ANN ARBOR— Forecasts for the U.S. and Michigan
economies and the consumer outlook for the year 2000 will
highlight the University of Michigan’s 47th annual
Conference on the Economic Outlook, Nov. 18-19.

Saul H. Hymans, U-M professor of economics and
statistics and director of the Research Seminar in
Quantitative Economics (RSQE), will open the conference
with a presentation of “The U.S. Economic Outlook” at 9:30
a.m. Nov. 18. Later that morning at 11 a.m., Richard T.
Curtin, director of the Surveys of Consumers at the U-M
Institute for Social Research (ISR), will discuss “The
Consumer Outlook for 2000.”

U-M economists Joan P. Crary and George A. Fulton will
present “The 2000 Outlook for the Michigan Economy” at 9:30
a.m. Nov. 19.

All sessions will be held in the Rackham Amphitheater,
except for an after-dinner address by John Ryding, senior
economist and senior managing director at Bear Stearns &
Co. He will speak on “The Financial Aspects of the
Economic Outlook” at 7:45 p.m. Nov. 18 at the Michigan
League.

Other topics in the two-day conference include:

“The Outlook for Europe: The Euro’s First Birthday”by Sheldon D. Engler, president and founder of Engler &
Davis Economics (Nov. 18).

“The Decline in the NAIRU” by Boston College economist Robert G. Murphy (Nov. 18).

“U.S. Wage Growth in the 1990s: Is Information Technology Improving the Inflation Outlook?” by U-M economist Frank P. Stafford and ISR researcher Yong-Seong Kim (Nov. 18).

“What Drives Consumer Sentiment?” by U-M economist E. Philip Howrey (Nov. 18).

“The Future of the World Trading System” by Sylvia Ostry of the University of Toronto’s Center for International Studies (Nov. 19).

“Why Has Housing Been So Strong?Can It Continue?” by David W. Berson, vice president and chief economist at
Fannie Mae (Nov. 19).

The conference is sponsored by the U-M Department of Economics in cooperation with the Institute for Social Research. For registration and other information, consult the RSQE Web page at http://rsqe.econ.lsa.umich.edu/ or call RSQE at (734) 764-2567.