March 2 saw the inaugural Scottish Economics Conference jointly organised by the student economics societies from Edinburgh, Heriot-Watt, Dundee, Glasgow, Aberdeen and St Andrews. There were many last minute reorganisations because of the changes in travel plans caused by the "Beast from the East", but the conference went ahead. Mark Carney, governor of the Bank of England, gave the first talk via video link from the conference room of Bloomberg in London. He was introduced in London by Sean Brocklebank (who was stuck in London because of the weather), and the governor was interviewed after his talk by Stephanie Flanders. There were questions from the audience in Edinburgh and in London. Read the brief Watch the video It was of course a pity that Mark Carney could not make it in person but nevertheless a great achievement for the student society to pull this off. Mark Carney's talk was on the future of money in the light of the emergence of crypto-assets, such as Bitcoin. This was followed by a lecture on the future of money by John Moore where he talked about his work with Nobu Kiyotaki on inside and outside money and how the returns to each change with financial development. There were short talks by students and Andy Park, a graduate of the SGPE (in 1995), who is now senior economist at the Scottish government. The conference was followed by a gala dinner in the evening. This article was published on 2024-07-03
