07-24-2024
As founder and co-chair of the Municipal Finance Conference, I was encouraged by what I saw at its 13th annual convening last week in D.C.
If you couldn’t join us at Brookings and missed the livestream, you can view sessions here.
We had an amazing response to our call for papers, with an abundance of papers of high quality; it resulted in a bit of a cramped agenda, but there was something of importance for everyone in attendance as a result and greater depth than in the past in a number of areas.
Our panels tackled important topics with leaders from academia, industry and government coming together to offer diverse perspectives on the issues of the day, including infrastructure, ESG (environmental, social, and governance) and municipal government.
In this time of political distance and skepticism for our institutions, we hosted wonderful panels of bipartisan (and non-partisan) treasurers and mayors who lead with the interest of their citizens at the forefront and with an energy and optimism that is often absent from the public discourse. It was a great group of true public servants.
We may have broken our record for attendance — both in-person and online. We had many repeat attendees and authors, and one 12-time presenter. All this tells me the muni space is gaining a critical following of rigorous scientists with a passion for this unique area of finance.
Lastly, we had a robust following on X (formerly Twitter) and in the Bond Buyer (subscription required), and a mention in BNN Bloomberg. This serves to reinforce that our topics are impactful and the research actionable.
Time to start planning for 2025 …
Rich Ryffel is executive director of business leadership and professor of practice at Purdue’s Mitchell E. Daniels, Jr. School of Business. While in industry, Rich advised colleges and universities, hospitals, cities, states, airports, school districts, and corporations on financing and capital structure, and led hundreds of financings in both the taxable and tax-exempt markets. He previously worked at A.G. Edwards (now Wells Fargo Advisors), Bank of America, Edward Jones and J.P. Morgan.
