Robert B. Menschel Economics Symposium

The Robert B. Menschel Economics Symposium generates critical thinking about the consequences of herd mentality behavior in global economics. The 2018 symposium will examine the insights that big data has provided into economic—and political—behavior.

This symposium, presented by the Maurice R. Greenberg Center for Geoeconomic Studies, is made possible through the generous support of Robert B. Menschel.

ORSZAG: OK. Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Peter Orszag. And I’d like to welcome you to this symposium, which is presented by the Maurice R. Greenberg Center for Geoeconomic Studies and made possible through the generous support of Bob Menschel. I should note that today’s symposium is on the record and is being livestreamed. So just please keep that in mind.

I am delighted that to kick off the Bob Menschel Economics Symposium we have Hal Varian with us. He is the chief economist at Google and has had many academic positions before that. I still remember when I was in graduate school the “in Varian” saying, which is if you had a question the answer was “in Varian,” and that meant it was in his...

The Robert B. Menschel Economics Symposium generates critical thinking about the consequences of herd mentality behavior in global economics. The 2018 symposium will examine the insights that big data has provided into economic—and political—behavior.

This symposium, presented by the Maurice R. Greenberg Center for Geoeconomic Studies, is made possible through the generous support of Robert B. Menschel.

GALLAGHER: Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to the second session of the Council on Foreign Relations Robert B. Menschel Economics Symposium, Behavioral Economics in the Age of Big Data. I’m Leigh Gallagher. I also want to, by the way, thank Robert Menschel for his generous support of this program. We’re all indebted to him for this. I’m Leigh Gallagher and I’ll be presiding over today’s discussion. And in the name of bipartisanship among your moderators, I am an Eagles fan. (Laughter.)

We are—at this time—whoa, sorry. We’ve got a great conversation today. Behavioral economics seems to be the hot new thing. I guess we could say that for many years now. But big data is sort of the latest wrinkle, and it has tremendous implications. So we have three fantastic panelists with us today. We have Hersh Shefrin, who is coming to us by...