Economic Uncertainty to be Addressed at 2008 Economic Outlook Conference Presented by UA

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. – Soaring oil prices. The ailing housing market. The decline in the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the Standard & Poor’s 500 in the last quarter of 2007. Is a recession imminent?

Those concerns, along with other economic issues, will be addressed during the 2008 Economic Outlook Conference, presented by The University of Alabama’s Center for Business and Economic Research.

Dennis P. Lockhart, president and chief executive officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, will deliver the keynote address at the 2008 Economic Outlook Conference scheduled for Thursday, Jan. 17.

The conference will be held at the Embassy Suites Hotel in Montgomery.

Lockhart was named president and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta last March. He came to the position from the faculty at Georgetown University’s Walsh School of Foreign Service, where he chaired the program’s concentrations in international business–government relations and global commerce and finance.

Welcomes by Dr. Barry Mason, dean of the UA Culverhouse College of Commerce, and Dr. Michael Hardin, associate dean for research for the UA business school, will open the conference. Dr. Nigel Gault, managing director of Global Insight’s North American Macroeconomic Service, will present the United States economic outlook. Dr. Samuel Addy, director of the Center for Business and Economic Research, will cover the Alabama economic outlook.

Conference sponsors this year include Alabama Industrial Development Training; Alabama Power; Alabama Small Business Development Consortium; BlueCross BlueShield of Alabama; Boeing Co.; Business Council of Alabama; Compass Bank; Honda Manufacturing of Alabama; Hyundai Motor Manufacturing Alabama; Mercedes-Benz U.S. International; Sterne, Agee & Leach Inc.; and Vulcan Materials Co.

The conference registration fee is $125, which includes the Alabama Economic Outlook2008, conference materials, and lunch. The registration deadline is Jan. 10. A conference brochure is available for downloading at http://cber.cba.ua.edu/2008Conference_brochure.pdf

For more information, phone 205/348-6191, or e-mail uacber@cba.ua.edu.

UA’s Center for Business and Economic Research is Alabama’s source for business, economic and demographic data. Since its creation in 1930, CBER has engaged in research programs to promote economic development in the state, while continuously expanding and refining its broad base of socioeconomic information. To forecast the level of activity in Alabama, CBER developed an econometric model of the state. Beginning in 1980, output from the model has been published in the annual Alabama Economic Outlook series.

Visit CBER on the web at: http://cber.cba.ua.edu