Expert Debate: Scott Sumner & John Cochrane Debate Monetary Policy

Scott Sumner (Bentley University) and John Cochrane (University of Chicago) discuss monetary policy and its role in causing--and ameliorating--the financial crisis. Both professors Sumner and Cochrane have somewhat iconoclastic takes on monetary policy and the crisis, and the discussion is wide-ranging and engaged. Professor Sumner discusses the monetary origins of the crisis and the failure of the Fed to engage in aggressive monetary stimulus--by failing to employ NGDP targeting or other novel means. Professor Cochrane focuses on the limits of the Fed's power to stimulate without excessive inflation and the unique characteristics of the 2008 crisis. The discussion concludes with some discussion of the prospects for optimal monetary policy in the future.

Dr. Scott Sumner has been a Professor of Economics at Bentley University for the past 27 years. Dr. Sumner earned a BA in economics at Wisconsin and a PhD at Chicago. His research has been in the field of monetary economics, particularly the role of the gold standard in the Great Depression. His areas of interest are macroeconomics, monetary theory and policy, and history of economic thought. He has published articles in the Journal of Political Economy, the Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, and the Bulletin of Economic Research.  His blog, The Money Illusion, dicusses an aray of topics in economics surrounding monetary policy.

Dr. John H. Cochrane conducts research on dynamics in stock and bond markets, the volatility of exchange rates, the term structure of interest rates, the returns to venture capital, liquidity premiums in stock prices, the relation between stock prices and business cycles, option pricing when investors can't perfectly hedge, and monetary economics including the fiscal theory of the price level. Cochrane is vice-president of the American Finance Association, a research associate and a Fellow of the Econometric Society. He has been an editor of the Journal of Political Economy, and associate editor of The Journal of Monetary Economics, the Journal of Business, and the Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control. Cochrane earned a bachelor's degree in physics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1979 and his PhD in economics at the University of California at Berkeley in 1986.

This webcast was moderated by Geoffrey Manne who currently serves as the Director of LeCG, a global expert services and consulting firm, Manne also serves as Lecturer in Law for Lewis & Clark Law School. In this capacity he lends his expertise to various law school endeavors.