Ryffel readies 6th annual Muni Fin meeting

Rich Ryffel, Olin’s senior lecturer in finance is the co-founder and co-chair of the annual Municipal Finance Conference hosted by the Hutchins Center on Fiscal and Monetary Policy at the Brookings Institution. This year’s conference will be held July 17-18 in Washington D.C. Olin is partnering with Brookings as well as the Rosenberg Institute of Global Finance at Brandeis International Business School and the Harris School of Public Policy at the University of Chicago to host the 6th annual conference.

The event invites academics, practitioners, issuers and regulators to come together for panel discussions and paper presentations of the latest research in municipal finance. The conference does not charge an attendance fee, but must be attended in person.

To find out more about the muni fin meeting, we asked Rich Ryffel a few questions:

Q: What happens at the Brookings Municipal Finance Conference?

RR: The goal of the conference is to bring researchers and practitioners together to both encourage better research in municipal finance and to encourage the adoption of more scientific policy and practices.

Q: What have been the changes in muni capital markets since the Great Recession?

RR: There have been significant changes in the municipal market since the Great Financial Crisis (GFC).  This includes the consolidation of intermediaries and reduced liquidity, more regulation, more disclosure and less innovation.

Q: Are there ever any surprising revelations from research shared at the conference?

RR: Lots of surprises – practitioners are often surprised to see how the data can reveal conclusions that are not obvious from anecdotal experience. Likewise, researchers are surprised to see how subtleties in the market can be masked when simply crunching large data sets. Thus, the reason to put the two groups together.

Q: Why should people involved in municipal finance attend the conference?

RR: Opportunities abound for education and improvement to better understand market behavior and use that knowledge to create better policy and more efficient government.

Link to more information on the 6th annual Municipal Finance Conference.