What is the Jackson Hole conference?

The Jackson Hole conference is an annual gathering of central bankers, where they discuss important ideas on macroeconomic and monetary policy, emerging challenges to the global economy and other issues. Apart from the prominent bankers, finance ministers, academicians and other influential economic thinkers from around the world also take part in the event.

The Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City has been hosting this annual conference since 1982. When it began, the aim was to provide a platform for promoting public discussion and exchanging ideas. The guest list for the event, which is carefully curated, is just above 100 every year. The attendees are selected based on each year’s topic with consideration for diversity in region, background and industry.

Every year there is a theme dominating the discussions in the conference. This year it was “Reassessing Constraints on the Economy and Policy.” Experts in the event publish a series of papers on the theme and related subtopics.

These papers have widely accepted and debated global policy circles and set the tone for policymaking. In the 2005 event, Raghuram Rajan pointed to frailties in excessive risks taken by US asset managers, undercapitalised banks and the consequent financial market developments. He proved prescient later as Lehman crashed in 2008.

Every year, market participants closely monitor the US Fed chief's address to get a sense of the policy direction and this year is no different. Investors looked for any clues on how the US Fed is thinking on rates ahead of its September policy meeting. In July’s meeting, some analysts believed that Fed’s tone was slightly dovish after a series of aggressive hikes. But then, Powell was expected to correct this perception.