You are invited to join Professor Lars Peter Hansen, Grace Tsiang, Mrs. HsiTsin Tsiang, and other family members for a variety of events on Thursday, March 1. Professor Hansen will serve as the inaugural speaker for the S.C. Macroeconomics Workshop.
To learn more about S.C. Tsiang and his contributions in the field of economics, click here.
Sincerely,
Larry Blume
March 1st Events:
Reception
10:45 AM
Undergraduate Economics Lounge, Uris 477
Light Refreshments Will Be Served
Inaugural Workshop
11:40 AM
Ives Hall 111
Professor Lars Peter Hansen
"The Price of Macroeconomic Uncertainty with Tenuous Beliefs"
Reception and Dinner
Reception: 5:30 - 6:00 PM
Dinner: 6:00 PM (By Invitation Only)
Banfi's Restaurant, Taylor Room
Inaugural Workshop
"The Price of Macroeconomic Uncertainty with Tenuous Beliefs"
Abstract:
This research illustrates the implications for forward-looking markets by taking an equilibrium pricing perspective. Struggles with uncertainty induce what looks like market sentiments that vary over the business cycle. When these views pertain to the underlying macro economy and its prospects for growth, there are consequences that emerge in financial markets. In times of weak growth, security markets reflect a concern that this weakness will endure. In times of strong growth, a market concern emerges that this strength will peter out. This asymmetry induces a form of nonlinearity in asset valuation that is reflected in a term structure of uncertainty. Uncertainty prices, which are market compensations for exposure to macroeconomic fluctuations, depend on the current growth state of the payoff horizon for alternative financial investments.
The paper shows how to capture formally uncertainty about multiple models along with the potential that each is merely an approximation. It combines previous formulations by Chen and Epstein to capture model ambiguity and by Hansen and Sargent to capture potential model misspecification. The preferences have a recursive structure and are a continuous-time version of the variational preferences of Maccheroni, Marinacci and Rustichini.
Bio:
Lars Peter Hansen is a leading expert in economic dynamics who works at the forefront of economic thinking and modeling, drawing approaches from macroeconomics, finance, and statistics. He is a recipient of the 2013 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel.
Hansen has made fundamental advances in our understanding of how economic agents cope with changing and risky environments. He has contributed to the development of statistical methods designed to explore the interconnections between macroeconomic indicators and assets in financial markets. These methods are widely used in empirical research in financial economics today.
The Nobel Prize recognizes this work, which has been used to test theories and models that have shaped our modern understanding of asset pricing. His recent research explores how to quantify intertemporal risk-return tradeoffs and ways to model economic behavior when consumers and investors struggle with uncertainty about the future. Improving models that measure risk and uncertainty have important implications for financial markets, fiscal policy, and the macroeconomy. Read the rest of Professor Hansen's bio here.
Research
Hansen’s current work investigates three interconnecting areas:
- Macroeconomic uncertainty and financial markets;
- Struggling with a complex future; and
- Understanding investor beliefs through asset market data.
