Event Registration


    8th annual Municipal Finance Conference

    When: Monday, July 15 - Tuesday, July 16, 2019

    Where:  The Brookings Institution, Falk Auditorium, 1775 Massachusetts Ave, NW, Washington, DC
                  The Capitol Hilton, 1001 16th St. NW, Washington, DC

    What: 

    The Municipal Finance Conference aims to bring together academics, practitioners, issuers and regulators to discuss recent research on municipal markets and municipal finance. This year’s conference is a joint venture of The Hutchins Center on Fiscal and Monetary Policy at Brookings, the Rosenberg Institute of Global Finance at the Brandeis International Business School, the Olin Business School at Washington University in St. Louis, and the Harris School of Public Policy at the University of Chicago.

    The 2019 conference will take place on July 15-16, 2019. Brookings will host the bulk of the program, but the cocktail hour and dinner keynote on the evening of July 15 will take place at the nearby Capital Hilton.

    Monday, July 15

    1:00 p.m. -- Registration opens

    1:30 p.m. -- Plenary I 

    • Climate change and state and local governments
      Authors: Adele Morris, Noah Kaufman, and Siddhi Doshi
      Presenter: Matthew Kahn 

    2:30 p.m. -- Break

    2:45 p.m. -- Breakout session I

    Track 1
    • General purpose local government defaults: Type, trend, and impact
      Authors: Lang (Kate) Yang and Yulianti Abbas

    • Big data based government economic monitoring and targeted action (GEM) -- Illustrating with the city of Newark
      Authors: Miklos Vasarhelyi, Alex Kogan, Arion Cheng, Divya Anantharaman, William Glasgal, and Ricardo Lopes Cardoso  

    • Competition, market concentration, and market power in the municipal bond market
      Author: Dario Cestau

    		 Track 2
    • Public pension risk-sharing mechanisms and their potential impacts
      Authors: Don Boyd, Gang Chen and Yimeng Yin

    • The fiscal sustainability of state and local government pension plans   
      Authors: Louise Sheiner, Jamie Lenney and Byron Lutz

    4:15 p.m. -- Break

    4:30 p.m. -- Panel 1: Payment-in-kind for state & local pensions: Good idea or not? When it is appropriate? When not?

    5:30 p.m. -- Cocktail hour
    at the Capitol Hilton

    7:00 p.m. -- Dinner and keynote: Dan Hynes, Deputy Governor, State of Illinois; Former Comptroller, State of Illinois
    at the Capitol Hilton

    Tuesday, July 16

    8:30 a.m. -- Breakfast

    9:15 a.m. -- Breakout session II

    Track 1
    • The price of safety: The evolution of insurance value in municipal markets
      Authors: Kimberly Cornaggia, John Hund and Giang Nguyen
    • The economic consequences of GASB financial statement disclosure
      Authors: James Naughton and Michael Dambra

    • Legal uncertainty and municipal bond yields: Market spillovers from Puerto Rico
      Authors: Chuck Boyer
    		 Track 2
    • The impact of bank financing on municipalities’ bond Issuance and the real economy
      Author: Ramona Dagostino

    • Tax increment financing and economic development
      Author: Komla Dzigbede and Rahul Pathak

    • Infrastructure costs
      Authors: Leah Brooks and Zachary Liscow

    11:00 a.m. -- Break

    11:15 a.m. -- Panel 2: Communities left behind: How to narrow the gap between prospering and stagnating communities

    12:15 p.m. -- End of program
    Lunch buffet


    Accommodations

    The conference keynote and dinner will be held at the Capital Hilton on Monday, July 15. For your convenience, we have arranged for a block of rooms at the hotel at a priority rate-- book a room here.

    Other nearby hotels include: 

    This event has reached capacity and registration is now closed.

    Register to watch the live webcast » 
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