M-RCBG Senior Fellow-Led Study Group: Marlene Amstad
Wednesday, December 2, 4:30-5:30
Zoom meeting. Register using a Harvard.edu email address; non-Harvard affiliates can join by emailing: susan_gill@hks.harvard.edu
Study group hosted by M-RCBG Senior Fellow, Marlene Amstad, with guest Prof. , Dean Witter Distinguished Professor of Finance at Stanford Graduate School of Business.
The Chinese economy has become one of the most important in the world, and its success is driven in large parts by its financial system. Though closely scrutinized, China’s system is often poorly understood and can be vastly different when compared to those in the established markets. Based on the newly published Handbook of China’s Financial System, the study group will identify the most important similarities and differences to the main Western financial markets. Focusing on the bond and stock markets, we will also discuss the process of opening China’s capital markets and the challenge of significant indebtedness of China’s SOE’s.
Marlene Amstad is economics and finance professor at The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen, the Co-Director of its Fintech Center at the Shenzhen Finance Institute and serves as Vice-Chair of the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA). As the former deputy director at the Swiss National Bank she headed the investment strategy and financial market analysis unit. Marlene also worked at the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Credit Suisse and the Swiss Economic Institute. She served as adviser to over ten Asian central banks and coordinated the Asian Bond Fund (ABF) initiative of EMEAP (Executives' Meeting of East Asia-Pacific Central Banks). Marlene regularly holds research fellowships at central banks, most recently with the Bank of Japan, Bank of Finland and BIS and is a fellow at ABFER (Asian Bureau of Finance and Economic Research). Marlene’s research focuses on international finance and monetary economics. Her research is published in refereed and policy-oriented journals. She is the coeditor of “Central Bank Digital Currency and Fintech in Asia” with the Asian Development Bank (ADB) covering contributions by eight Asian central banks, IMF, BIS and Luohan Academy. Her latest book is “The Handbook of China’s Financial System” including banking, bonds, the stock market, asset management, the pension system, and financial technology (forthcoming Nov 2020, in Princeton Press). Marlene is an expert in developing new economic indicators based on big data for policy makers and investors. Working at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, she created the “Fed New York staff underlying inflation gauge (UIG)” which is published monthly. She built a quantitative credit rating system for corporate clients at Credit Suisse, and at Swiss Economic Institute a recession indicator based on company surveys. As a Senior Fellow at M-RCBG, her research will be on data innovation and financial regulation. Her faculty sponsor is Ken Rogoff, Thomas D. Cabot Professor of Public Policy and Professor of Economics at Harvard University. Email: marleneamstad@hks.harvard.edu