Dear Colleagues and Friends,

It is our pleasure to invite you to attend the 5th International Conference on Sovereign Bond Markets.

The conference this year focuses on Sovereign Debt and Financial Intermediation and is sponsored by the NYU Stern|Salomon Center for the Study of Financial Institutions. Co-sponsors include the University of Michigan|Mitsui Life Financial Research Center, Research Center SAFE at Goethe University Frankfurt, the National University of Singapore Business School|Centre for Asset Management Research and Investments, the Waseda University and Bank of Canada.

In the aftermath of the financial crisis, the key role played by sovereign debt in facilitating financial intermediation has received increased attention from academics, debt managers, and policy makers in general. The use of government debt to obtain funding liquidity, and to help in the price discovery process, is essential to maintaining well-functioning financial markets. An understanding of the mechanisms underlying the interaction between sovereign debt and financial intermediation is required for debt managers to tailor financial market policies to achieving macroeconomic goals.

We solicit theoretical and empirical papers on the interactions between financial intermediation and sovereign debt markets. Topics of interest include:

• Sovereign debt distribution: participants, auction mechanisms, and market outcomes
• Financial intermediation and the term structure of sovereign debt issuance
• Liquidity provision, transaction costs, and price formation in secondary sovereign bond markets
• Regulations (e.g., Basel III, Dodd-Frank) and their impact on financial intermediaries
• Unwinding of unconventional monetary policies and their impact on sovereign bond markets
• Sovereign debt issuance and spillovers to small open economies

Papers in related areas may also be considered.

The final program will include both submitted and invited papers.

The conference will also feature a session by debt managers on current sovereign issuance practices in major economies, and a panel discussion on researchers' and practitioners' views on the major outstanding issues in sovereign bond markets.

The Scientific Committee for this Conference includes:

Robert F. Engle, NYU Stern

Marti G. Subrahmanyam, NYU Stern

Paolo Pasquariello, University of Michigan

Jun Uno, Waseda University

Loriana Pelizzon, SAFE-Goethe University Frankfurt

Toshinao Yoshiba, Bank of Japan

Simone Manganelli, European Central Bank

Michael Fleming, Federal Reserve Bank of New York

Joseph Cherian, National University of Singapore Business School

James Chapman, Bank of Canada