Previous Events:
• Spring 2004
• Fall 2003
• Spring 2003
• Fall 2002
• Spring 2002
• Fall 2001
• Spring 2001
• Fall 2000
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CEPA events are free and open to the public, and they are usually held in the CEPA conference room, 80 Fifth Avenue, 5th Floor, New York City (unless noted otherwise). For further information, call CEPA at 212-229-5901 or write to cepa@newschool.edu

More events for Fall 2004 will be listed soon.

• Economic Policy Workshop
• Fall 2004 Economics Department Seminar Series
• Pension Fund Capitalism and the Crisis of Old-Age Security in the United States
  

ECONOMIC POLICY WORKSHOP:

TIME: 6 - 7:30 p.m.
PLACE: 80 Fifth Ave, Fifth floor conference room.

October 13th: Carl Wennderlind, Barnard College, "Credit in African Bodies: How the Slave Trade Contributed to the Financial Revolution."

October 20th: Amit Bhaduri, University of Pavia, "The Dynamics of Different Regimes of Demand-Led Expansion."
[Download DOC—106KB]

November 3rd: Economic Implications of the Election: A Roundtable Jeff Madrick, Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis Anwar Shaikh, Department of Economics Darick Hamilton, Milano School

November 10th: Matias Vernengo, University of Utah: "Globalization and Endogenous Fiscal Crisis: Theory and the Brazilian Experience."

November 11th: Nelson Barbosa, University of Rio de Janeiro, "Brazil's Macroeconomy Under Lula."

December 8th: Ed Wolff, New York University and Ajit Zacharias, Levy Institute, "An Overall Assessment of the Distributional Consequences of Government Spending and Taxation in the U.S., 1989 and 2000"
[Download PDF—515KB]

December 15th: Mariana Mazzucato, Open University, "Idiosyncratic Risk, Excess volatility and Innovation."

Fall 2004
Economics Department Seminar Series

All Seminars are held on Mondays, 6:00 - 7:30pm in the Conference Room, 5th Floor, 80 Fifth Avenue unless otherwise noted.

Department Seminar Coordinator: Prof. Willi Semmler telephone: 212-229-5783 email: semmlerw@newschool.edu

Pension Fund Capitalism and the Crisis of Old-Age Security in the United States
September 10-11, 2004.

The conference served to deepen our understanding of the role of private pensions in the U.S. economy. Its specific aim was to bring progressives - economists, political scientists and sociologists, union representatives, shareholder activists, lawyers, and sympathetic members of the money management industry - together to look at current problems in pension provision and to come up with alternatives. The goal of the conference was be to generate new, original thinking about pension provision and pension reform.

The conference explored three propositions. First, that the existing commercial provision of pensions offers a window into crucial relationships in today's financial regime and hence deserves more systematic and critical study in its own right. Second, that the prevailing mix of public and private programs will not be adequate to furnish a decent retirement income to every American. Third, that in order to reach this goal it will be necessary both to find new sources of finance and to introduce real accountability into the existing pension and mutual fund industry.

Conference Program (Downloadable papers are in blue)

Friday, September 10, 2004

8:30am: Opening remarks

Ben Lee, Dean, Graduate Faculty of Political and Social Science, New School University

9:00am: Keynote Address

Robin Blackburn, New School University

10:30am: Coffee break

10:45am: Theoretical Considerations

Gerard Dumenil, MODEM, University Paris X-Nanterre,
"Pensions Funds: Trends in the Ownership of the Means of Production" [Download PDF—300KB]

Frederic Lordon, CEPREMAP,
"Managers in the Hands of Investors: Where Does 'The Power of Finance' Really Come From?" [Download DOC—69KB]

Tom Michl, Colgate College, "Capitalist, Workers, Social Security" [Download PDF—188KB]

12:45pm: Lunch break

2:00pm: Macroeconomic Considerations

Jane D'Arista, New School University,
"Pension Funds: The Need for a Macroprudential Framework"
[Download DOC—162KB]

John Eatwell, Cambridge University,
"Pensions, Fiscal Policy, and the Distribution of Risk"
[Download DOC—69KB]

Christian Weller, American Progress Institute,
"Institutional Shareholder Concentration, Corporate Governance Changes, and Diverging Fortunes of Capital and Labor"
[Download DOC—407KB]

4:00pm: Coffee break

4:15pm: Financial Market Considerations

Randall Dodd, Financial Policy Forum, "Pension Fund Capitalism: The Need for Derivatives and Hedge Fund Regulation"

Tessa Hebb, Oxford University, "Global Standards and Emerging Markets: the institutional investment value chain and CalPERS' investment strategy" [Download DOC—188KB]

5:45pm: Wine/cheese
  

Saturday, September 11, 2004

9:00am: Pensions and Retirement

Teresa Ghilarducci, Notre Dame University, "Employer Pension Reform and the Future of Retirement" [Download DOC—103KB]

Edward Wolff, New York University, "The Unraveling of the American Pension System, 1983-2001" [Download PDF—250KB]

10:30am: Coffee break

10:45am: Pension Fund Socialism

David Brennan, Franklin and Marshall College, "'Fiduciary Capitalism,' the Political Model of Corporate Governance, and the Prospect of Stakeholder Capitalism in the US" [Download PDF—298KB]

Doug Henwood, Left Business Observer, "Pension Fund Socialism: an Illusion that Just Won't Die"

Jim Stanford, Canadian Automobile Workers Union, "Controlling Pensions or Controlling Capital?" [Download PPT—228KB]

12:45pm: Lunch break

2:00pm: Encounters with History and Reform

Mark Harvey, University of Manchester, "The Historical Formation of Resources, Rights, and Rights-Holders: The Example of Pensions" [Download DOC—154KB]

Matthieu Leimgruber, University of Lausanne, "A Closer Look at the World Bank Model: Unpacking the Swiss Three-Pillar Pension System" [Download PDF—395KB]

3:30pm Coffee break

3:45pm: General Discussion directed by Robin Blackburn

5:45pm: End of conference