Economics focus

摘要

In today's electronic age is it really worth travelling 17 hours from London to attend an economics conference? If that conference is the annual symposium of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, held in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, at the base of the majestic Grand Tetons, and attended by central bankers and economists from around the world, the answer is definitely yes. The topic of this year's symposium was the future economic impact of ageing populations. The papers presented went much further than the well-known implications of ageing for labour-force growth and public finances, and focused more on its effects on future economic growth rates, the return on capital, interest rates and exchange rates. One of the most interesting papers was by James Poterba, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who explored how demographic change might affect financial markets.