Last Friday, on November 20th, the Volatility Institute at NYU Shanghai (VINS), together with the Economics School at Fudan and the Pudong Institute of Finance, hosted the First Annual VINS Conference. This year’s conference was centered on the topic of “Liberalizations in Emerging Markets”. Professor Robert Engle, 2003 Nobel Prize Laureate in Economics, came to Shanghai to deliver the keynote speech, during which he explained the potential challenges the world economy will inevitably face in the year 2016. The conference attracted numerous researchers, professionals, as well as NYU Shanghai students.The day after the conference, on Saturday, Professor Robert Engle met several NYU Shanghai students for an informal conversation on variety of topics, ranging from academic choices to the situation at the Chinese financial market.Professor Engle started the meeting by talking about his own college experience. Having graduated with a major in physics, he ended up pursuing a PhD in economics by a rather bizarre quirk of fate. He then talked about the recent Chinese stock market collapse as well as answered students’ questions about the potentiality of renminbi replacing US dollar as a global currency and the threat of China becoming “the next Japan” in the sense of falling into prolonged recession.After the talk officially ended, students hung around for over an hour asking additional questions. If anybody happens to be wondering how well Professor Engle managed to connect with the NYU Shanghai community, this seems to be the most accurate answer.

This article was written by Anna Jaskiewicz. Please send an email to [email protected] to get in touch. Photo Credit: Dylan Crow