Chicago Booth presents the Global Leadership Series Event

“Bitcoin vs Banks:  Will Innovative Financial Technology Put Central Banks and Commercial Banks Out of Business?”

Financial technologies such as bitcoin, peer-to-peer lending, and crowdfunding are fledgling industries now, filled with companies that are little immediate threat to traditional commercial banking.  But Chicago Booth’s Randall S. Kroszner will explain that their growth has serious implications for banking, monetary policy, and the ability of central banks to shape them.

Date: Saturday, October 31, 2015

Time: 5:30pm Registration

         6:00pm Keynote Speech

         7:00pm Reception         

Speaker bio:

Randall S. Kroszner served as a Governor of the Federal Reserve System from 2006 until 2009. He chaired the committee on Supervision and Regulation of Banking Institutions and the committee on Consumer and Community Affairs. In these capacities, he took a leading role in developing responses to the financial crisis and in undertaking new initiatives to improve consumer protection and disclosure, including rules related to home mortgages and credit cards. He represented the Federal Reserve Board on the Financial Stability Forum (now called the Financial Stability Board), the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, and the Central Bank Governors of the American Continent and was a director of NeighborWorks America. Dr. Kroszner chaired the working party of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), composed of deputy central bank governors and finance ministers, on Policies for the Promotion of Better International Payments Equilibrium. As a member of the Fed Board, he was also a voting member of the Federal Open Market Committee.

From 2001 to 2003, Dr. Kroszner was a member of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers (CEA). He was involved in formulating policy on a wide range of issues, including responses to corporate governance scandals, government-sponsored enterprise reform, pension reform, terrorism risk insurance, tax reform, currency crisis management, sovereign debt restructuring, the role of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and international trade and development.

Since 1990, Dr. Kroszner has taught at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. Dr. Kroszner was Director of the George J. Stigler Center for the Study of the Economy and the State. He served as editor of the Journal of Law & Economics and has been associate editor of a number of other academic and policy journals. He was a member of the board of directors at the National Association for Business Economics. Dr. Kroszner also was a member of the Federal Economic Statistics Advisory Committee at the Bureau of Labor Statistics in the Department of Labor. He is currently a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research and serves on the Committee on Economic Statistics of the American Economics Association. He serves on the board of the Financial Management Association and of the Paulson Institute. He is the Booth Academic Director of the CEO Perspectives program.

Dr. Kroszner has been a visiting scholar at the Securities and Exchange Commission, the IMF, the Stockholm School of Economics, the Stockholm University, the Free University of Berlin, Germany, the London School of Economics, and the American Enterprise Institute. He was the John M. Olin Visiting Fellow in Law and Economics at the University of Chicago Law School the Bertil Danielson Visiting Professor of Banking and Finance at the Stockholm School of Economics, and the SK Chaired Visiting Professor at Yonsei University, Seoul, Korea.

His research interests include regulation of financial institutions, international financial crises, the Great Depression, monetary economics, corporate governance, debt restructuring and bankruptcy, and political economy. His paper on managerial stock ownership (with Clifford Holderness and Dennis Sheehan) won the Brattle Prize for best corporate finance paper in the Journal of Finance. His book co-authored with Robert J. Shiller, Reforming U.S. Financial Markets: Reflections Before and Beyond Dodd-Frank (MIT Press) appeared on the Washington Post’s Book World political best sellers list.

Dr. Kroszner is a frequent commentator in the international media. He provides advice to financial institutions, government organizations, and central banks throughout the world. He is a member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on the global financial system and is involved with Gates Foundation initiatives on promoting access to financial services for the poor in emerging market countries.

Dr. Kroszner received a Sc.B. (magna cum laude) in applied mathematics-economics (honors) from Brown University in 1984 and an M.A. (1987) and Ph.D. (1990), both in economics, from Harvard University.