The Bonbright Center periodically hosts or sponsors conferences in the new Terry College of Business facilities. Bonbright Center resources have brought hundreds of people from around the world to Athens. Such conferences have been well received and have raised the profile of the Economics Department, Terry College of Business, University of Georgia, and Athens-Clarke region.
Chinese Economists Society
The Bonbright Center co-sponsored with the Chinese Economists Society a conference about “Regulatory Impact Analysis: Methods, Applications, and Implications for Emerging Economies.” This gathering of about 200 people was at that time the largest academic conference in the history of the Terry College and drew considerable international attention as economists and policy makers from many nations visited the new Terry College facilities. Guests included about a dozen current or former deans of business schools in China and Chinese fiscal and monetary policy makers. The conference included a panel that discussed the trade conflict between China and the United States that was open to the general public. (April 2018)
I-85 Macroeconomics Workshop
The UGA Economics macroeconomics professors created the Inaugural I-85 Macroeconomics Workshop (October 2018). Thirty people attended a one-day conference for professors and graduate students from Clemson University, Emory University, Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, University of Georgia, and the University of North Carolina Charlotte. This innovative conference has since been offered once per semester with a rotating host institution: Clemson (spring 2019), Emory (fall 2019), and Federal Reserve Bank (2020).
Midwest Macroeconomics Meetings
The Midwest Macroeconomics Meetings in May 2019 attracted over 250 participants from across the US and abroad, including academic, government agency, private economists, and doctoral students. These meetings have been offered annually since 1998 (and semi-annually over recent years), and the meetings at UGA were the largest – by far – on record. The program committee accepted 40% of more than 560 paper submissions. The conference contained 61 breakout sessions, and more than 200 papers were presented. There were sessions on monetary policy, economic growth and labor markets, unemployment insurance, tax policy, aging and retirement, capital regulations, shadow banking, the macroeconomic effects of Medicare and Social Security, and the effects of the Dodd-Frank Act on small banks.