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The Economic Dynamics and Financial Markets Working Group is a weekly session in which students present their work in topics primarily in macroeconomics and finance, broadly speaking. Research can be preliminary. This is not a venue primarily geared toward formal presentation practice (e.g., job market talk practice). It is more oriented towards early-stage feedback. The group is open to PhD students and faculty.

Meeting Logistics. (updated for Spring 2020)

- Time: Tuesdays 4:00pm-5:00pm

- Location: Zoom

- Contact: Jian Li at lijian[at]uchicago[dot]edu to present or join the mailing list

Attendance.

If you attend, you should present; if you present, you must attend. Basically, this means that I am less likely to give you a presentation spot if your attendance is spotty. Most presentation slots will be given to 4th+ years, but 3rd years should also attend and request presentation slots. The reason for giving some preference to older students is that, beginning in Fall 2015, there is a new class similar to this working group specifically geared towards 3rd years.

Meeting Format.

Student research presentation of 60 minute. For the fall quarter presentation, each student should spend at least 20 minutes of their talk placing their interests within a broader literature. All presenters need to submit a one-page proposal one week prior to their presentations. Slides should be submitted on the Saturday prior to the presentation.

Here are some more detailed presentation tips compiled after seeing how these shorter presentations played out during Fall 2015 and Winter 2016.

Questions.

During presentations, try to ask clarifying questions or make quick suggestions, rather than asking deep questions that would require a more thoughtful response or a back-and-forth discussion. If you want to ask "it seems like literature X is wrong about assumption A.x whereas literature Y makes a much more plausible assumption A.y -- can you comment on why you chose to go with A.x, and what would your model/estimation look like if you went with A.y?" then you should probably save it for the Q&A. It's just way too hard to answer those questions and not get derailed.