#44. The College Town (Friday, June 2, 2017)

What was your best day…of realizing just how many opportunities lay ahead in your education/career?

St. Francis Xavier University in Antigonish, Nova Scotia is a very unique liberal arts college. The student enrollment is small (about 5,000), the education is top-notch with many renowned professors, and it’s located in a town where it is literally the only industry.

Which is why the decision to hold the 2017 Canadian Economics Association (CEA) annual conference (a three-day event) there was met with some raised eyebrows. But, what the heck, let’s all try something new—and have some good Maritime lobster while we’re at it.

The CEA, for all you non-Canadians and/or non-economists out there, kind of has its own tier in terms of academic conferences. Getting your paper accepted is almost guaranteed; so it’s almost like a casual hangout for anybody in Canada who does research or is a student in the broad field of economics. So on this weekend, a contingent of over two thousand economists was about to descend on a town that in the summer probably didn’t even have that many people.

I was presenting an early draft of my paper with Jialong on bond market liquidity (#114), and I had the good fortune to be part of the same session as Seung Jung Lee, a very senior Fed economist (and Chicago PhD) who had a paper on measuring sovereign crisis vulnerabilities. There was also a third guy in that session from St. Mary’s (in Halifax). There was no set structure (this is CEA, after all); so Seung, like a proper academic, suggests we also discuss¹ each other’s paper like in a real conference. So I’ll discussing Seung’s paper; no pressure.²

So I fly to Halifax Thursday after work. Get there at ten. Then they have a shuttle that picks you up and drives two hours to Antigonish. On the ride, I talk to some Simon Fraser (Vancouver) guys who do actual lab experiments to test economic behavior, all the while rehearsing my two presentations in my head.³

My session on Friday goes really well. There’s a good group of around twenty economists (including my colleague from the government, James Weston, a Prince Edward Island guy who’s a St. FX grad and here just to “hang out for the weekend”). The St. Mary’s guy isn’t really in my field (his paper was on SEC reporting) so not much comes from his discussion. But Seung seems to appreciate my comments, though most were already covered in a recent Revise & Resubmit⁴ they got.

At the session, I also meet two recent Yale PhD graduates. And after it’s done, I have a really good conversation with them – they’re especially interested in all the work I do with repo data, since they’re close colleagues with Gary Gorton⁵. This goes on all the way to Piper’s Pub—one of two bars in the town—where we grab some drinks and talk extensively about our fields. We meet my market structure research colleague Donovan with his University of Toronto buddies there as well, and have a grand time all the way to dinner.

We have our big fancy lobster dinner in the main hall, then after that all go back to Piper’s Pub again for late-night drinks (especially fun for me, since I’m now all done). Naturally, everybody from the conference is there – so the place is packed full. By the end of it, at one or so in the morning, it’s just one of the Yale guys, Theron (French financial stability research colleague), and I; and then this huge undergraduate crowd comes in and the place turns into a dance club. We end up partying for another hour.

Making all these connections with these researchers from top schools just felt so, so great. That day in a small town of a few thousand made me realize that I was really in a special position in the economics community – and had so much to take advantage of if I really wanted to.

You prepare 3-4 slides interpreting the paper, what you liked/didn’t like about it, what can be done to improve it, etc. There’s a fine balance between harsh criticism and naïve platitudes that needs to be managed.
I spend an inordinate amount of time preparing my discussion, and—with a lot of help from my market risks and vulnerabilities colleagues—it comes out alright.
In the check-in lobby I run into Kai Ho and Gary (who I’m meeting for the first time) (#80). We have a quick meal at McDonald’s, where I reveal my habit (at the time) of going to the office most Saturdays so I’d have an excuse to stuff myself at a buffet afterwards. Gary finds that to be the funniest thing ever, and “Buffet Yang Ming” becomes one of Kai’s many phrases that he repeats hundreds of times…
It means your paper is almost good enough for journal publication, subject to a few revisions.
Repo (short for “repurchase agreement”): a financial transaction where one institution lends money to another institution in exchange for some collateral (e.g. a bond). The money is then repaid and the collateral returned shortly after. Gorton is the pre-eminent researcher in that area.