Is economics still relevant today? A discussion with Nobel Laureate Bengt Holmström

• Florence School of Transnational Governance

The STG Talks, held weekly, serve as a space for discussion for the STG community and beyond. Led by the STG Fellows, the talks are a place for informal learning and exchange on global issues affecting different areas of policymaking.

In this STG Talk, Nobel Prize-winning economist Professor Bengt Holmström will engage with the EUI community around the question of Is economics still relevant today?

The conversation will address the following themes and questions: 

• Measuring the economy: From the Solow paradox, where the effects of technology could be seen everywhere except in productivity statistics, to externalities related to sustainable growth, it has been understood for a while that GDP is a bad measure. Does it need replacing? How could it be replaced, and with what? 
• Understanding commons: How can economics be recalibrated to correctly value life-sustaining commons to protect them? Are economists seriously underestimating the catastrophic consequences of protecting commons, and overestimating the policy tools to protect them?
• Understanding human behaviour: From utility maximisation to bounded rationality and behavioural economics: how long has the road been? Is behavioural economics still useful? Are economists open to understand and learn from other disciplines?
• Regulating the new platform economy: Are old ways of regulation still useful in the platform economy? What is the proper scope of government for the new infrastructures of networks/platforms/utilities? How do they get paid for? 

Speakers:

• Bengt Robert Holmström, Paul A. Samuelson Professor of Economics, Emeritus, at Massachusetts Institute of Technology; STG Adjunct Professor
• Georgios Papakonstantinou, STG Chair of International Political Economy; EUI Dean of Executive Education
• Petra Krylova, Policy Leader Fellow
• James Drummond, Policy Leader Fellow
• Adrien Bradley, Teaching Associate
• Farhan Abdul Majiid, Master's student

Please note this is an in-person event. No zoom link will be provided upon registration.