16th Nordic Summer Symposium in Macroeconomics (Normac) 2024

About Normac

The Nordic Summer Symposium in Macroeconomics (Normac) is an annual conference that started in 2006 with the aim of sustaining a high research quality in macroeconomics in the Nordic countries. The conference is targeted at advanced PhD students, postdocs and young researchers working in academia or in policy institutions. It is designed to create networks between promising young macroeconomists, to expose young researchers to frontier-shifting research, and to provide a forum in which younger researchers receive feedback on their research from leading senior academics. There is a preference for younger macroeconomists from the Nordic area, but the conference also admits non-Nordic based (or connected) participants on the basis of merit.

The conference has circulated across Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden since its inception. This is the 16th edition of the conference and the third time it is scheduled to take place in Denmark. We believe that NorMac has proved itself to be an important component in the development of macroeconomic research in the Nordic countries. It has helped younger researchers creating research links and obtaining feedback on their work from senior researchers. 

The organizing committee and keynote speakers are senior academics and also editors of many of the top academic journals. Many of the papers presented at the conference over the years have ended up being published in top academic journals and this has helped their careers very significantly. In some cases, postdocs and advanced PhD students have also found employment as a direct result of the conference due to their exposure to senior academics. But most importantly, the conference has provided a focal point where leading younger macroeconomists meet and exchange ideas. The Nordic area has now gained presence in the field partly due to the conference.  

The 2024 edition of the conference will take place in Denmark over the period August 6th – 9th. The local organizers are Jeppe Druedahl (KU) and Pontus Rendahl (CBS), and the organizing committee of NorMac consists of Timo Boppart (IIES, Stockholm University), Niku Maatanen (Helsinki Graduate School of Economics), Kurt Mitman (IIES, Stockholm), Morten O. Ravn (University College London), Kjetil Storesletten (University of Minnesota), and Johanna Wallenius (Stockholm School of Economics). 

The plenary speakers for the 2024 conference are Monika Piazzesi and Martin Schneider, both Stanford University, two outstanding senior macroeconomists. Submissions for presentations (and discussants) of junior researchers will take place as an open call and be selected by the organizers on the basis of merit. We are planning on having around 35 participants in total which keeps the group large enough to exploit scale but small enough that it allows for the creation of networks.