Professor Robert Engle, NYU Stern Professor and Nobel Prize Laureate in Economics, recently led an informal conversation on November 21 with students ranging from the Chinese financial markets to how a bizarre quirk of fate led him, a physics major, to pursue a PhD in economics. Engle was at NYU Shanghai to deliver the keynote speech at a conference hosted by the Volatility Institute.

He spoke about the challenges the world economy will inevitably be facing in the years to come and the recent Chinese stock market collapse. He answered students’ questions on the potential of the renminbi replacing the US dollar as a global currency and the threat of China becoming “the next Japan.”

After the talk, students still hung around for over an hour’s worth of questions and answers, full of insight and discussion.