A little History

In 1993, with the cooperation of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, the Economics Department at the University of Texas hosted the first Conference on Monetary Economics (the "Murray S. Johnson" conference). The success of this first encounter prompted many of the participants to pursue the idea of repeating the event on an annual basis, following the original format and rotating among the major Texas institutions. The following year an equally successful meeting was hosted by the Research Department of the Dallas Fed, and later on, from 1995 to 1997, the event was hosted in the Spring of each year by Texas A&M, Rice and Southern Methodist Universities. 1998 marked the "closing of the circle", and the University of Texas hosted the encounter for the second time, followed again by the Dallas Fed in 1999. Texas A&M in 2000, Rice in 2001, Texas in 2002, the University of Houston in 2003, Southern Methodist in 2004 and Texas in 2005. In April of 2006 the Conference is taking place at Texas A&M University, in College Station.

The format, that proved so successful the first time, has remained basically unchanged: an invitation to first rate macro and monetary economists from anywhere, with discussants from the six major Texas institutions. An incomplete list of presenters in past conferences includes Joshua Aizenman, Costas Azariadis, Laurence Ball, Jess Benhabib, Mark Bils, Henning Bohn, Craig Burnside, J. J. Chari, Matthias Doepke, Lawrence Christiano, Richard Clarida, John Coleman, Thomas Cooley, Russell Cooper, Dean Corbae, Martin Eichenbaum, Eduardo Engel, Roger Farmer, Timothy Fuerst, Mark Gertler, Edward Green, Simon Gilchrist, Jo Anna Gray, Jeremy Greenwood, Gary Hansen, Selo Imrohoroglu, Peter Ireland, Larry Jones, Boyan Jovanovic, Patrick Kehoe, Nobuhiro Kiyotaki, Narayana Kockerlakota, Per Krusell, Finn Kydland, Pamela Labadie, Owen Lamont, Lee Ohanian, Chris Phelan, Edward Prescott, Assaf Razin, Sergio Rebelo, Jose-Victor Rios-Rull, Martin Schneider, Stacey Schreft, Bruce Smith, Carlos Vegh, Neil Wallace, Warren Weber, Ivan Werning, Steve Williamson, Michael Woodford and Randall Wright.

Even the briefest "history" of the Texas Monetary Conference would be incomplete without reference to two outstanding scholars and dear friends who were instrumental in starting the Conference thirteen years ago and in maintaining its standards: Scott Freeman and Bruce Smith. Scott, who organized the first conference, died in July 2004; Bruce, a permanent presence in the Conference even before he moved from Cornell to the University of Texas, passed away in July 2002. By a tragic irony, both had been born the same year, both died at the highest level of their productivity, and both gave an example of grace under the punishment of their long illnesses. We still miss their intellect and their friendship.