Eleventh BIS Consultative Council of the Americas Research Conference "The Economics of the Covid-19 Pandemic"

Tuesday 16 November

09:00 – 09:05

Opening remarks by Alexandre Tombini, Chief Representative of the BIS for the Americas and Césaire Meh, Chair of the BIS CCA Scientific Committee

09:05 – 11:30

Session I: The pandemic's impact on banks, firms and growth
Chair: Césaire Meh (BIS CCA Scientific Committee and Bank of Canada)

"COVID-19 and Local Market Power in Credit Markets"
Thiago Christiano Silva, Sergio Rubens de Souza and Solange Maria Guerra (Central Bank of Brazil) | Presentation (later published as BIS Working Papers, no 1017)
Discussant: Vasso Ioannidou (Bayes Business School, University of London) | Presentation

"Anatomy of Firms' Margins of Adjustment: Evidence from the COVID Pandemic"
Elías Albagli, Andrés Fernández, Juan Guerra and Federico Huneeus (Central Bank of Chile) | Presentation
Discussant: Ryan Banerjee (BIS) | Presentation

"Nowcasting during the Pandemic: Lessons from Argentina"
Emilio Blanco, Fiorella Dogliolo and Lorena Garegnani (Central Bank of Argentina) | Presentation
Discussant: Esther Ruiz-Ortega (Universidad Carlos III de Madrid) | Presentation

Wednesday 17 November

Session II: The pandemic's impact on labour markets
Chair: Ana Aguilar (BIS)

"COVID-19 and Implications for Automation"
Alex Chernoff and Casey Warman (Bank of Canada) | Presentation
Discussant: Ayşegül Şahin (University of Texas at Austin) | Presentation

"Is the pandemic Fast-Tracking Automation in Developing Countries? Preliminary Evidence from Colombia"
Leonardo Bonilla, Luz Flórez, Didier Hermida, Francisco Lasso, Leonardo Morales, Juan Ospina, and José Pulido (Central Bank of Colombia) | Presentation (later published as BIS Working Papers, no 1048)
Discussant: Sylvain Leduc (FRBSF) | Presentation

"Informal Labor Markets in Times of Pandemic: Evidence for Latin America and Policy Options"
Gustavo Leyva and Carlos Urrutia (Bank of Mexico) | Presentation
Discussant: Alan Finkelstein (Tufts University) | Presentation

Thursday 18 November

09:00 – 10:30

Session III: The pandemic's lessons for monetary policy
Chair: Fabrizio Zampolli (BIS)

"The Limited Power of Monetary Policy in a Pandemic"
Antoine Lepetit and Cristina Fuentes-Albero (Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System) | Presentation (later published as BIS Working Papers, no 1018)
Discussant: Mathias Trabandt (Goethe University Frankfurt) | Presentation

Panel: Policy challenges after Covid: what can research tell us?
Chair: Alexandre Tombini (BIS)

Participants: Laura Alfaro (Harvard Business School) | Presentation, Paul Beaudry (Bank of Canada) | Presentation, Hyun Song Shin (BIS) | Presentation, and Hernando Vargas (Central Bank of Colombia) | Presentation.