46TH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE

The I.S.E.O. Institute’s 46th International Public Conference held at Palazzo Martinengo Colleoni opened with a lecture by two Nobel Prize-winning economists, Professor George Akerlof, from Georgetown University, and Professor Robert Shiller, from Yale University. The discussion was moderated by PhD Emanuele Ferragina, an Assistant Professor from Sciences Po University.

Professor Akerlof is an American economist who together with A. Michael Spence and Joseph E. Stiglitz, was awarded the Nobel Prize for Economics in 2001 for laying the foundation for the theory of markets with asymmetric information. Akerlof has focused much of his research on unconventional approaches to markets and the economy. Together with his collaborator Rachel Kranton of Duke University, he introduced social identity into formal economic analysis, creating the field of identity economics.

Meanwhile, Professor Shiller, together with Eugene F. Farm and Lars Peter Hansen, was awarded the Nobel Price for Economics in 2013, for their empirical analysis of asset prices. Shiller has written much on financial markets, financial innovation, behavioural economics, real estate and statistical methods, as well as, on public attitudes, opinions, and moral judgments regarding markets.

The meeting focused on the contents of the publication Phishing for Phools, which Professor Akerlof and Professor Shiller have worked on together. According to their research, markets harm as well as help us. As long as there is profit to be made, sellers will systematically exploit our psychological weaknesses and ignorance through manipulation and deception. Rather than being essentially benign and always creating the greater good, markets are inherently filled with tricks and traps and will “phish” us as “phools”.

If you want to gain more info on the meeting, you can check our photogallery or download some useful materials here below.