sichel, a longtime WMU economics professor and former department chair, who retired in 2004. The series is annually cosponsored by the College of Arts and Sciences and W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research. The lectures are open to the public and formatted with the general public in mind.

This year's series is being organized by Dr. Eskander Alvi, a WMU professor of economics.

For more information, contact Alvi at (269) 387-5547 or eskander.alvi@wmich.edu.

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