The State of the West: First Annual Joint Symposium with the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research

On Friday, February 4, the Center held its first annual State of the West Symposium with the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research. Video for most of the sessions is now available. You can either watch it above or browse a playlist of sessions on YouTube.

The symposium featured a timely lunchtime address by John C. Williams, the San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank's vice president and director of research. Williams said that the nation's economic recovery has reached "escape velocity," and that while the West suffered some of the worst impacts of the Great Recession, the region can lead the way to recovery, through technology and exports.

The San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank has posted a transcript of John Williams' speech and slide presentation. News coverage of the speech appeared in  Reuters, Bloomberg, the Wall Street Journal and the Stanford Daily. MarketNews.com published a comprehensive analysis by Steven Beckner here. The Bay Citizen has a story about the response to the speech by George Shultz here. And Reuters published a story about the "red hot" debate on pension politics.

Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer delivered a provocative and inspiring homespun western dinner speech (video). Afternoon panels included a debate on pension liabilities between Joseph Dear, Chief Investment Officer, California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS) (video), and Joe Nation, Professor of the Practice of Public Policy at Stanford and former California State Assemblyman (video); a panel discussion on climate change policies and alternative energy investments featuring Lawrence Goulder, Professor in Environmental and Resource Economics at Stanford (video), Donald Kennedy, President Emeritus of Stanford and a Senior Fellow at the Woods Institute for the Environment (video), and Nancy Pfund, Managing Partner of DBL Investors (video); and a review of the regional impact of the Great Recession and prospects for recovery by Edward Leamer, Director of the UCLA Anderson Forecast, and Kenneth T. Rosen, Chair of the Fisher Center for Real Estate and Urban Economics at the University of California, Berkeley.