On the afternoon of July 8, Ms. Vivian Yue and Mr. Bin Wei, senior economists of the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank gave a session of academic reportsto our students and teachers at Conference Room No. 6 in the Economics and Management School. Attendees for the session included Prof. XieDanyang, Prof. Jiang Chun, and other teachers and students from the Departments of Finance and World Economics. There were also friendly exchanges between the two economists and the listeners.

Dr. VivianYue gave a report titled “Export Dynamics in Large Devaluations”. She studied impacts of the large devaluation of currencies in emerging market economies on exports, and held that the increase in exports after the sharp devaluation of currencies was caused by the increase of the number of exporters. Through modeling and verifying the models with data, she concluded that credit friction had little effect in explaining the gradually increase in trade and exports.

Dr. Bin Wei’s report was “Liquidity Backstop and Dynamic Debt Runs”. Dr. Wei introduced first during the 2007-2009 economic crisis, the bad performance of variable rate demand obligation (VROD) and Auction Rate Securities (ARS) led to the largest municipal bankruptcy in history. Both VROD and ARS were long-term variable-rate bonds; but unlike the VROD, the ARS lacks liquidity support.In his report, Dr. Bin Wei built a closedendogenous model, whichproved theoretically that once there was a change in the market rate,the ARS would get affected more easily than the VROD.

During their reports,the two economists were faced with questions from students and teachers now and then, and they answered and discussed those questions in details.

Dr. VivianYueis a senior economist with the U.S. Federal Reserve Board, and previously worked as an assistant professor in New York University. She also served as a researcher in the Hong Kong Institute for Monetary Research, thevisiting scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, the Friday visiting scholarat the New York Federal Reserve Bank in succession earlier in her life. She graduated from Tsinghua University in 2000 and continued her further studyin the University of Pennsylvania, where she was granted mater’s and doctor’s degrees in economics. She has engaged in the field of international finance, and won various honors and awards successively, including Bhagwati Award for the Best Paper published in the Journal of International Economics; Elsevier’s Most Cited Articles, 2005-2009 Award for articles published in the Elsevier’s Economics and Finance Journals; Excellence in Refereeing Award,American Economic Review 2009; University Research Challenge Fund, New York University 2008-2009; Lamfalussy Research Fellowship from European Central Bank 2008; and Econometric Society World Congress 2005 Meeting, Young Scholar Award 2005.

Dr. Bin Wei is a senior economist with the U.S. Federal Reserve Board, and previously worked as an assistant professor at the Baruch College, the City University of New York. He graduated from the University of Science and Technology of China in 2000, then went to the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, where he got his master’s degree in 2002, and later in 2007 earned his PhD. in finance at the Fuqua School of Business, Duke University. He has engaged in the research covering the contract theory, fixed income, assets assessment, and the micro-structure of the market. He published two papers on the world’s top financial journal Review of Financial Studies. He obtained a succession of awards such as the Best Paper Award at the 2012 TCFA Conference 2012 and the Best Student Paper Award of the Northern Finance Association (NFA) 2006.