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The Center for Economic Policy's mission is to educate students on financial markets and securities and provide an integrated view of how these markets interact in a general equilibrium context, as well as the economic tools to analyze the regulatory and legal framework in which financial markets operate. Learn more about the Center's mission.
The Center for Economic Policy is responsible for two certificates: Finance & Policy and Markets and Regulation. Both certificates aim to integrate the study of markets with public policy. The certificate curricula provide students with required and elective courses. The center also undertakes targeted and focused research programs relevant to finance, markets, and public policy, in the University of Chicago tradition that ties education closely with rigorous and disciplined research.
The center aims to train certificate holders for positions at government agencies and private institutions that operate at the intersection of economic policymaking and markets, positions that require a combination of strong economic training, technical skills, and understanding of financial markets.
Incoming Events of Spring 2022
The Center for Economic Policy's Speaker Series events are a hallmark of the Center and a series of events students look forward to every quarter. Learn more about past speakers and find past recordings of events.
The Center, led by Dr. Thomas Coleman from Harris School of Public Policy, is hosting a quarterly series of lectures about the people and ideas that have animated The History of Economics at Chicago and in the world more widely.
The Harris Finance Group (HFG) is an organization for students interested in capital markets and public policy. HFG provides academic and career resources; it also sponsors events and interest-based cohorts for Harristas passionate about public finance, ESG and impact investing, climate finance, economic regulation and more. Visit HFG’s website to learn more about upcoming opportunities and sign up for Harris Finance updates.
The Harris Finance Group along with the Center for Economic Policy have combined resources and information for Harris students about the financial services industry.
In December, Prof. Coleman's paper "Three Myths About US Economic Inequality and Social Mobility” (with Xi Song and Michael Lachanski) was published in the journal Capitalism and Society. He says "Income inequality has increased dramatically in the United States since the 1970s. However, we argue that many common perceptions about causes and consequences of rising inequality are misleading or even false." You can find the paper at https://papers.ssrn.com/abstract=3985601
In November, the CFA published a Research Brief titled "Puzzles of Inflation, Money, and Debt: Applying the Fiscal Theory of the Price Level" by Prof. Coleman, Bryan Oliver, and Larry Siegel (https://www.cfainstitute.org/research/foundation/2021/puzzles-of-inflation-money-debt). "The fiscal theory of the price level (FTPL) provides an update and revision of monetary theory to address puzzles raised by the failure of both the new Keynesian theory (commonly used by central bankers) and neoclassical monetarism (in particular, the quantity theory of money as interpreted by Milton Friedman and Anna Schwartz)—puzzles such as the low inflation that followed the sustained expansionary monetary policies post-2008."