{"id":339762,"date":"2018-10-01T14:36:38","date_gmt":"2018-10-01T18:36:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/?p=339762"},"modified":"2018-10-01T14:36:38","modified_gmt":"2018-10-01T18:36:38","slug":"economists-celebrate-mark-bils-and-his-innovative-approach-to-macroeconomics-339762","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/economists-celebrate-mark-bils-and-his-innovative-approach-to-macroeconomics-339762\/","title":{"rendered":"Economists celebrate Mark Bils and his innovative approach to macroeconomics"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Mark
Mark Bils. (Ä¢¹½´«Ã½ photo \/ J. Adam Fenster)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Yongsung Chang \u201997 (PhD) chose the Ä¢¹½´«Ã½ in 1992 for his PhD studies because Mark Bils was on the faculty. In the years since, Chang, now a professor of economics at Seoul National University, has not only stayed in touch with Bils, the two economists have worked together on research projects. So it should be no surprise that Chang wanted to organize a conference celebrating his former adviser’s 30 years at Rochester.<\/p>\n

Economists from four continents gathered at the URochester in mid September to honor Bils, the Hazel Fyfe Professor in Economics, and to discuss recent changes in the US economy.<\/p>\n

\u201cMark was the first economist to use micro data to address macro issues,\u201d says Chang. Micro data, derived from individuals, can reveal information that\u2019s obscured in macro\u2014or system-level\u2014data, he explains.<\/p>\n

Just as Bils was a factor in some students’ decisions to enroll at Rochester, Bils says that the strength of the department\u2019s faculty was the major reason he chose to come to the University as an assistant professor in 1985. It\u2019s also a major reason he has stuck around for more than three decades. \u201cThere\u2019s a common belief in the department that it\u2019s more important to advance research in our field than it is to simply increase the number of times we get published.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bils is a macroeconomist whose work has focused on understanding business cycles and the decline of labor demand during recessions. The impact of that work has been wide-ranging.<\/p>\n

\u201cDuring Mark\u2019s 30-plus years, he has made important contributions to our understanding of numerous economic phenomena at the firm, household, worker, and economy-wide level,\u201d says George Alessandria, chair of the of the Department of Economics. \u201cHe is a Rochester institution.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jos\u00e9 Mustre-del-Rio \u201911 (PhD), a senior economist at the Federal Reserve Bank in Kansas City and a former PhD student of Bils, calls his mentor a \u201cpractical economist.\u201d As he explains, \u201cMark wants an economist to make sure that there is something in the real world that can be measured. Economists often get too involved in coming up with a complex mathematical theory, but if there\u2019s no way to convince others that it can be seen in real world decisions, what\u2019s the point?”<\/p>\n

Corina Boar \u201917 (PhD), an assistant professor of economics at New York University, presented a preliminary paper at the Rochester conference that focused on something that is commonly measured in the real world: wealth. Boar, another former PhD student of Bils, says \u201cA lot of people have very little liquid wealth holdings, even though they are actually very rich in terms of income and holdings of ill-liquid wealth. So, in this paper, we\u2019re trying to understand why is it that some people end up in a position of low liquid wealth.\u201d Boar is coauthoring the paper with Bils and Mark Aguiar, a professor of economics at Princeton University.<\/p>\n

Alessandria notes that the \u201cpractical economist\u201d truly has brought his approach right down to the household level: his own, and Alessandria\u2019s. According to Alessandria, Bils constantly thinks about the tradeoff between quality and quantity. And that\u2019s ultimately why Alessandria’s children call Bils the “grape economist.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMark is in tune with the seasons and knows exactly when the Concord grapes will be harvested,\u201d he says. \u201cWhen the time is right, he drives out to Naples to buy grapes in bulk. And I\u2019ve been fortunate that Mark will deliver grapes to my house.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Economists from four continents gathered at the URochester in to honor Bils, the Hazel Fyfe Professor in Economics, for his 30-year career at Rochester and to discuss recent changes in the US economy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":340272,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[23322,16072],"class_list":["post-339762","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-university-news","tag-department-of-economics","tag-school-of-arts-and-sciences"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nEconomists celebrate Mark Bils and his innovative approach to macroeconomics<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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