Alumni-Faculty Forum: Of Bulls and Bears: The Current Economic and Financial Environment

Location: Robertson Hall, Arthur Lewis Auditorium

Moderator:

Stephen Redding
Co-Director, Griswold Center for Economic Policy Studies; Harold T. Shapiro *64 Professor in Economics, Department of Economics and International Affairs, Princeton University

Panelists:

Albert Keidel, III ’68
Adjunct Professor, George Washington University

Colin Fenton ’93
Senior Managing Director, 22V Research

Kristin Burke ’03
Partner, Harding Loevner LP

Sylvia Qiu ’08
Managing Director, U.S. Healthcare Team, CVC Capital Partners

Daniel Lewis ’13
Assistant Professor of Economics, University College London

Moderator

Stephen Redding
Stephen Redding’s research interests include international trade, economic geography and productivity growth. His recent work has been concerned with global firms, the distributional consequences of globalization, agglomeration forces and transport infrastructure improvements. He currently serves as director of the International Trade and Investment Program of the National Bureau of Economic Research. He is a fellow of the Econometric Society, an associate editor of the Quarterly Journal of Economics, an International research associate of the Centre for Economic Performance at the London School of Economics and a research fellow of the Centre for Economic Policy Research. Prior to joining the Princeton faculty in 2010, he was a professor in Economics at the London School of Economics and the Yale School of Management. He is a recipient of the Frisch Medal, the Bhagwati Prize, the Global Economic Affairs Prize from the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, and the Philip Leverhulme Prize Fellowship.

Panelists

Albert Keidel, III ’68
Albert (Bert) Keidel is an economist currently teaching China’s economy at George Washington University. He is the author of “China’s Economic Challenge: Unconventional Success.” The book argues that China’s success challenges mainstream development strategies, especially concerning trade, exchange rates, financial and fiscal strategies and international capital flows. He was China desk officer and deputy director of the East Asia Office at the Department of the Treasury and subsequently a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Keidel previously had been a consultant and contractor for the World Bank, stationed in Beijing. After leaving Princeton he was a Princeton in Asia fellow teaching French and German at Tunghai University in Taiwan. He then received his Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard University and was a postdoctoral fellow in the economics faculty of Tokyo National University (using the Japanese language). He speaks and reads Mandarin Chinese for professional purposes.

Colin Fenton ’93
Colin Fenton is the head of commodities research at 22V Research, which received the #1 ranking in the independent macro category in Institutional Investor’s latest annual poll. Previously, he was the global head of commodities research and chief commodities strategist for J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. There, he was a member of the management committee that supervises the work of about 1000 research analysts worldwide across all asset classes and sectors. He has served as a managing director at Duquesne Capital Management, the chief intelligence officer of Ospraie Management and the founder and managing partner of Curium Capital Advisers. Fenton began his Wall Street career as an original member of the commodities research group at Goldman Sachs. Most recently, he was the chairman of commodities at Tudor, Pickering, Holt & Co. and a co-founder of its spinout, Veriten, a media platform where he was a co-host of the popular “Close of Business Tuesday” podcast.

Kristin Burke ’03 

Kristin Burke is partner at Harding Loevner LP, a global equity asset management firm co-founded and led by another Princetonian, David Loevner ’76. Harding Loevner manages $60 billion in assets for institutional clients from around the world, with a focus on fundamental equity investing in non-U.S. markets. Burke currently leads the firm’s capital raising efforts in North America, and she has held many roles as the firm has grown and developed over the 20 years since she joined in 2003. Burke received her MBA from the Wharton School of Business in 2009, and she credits her success to the wide and diverse network she has developed over years of traveling and speaking on behalf of the firm. Harding Loevner’s additional area of expertise is the study and application of behavioral finance, and Burke is passionate about helping clients make effective, unbiased investment decisions.

Sylvia Qiu ’08
Sylvia Qiu is a managing director at CVC Capital Partners, a global private equity firm with $85B of assets under management. There, she focuses on investments in the health care space. Prior to CVC, she began her career at Citi and spent time in the private equity group at Cerberus Capital Management. Qiu holds an A.B. in molecular biology from Princeton University, an MBA and M.S. from Columbia University, and an M.D. from Mount Sinai School of Medicine.

Daniel Lewis ’13
Daniel Lewis is an Assistant Professor in Economics at University College London. Lewis researches topics in time series econometrics and empirical macroeconomics, with a particular interest in the estimation of the causal effects of economic policy. Previously, he served as a senior economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. There, he led a time series forecasting team, and developed the Weekly Economic Index, which emerged as a widely-followed economic indicator during the pandemic. After completing an A.B. in economics at Princeton, he obtained a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University in 2018. His research has been published in leading economic journals, including Econometrica, The Review of Economic Studies, and the Review of Economics and Statistics.