Speaker Details
Speaker: Khalid Saeed
Affiliation: Worcester Polytechnic Institute
Time: 09:30–10:30 Tokyo time
Summary
This webinar featured Khalid Saeed of Worcester Polytechnic Institute who discussed the relevance of modern money theory for contemporary public finance. He assessed whether prevailing policies of treasury departments and central banks are relevant to the functioning of present-day economies where the currency is pervasively fiat—one that is not backed by a commodity but recognized as legal tender.
Saeed presented a parsimonious system dynamics model of the macroeconomic system that subsumes both fiscal and monetary interventions. Using this model, he explained the relevance of taxation to fiat money and explore alternative policy levers for funding public expenditure and regulating the money supply. Saeed further described how public spending can be entirely funded through deficits, while taxation and open market operations can be used to control inflation.
About the Speaker
Khalid Saeed is Professor of Economics and System Dynamics at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in the United States. He has published widely across fields including sustainable economic development, infrastructure planning, political economy, supply chain management, and system dynamics modeling.
Saeed serves on the editorial board of Systems, served as President of the System Dynamics Society, and is a founding Editor of System Dynamics Review. He holds a PhD in system dynamics and economic development from MIT.