1 UBS Center Newsletter Dear reader, The first six months of this year were quite eventful for the center. Allow us to share a summary of re- cent highlights with you and give you a preview of what we have in store for the rest of the year. On the research side, we are pleased to announce that Dina Pomeranz (Harvard Business School) will join the Department of Economics of the University of Zurich as a visiting professor in August 2016. She will be affiliated with the UBS Center. Further- more, we would like to congratulate the three grad- uate students who were awarded with this year’s UBS Center Scholarships. On the event side, we look back at another success- ful edition of our Podium. Experts from science, business, and politics discussed the opportunities and risks for the Swiss economy in light of an aging society. Also, we had the honor to host an event with Nobel Laureate Robert Shiller (Yale Universi- ty) who talked about his latest book entitled “Phishing for Phools: The Economics of Manipula- tion and Deception.” We are proud to be able to offer similar top events in the second half of the year. Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman (City University of New York) will visit us on September 22 to give a public lecture entitled “Can Europe Be Saved?” Furthermore, we will be hosting the 2016 Forum for Economic Dialogue on “The Rise of the Machines” on November 7, fea- turing Jeremy Rifkin and Prof. David Autor (MIT) as keynote speakers. Finally, with the holidays just around the corner, we wish you a nice summer with plenty of time to recharge your batteries. Ernst Fehr Fabrizio Zilibotti Director Scientific Director No. 7, June 2016 Nobel Prize Winner Robert Shiller at his lecture on “Phishing for Phools: The Economics of Manipulation and Deception” at the University of Zurich. Content Research ........................................ 2 Scholarships ............................. 3 Publications ............................... 5 Dialogue and Events ...... 6 Outlook ............................................. 10 About us .......................................... 11
Transcript
1
UBS Center Newsletter
Dear reader,
The first six months of this year were quite eventful for the center. Allow us to share a summary of re-cent highlights with you and give you a preview of what we have in store for the rest of the year.
On the research side, we are pleased to announce that Dina Pomeranz (Harvard Business School) will join the Department of Economics of the University of Zurich as a visiting professor in August 2016. She will be affiliated with the UBS Center. Further-more, we would like to congratulate the three grad-uate students who were awarded with this year’s UBS Center Scholarships.
On the event side, we look back at another success-ful edition of our Podium. Experts from science, business, and politics discussed the opportunities and risks for the Swiss economy in light of an aging society. Also, we had the honor to host an event with Nobel Laureate Robert Shiller (Yale Universi-
ty) who talked about his latest book entitled “Phishing for Phools: The Economics of Manipula-tion and Deception.”
We are proud to be able to offer similar top events in the second half of the year. Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman (City University of New York) will visit us on September 22 to give a public lecture entitled “Can Europe Be Saved?” Furthermore, we will be hosting the 2016 Forum for Economic Dialogue on “The Rise of the Machines” on November 7, fea-turing Jeremy Rifkin and Prof. David Autor (MIT) as keynote speakers.
Finally, with the holidays just around the corner, we wish you a nice summer with plenty of time to recharge your batteries.
Ernst Fehr Fabrizio ZilibottiDirector Scientific Director
No. 7, June 2016
Nobel Prize Winner Robert Shiller at his lecture on “Phishing for Phools: The Economics of Manipulation and Deception” at the University of Zurich.
Content
Research ........................................ 2
Scholarships ............................. 3
Publications ............................... 5
Dialogue and Events ...... 6
Outlook ............................................. 10
About us .......................................... 11
Dina Pomeranz (Harvard Business School) to join the Department of Economics
Dina Pomeranz will join the Department of Econom-ics of the University of Zurich as a visiting professor in August 2016 before taking on her appointment as Assistant Professor in Microeconomics as of September 1, 2017. She will be affiliated with the UBS Center.
Dina Pomeranz is currently an assistant professor of business administration in the Entrepreneurial Management Unit at the Harvard Business School, specializing in public policies towards firms and entrepreneurs in emerging markets. Her research has been published in journals such as the Ameri-can Economic Review and the Tax Administration Review; furthermore it has been featured in media outlets including CNN, Bloomberg News and The Wall Street Journal.
Research interestsHer research focuses on public policies towards firms and entrepreneurs in developing countries. In particular, she has conducted large-scale random-ized field experiments on tax evasion by firms and on the determinants and impacts of formal savings programs for low-income microentrepreneurs.
Three international students have been awarded a UBS Center Scholarship
The UBS Center of Economics in Society recently awarded three UBS Center Scholarships to out-standing young talents.
This year’s scholarship recipients are Matteo Ro-berto Greco (Bocconi University, Italy), Pascale de Raemy (Cambridge University, UK), and Ursina Schaede (University of Chicago, USA). They will enter the Zurich Graduate School of Economics in September 2016.
The UBS International Center provides full scholar-ships to PhD candidates who wish to take up doc-toral studies at the Zurich Graduate School of Economics (ZurichGSE) at the University of Zurich. For more information on the scholarships, please visit our website: www.ubscenter.uzh.ch
UBS Center Scholarships – Quick FactsLevel of study: PhD candidatesOffered: AnnuallyNumber of awards: 3 (for entry in September 2017)Value: Approx. CHF 42,500 p.a. plus tuition feesDuration: 4 yearsClosing date: January 31, 2017
For more information, please visit www.ubscenter.uzh.ch
The first UBS Center Scholarship recipient grants us a glimpse of his ride on the PhD roller coaster.
Jean-Michel Benkert joined the UBS Center in 2012 as a PhD student at the Department of Eco-nomics. He was the first student to receive a UBS Center Scholarship for the Zurich Graduate School of Economics. At the time of this interview, Jean-Michel Benkert was a visiting student at North-western University, Illinois.
Four years have passed since you were awarded the UBS Center Scholarship. When you look back now, what were your personal highlights?
Jean-Michel Benkert: Well I guess right now is one of the highlights. The opportunity to visit North-western University is amazing, as it is one of the best departments in the world; experiencing that is certainly a personal highlight. More Zurich spe-cific, the Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting, which I was able to attend in 2014 along with the other UBS Center Scholarship holders, was impressive in terms of witnessing the Nobel laureates and also being able to talk to them and interact with them during dinner. Finally, more generally speaking, the experience of interacting with the visiting scholars in Zurich. When you have speakers over, this is something I appreciate a lot and it is always a high-light of the week and as such one of the highlights overall.
What were the main challenges that you faced during the past years and how did you master them?
What I was told and what I tell all the prospective or young students is that course work is relatively easy; it is hard work but it is a familiar setting. The hard part is the transition to research. Course work is just like what you had before, but doing research is just a new situation. The challenge here is to get good at self-management. I managed to get better at this by talking to the people who are more experi-enced, especially by speaking to my mentor and advisor. Every day in some sense is a challenge just by the virtue of doing research. You don’t know if a project is going to work out, so you have to try and work hard on it. And certainly one of the hardest moments was when I had to let go of a project that didn’t lead anywhere for the first time. And the
challenge that I’m now facing is to come up with something that is good enough for a job market paper. As you said it’s been four years, I’m closer to the end than to the beginning and now it’s about trying to position myself on the academic market and that currently feels like the biggest challenge so far.
You were the first UBS Center Scholarship holder and started in 2012 shortly after the creation of the center. Have you benefitted from having a UBS Center Scholarship?
That’s an easy question to answer. Yes, I have benefitted tremendously. The most obvious advan-tage is that I have the option to teach classes while not having any obligations. The scholarship gives me the opportunity to dedicate myself fully to my research and course work. Also, what I really enjoy is that I am invited to all the UBS Center events. It is a great opportunity to interact with people, with whom I wouldn’t usually interact. For instance, I sat next to Peter Gottwald, the former German ambassador in Switzerland and Liechtenstein, at the dinner that followed the public lecture by Kenneth Rogoff in June 2015. Talking with him was incred-ibly interesting. That is a conversation I would have probably never have had and probably never will have again.
What is your assessment on the build-up and the activities of the center?
From the beginning, the center has been very suc-cessful at hosting outstanding public events, like the Forum. Recently, the center started hosting aca-demic conferences with first-class speakers, and it
“I started a PhD with the idea of pursuing an academic career and the last four years rein-forced my belief that being a researcher is an attractive job. The combination of teaching and research is very appealing.”
has now also succeeded in contributing more di-rectly to the academic environment of the depart-ment. In particular, the Economics Department has attracted top researchers to Zurich, which would not have been possible without the center. With these new people, there are now more researchers at the center and there seems to be a clear direction in terms of research focus with the people doing eco-nomics for society. The center has thus also helped to lay the foundation for a reputational gain for the department.
What are you currently working on?
Up to now, I have focused on the optimal design of economic institutions and their effect on people’s incentives. For instance, in joint work with my fellow student Igor Letina, we study how we should design tournaments that aim to foster research and innovation. These tournaments are inherently dynamic, that is, they typically take place over a longer period of time. We analyze how this dynam-ic nature of tournaments should optimally be taken into account in the design of research tournaments. For example, should there be multiple prizes to be won as the tournament progresses, and, if so, how should the value of these prizes evolve over time?
Why did you choose to work on these specific topics?
I am broadly interested in why people behave the way they do. I believe that the environment a per-son faces is central in determining his or her behav-ior. Thus, I try to better understand how different economic institutions affect people’s incentives and in what ways. The actual research questions I am pursuing originated from very different sources. I have a project in which I allow for the possibility that people are loss-averse. This project essentially evolved from a comment my mother made. She is a high school teacher and she once told me that she believes that rewards work better than punishments to incentivize students. This thought eventually developed into a project on the effect of loss-aversion on people’s incentives in trade situations.
What advice would you give students who want to pursue a PhD in Economics?
We just had the prospective students at the Depart-ment of Economics in Zurich and I talked to some
of them. One of the things I told them is that you usually do your PhD from the age of roughly 24 to 30. This is a long and very important time of your life, not only in terms of your future career but also for your private life. What I mean is: try to give the PhD the importance it deserves, but don’t make it the only thing in your life. Also, try to enjoy the PhD roller coaster ride. Because there will be very good times and you should try to focus on these – or as somebody else told me – one of the best quali-ties you can develop is resistance to frustration or at least a high tolerance of frustration.
Jean-Michel Benkert
Jean- Michel Benkert obtained a B.A. in Business and Economics at the University of Basel at the age of 22. He then went to Barcelona where he completed the M.Sc. program in Economics and Finance at the Barcelona Graduate School of Economics. Benkert was the first student awarded a UBS Center Scholarship for the Zurich Graduate School of Economics in 2012.
His research interests lie in the field of microeco-nomic theory, with an emphasis on behavioral theory and mechanism design. Benkert spent the last nine months at the Department of Economics at Northwestern University for which he received a mobility fellowship from the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF).
The Working Paper Series is an academic publication series that features current research papers on topics that are of crucial relevance beyond academic research circles. These research papers touch on themes that are of both topical and fundamental importance for private- and public-sector representatives. You can download the full version of the UBS Center Working Papers from our website anytime.www.ubscenter.uzh.ch/en/publications
Working Paper No. 15, February 2016The Distributional Consequences of Large Devalu-ationsJavier Cravino, Andrei A. Levchenko
Large exchange rate devaluations are associated with dramatic changes in relative prices. In the aftermath of a devaluation, the price of tradeable goods “at the dock” moves one for one with the exchange rate, the retail price of tradeable goods increases, though less than the exchange rate, while non-tradeable goods’ prices are relatively stable. A clear illustration of such relative price movements is presented in Figure 1, which plots the evolution of these prices following the 1994 Mexican devaluation. The retail price of trade-ables is much closer to the price of non-tradeables than to prices of non-tradeables at the dock, consis-tent with the importance of local distribution costs in retail prices. This paper studies the distributional consequences of such relative price movements.
Using the 1994 Mexican peso devaluation, the au-thors show that the distributional consequences can be large. In the two years following the devaluation, inflation of the consumption basket of those in the bottom decile of the income distribution was between 32 and 39 percentage points higher than for the basket of those in the top decile. Differences in price changes within narrow product categories account for about half of this difference. The authors explore one possible explanation for this result in detail: the poor consume fewer non-tradeable goods. This manifests itself at all levels of product aggregation. Poorer households tend to spend a larger overall share of their income on tradeables. Across tradeable categories, the poor have higher expenditure shares in products with systematically lower distribution margins. Finally, within detailed product categories, the poor consume lower-priced varieties that contain relatively less domestic value added. Correspondingly, prices of goods with a smaller non-tradeable compo-nent rise more following a devaluation, leading to anti-poor distributional consequences. Another plausible mechanism that can drive the within effect are differences in markup elasticities with respect to exchange rate changes between higher- and lower-quality goods. The systematic consumption basket differences we identify are likely to occur in other countries and time periods, and thus the results for Mexico may be informative of the effects of other devaluations.
PublicationsWorking Paper Series
2.50 Trade-weighted exchange ratePrice of tradeables at the dock (IPI)
Retail price of tradeablesPrice of non-tradeables
2.00
1.50
1.00
Nov-94 Jan-95 Apr-95 Jul-95 Oct-95
Notes: This figure plots the trade-weighted nominal exchange rate, the import price index, and the consumption price indices of tradeables and non-tradeables following the November 1994 peso devaluation, each rebased to November 1994.
Figure 1: Price changes during the 1994 Mexican devaluation
The Grey Revolution – Opportunities and Risks for the Swiss Economy
Life expectancy in Western societies increases while birth rates drop. There is a fifty-percent chance that a child born today in Switzerland will live to be 100 years old. What does this mean for the economy and for society? How can the pension system be secured?
Experts from science, business, and politics discussed these and more questions at the UBS Center’s annual Podium, which took place in Zurich on April 21, 2016.
The problem lies with our minds, not bodies Walter B. Kielholz (Chairman of Swiss Re) started the debate with an input presentation. “The worst part still lies ahead of us,” he said, pointing out that by 2035, the number of people older than 65 will double across the globe, and the share of working age popula-tion to support the older generations will decline further. According to him, demographics is one of the reasons why structural reform of the pension system is so hard to achieve: Taking the city of Zurich as an example, only a minority of the people most affected by a lack of true reform are eligible to vote – the others being either too young or holding the wrong passport.
In the following discussion led by moderator Markus Spillmann, all panelists agreed that being 65 no longer means being old. Axel Börsch-Supan (Max Planck Institute) said biology is much further in this regard than our mindsets. At 65, people are fitter and better educated than ever before, and by no means need to go into retirement. He challenged the term “aging society” as being a problem of definition – 65 was defined as retirement age 120 years ago!
Dialogue and EventsPodium
Jacqueline Fehr (Cantonal government Zurich, Social-Democrat Party) said we still have not fully under-stood what voluntary family planning means for society. In northern European countries, excellent childcare systems achieved two things: Women do not drop out of the workforce and they still have more children than the Swiss.
Bernd Raffelhüschen (University of Freiburg) agreed that keeping more women employed is a good thing to do, but at the same time, every additional day of life expectancy cannot mean an additional day of getting pension payments. People could easily work longer: older employees have a more crystalline intelligence, but on the other hand, they have experience. Jacque-line Fehr responded that we should not underestimate the value retired people create by taking on unpaid work: The number of hours Swiss grandparents care for their grandchildren is higher than the combined working hours of all primary school teachers in the country. She also said older employees often do not feel appreciated and welcome in corporate environ-ments.
Walter B. Kielholz agreed that
and to give their older employees a bouquet of flowers. It would take more responsible leadership behavior to solve this issue. And Axel Börsch-Supan added that with this practice, employers can outsource their social plan to the state. In response to a question from the
“In times of restructuring it is much easier for managers to retire than to fire”
Walter B. Kielholz (Swiss Re) talked about opportunities and risks of demographic change from an economic perspective.
Panel discussion with Axel Börsch-Supan, Bernd Raffelhüschen, Jacqueline Fehr, and Walter B. Kielholz (f.l.t.r.).
audience, Walter B. Kielholz said it is not fair to tell the working-age population that they have to finance the excessive pension system while not giving them any hope that they will get something in return. The concept of the so-called generational contract is cur-rently more than strained, but: “If I knew how to solve this, I would have become a politician” he said.
What makes sense in economic terms is not always politically viable In the second part of the afternoon, Axel Börsch-Suppan set the stage with valuable insights from research: As the cases of Denmark and Sweden showed, aging does not harm economic output with flexible labor market and automatic calibration of pension payments. But to gain support for the right reforms, three myths have to be abandoned, which are supported by empirical data. First, health does not generally decline from age sixty; second, produc-tivity is not lower at an older age (while younger people make fewer mistakes, they tend to make the fatal ones), and third, older employees do not take jobs away from younger employees.
Moderator Markus Spillmann started the following panel discussion by asking Alex Kuprecht (Councillor of States, Swiss People’s Party) and Urs Schwaller (former Councillor of States, Christian-Democrat Party): “Why haven’t you been more courageous?” The two politicians involved in drafting the current Swiss pension reform project responded with political pragmatism. Kuprecht noted that the Swiss direct democracy limits the room for maneuver; reductions in one pillar of the pension system therefore have to be balanced with concessions in the other. Schwaller added that there has not been a successful pension
reform for twenty years. Hence it is more important now to get through with something, even if it is not the perfect solution.
Christoph Schaltegger (University of Lucerne) chal-lenged this view by claiming the reform package does not help solve the issue at stake at all, but cross-financ-es new goodies for voters who do not really need them. Schwaller made clear that in his view, the pro-posed additional 70 francs for monthly pensions in the first pillar are only compensation for the current working population who will have to contribute more; it will not be paid to existing retirees.
Schaltegger said the only wise solution in such a politi-cal dead end would be an automatic mechanism simi-lar to the debt brake introduced in Switzerland at the beginning of the new century: “Otherwise, politics gets tangled up in an ongoing give-and-take exercise, which will never yield an economically viable result.” But with a sigh of resignation, Schwaller said
If there were someone courageous enough to propose a higher pension age with a popular initiative, they can try – but it will fail miserably at the polls. At least, Kuprecht promised parliament would not forget about the long-term issue after the current reform goes through, but will take the opportunity to further improve the system by means of parliamentary initia-tives.
Axel Börsch-Supan focused on the prerequisites for a sustainable pension system from an international perspective.
Panel discussion with Alex Kuprecht, Prof. Christoph Schaltegger, and Dr. Urs Schwaller (f.l.t.r.).
Workshop on the Behavioral Economics of Financial Markets
On June 2/3, the UBS Center organized a two-day workshop on the “Behavioral Economics of Financial Markets” on its own premises in Zurich, which fea-tured presentations from researchers around the world.
The program proved very diverse in terms of research methodologies and focus themes, which served as a reminder as to why behavioral finance has become such a thriving research area. Ranging from theory papers to empirical contributions and experimental studies, presentation topics included an array of highly relevant and debated issues such as the effects of nudg-ing and financial education, cognitive biases and mis-conduct, as well as financial innovation.
Consumers behave irrationally, and macroeconomic policy-makers rather like itAs could be expected from a field that has gained a reputation for challenging orthodoxy, the workshop featured various contributions that questioned conven-tional wisdom. One fascinating example was Michaela Pagel’s presentation (of a joint paper with Arna Vardar-dottir) on the payday spending puzzle. Standard eco-nomic theory predicts that rational consumers plan their spending to maximize their overall utility, so that spending should be independent of expected income payments as long as consumers are not facing liquidity constraints. However, using an amazing dataset that contains total spending of one quarter of Iceland’s population, the two economists were able to show that in reality, Icelanders of all income classes spend consid-erably more on things like clothes, entertainment, and fast-food meals on payday even though only a very
“Consumers thus seem rather more irrational than com-monly thought, spending on more, and pricier goods, once payday seems to pro-vide them with a ‘license to spend’.”
Dialogue and EventsAcademic Workshop
small number of them face any real or perceived liquid-ity constraints.
While this behavior may decrease the welfare of these individuals, this pattern offers important inputs for policy-makers, as it provides some microeconomic evidence for why and how fiscal stimulus packages can be an effective means to bolster economic activity in the short run.
The last session of the workshop was devoted to dis-cussing promising future research areas and made clear that behavioral finance is likely to keep on thriving, as the understanding of how financial markets really work remains limited – among both practitioners and researchers. Much more academic research is needed and the dialogue between academics and the financial sector should be intensified. So expect more events of this type to be featured on these pages in the future.
Michaela Pagel (Columbia Business School) presenting the payday spending puzzle.
Public lecture on “Phishing for Phools: The Economics of Manipulation and Deception”
In connection with the conference on the “Behavioral Economics of Financial Markets” (see page 8), the UBS Center organized a public talk by Robert Shiller from Yale University on June 2, where the Nobel Prize Winner presented his new book “Phishing for Phools: The Economics of Manipulation and Deception,” which he just completed with another Nobel Laureate, George Akerlof.
You are all being “phished”Economic models tend to assume that people are informed about the decisions they make, so that consumers are able to make markets work to their advantage. Robert Shiller argued that this assump-tion is at least partially wrong, as many competitive markets by their very nature spawn deception and trickery. There are plenty of market equilibria where one party is being deceived, or “phished.”
To make his case, Shiller presented numerous exam-ples from various sectors, including pharmaceutical companies that present misleading medical evidence
“You may think you are doing well out of markets and be-have quite rationally, but in fact you are being taken for a ‘phool’.”
Dialogue and EventsOpinions
Nobel Prize Winner Robert Shiller honors the “unsung heroes” fighting against market abuse and therefore for a smoothly functioning market economy.
in order to sell more medicines, car dealers that consistently charge higher prices for women and blacks, or supermarket chains that mischievously exploit parents’ weak spot by putting the sweets on display right at the check-out in plain sight while having to line up together with their increasingly impatient offspring.
Standing up for the “phooled”If manipulation and trickery is so widespread even in competitive markets, the central question is of course what can be done about it. In Shiller’s view, states have an important role to play by doing their utmost to prevent as much abuse as possible through proper regulation. His second pillar against malpractice is a thriving and engaged civil society, in which its mem-bers remain ever vigilant and come out fighting for transparency and against abuse once they come across it for the benefit of the entire society. Manag-ers and employees of firms also have an important role to play by adhering to clear values and prin-ciples. Yet for businesses, Shiller’s advice appears less clear, bordering the contradictory: While urging managers and employees to behave morally and put client interests center stage, he also contends that companies in many competitive markets often have to test the limits of what is allowed to stay in busi-ness – which may include behavior that may be legal but would be dubbed dubious or even illegitimate by a large share of society.
Prof. Paul Krugman “Can Europe Be Saved?” on September 22, 2016
It is an honor for the center to host a public lecture by Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman at the University of Zurich. Please join us to hear his assessment on the European economic situation.
Nobel Laureate Paul Krug-man is known for his work on international economics, liquidity traps, and currency crisis. He has written over 20 books and has published over 200 scholarly articles. He has also contributed more than 750 columns on economic and political issues to The New York Times, Fortune, and Slate.
As a commentator, Krugman has written on a wide range of economic issues including income distribu-tion, taxation, and international economics.
Prof. David Hémous “Innovation and Climate Change Policies” on December 12, 2016
David Hémous was appointed to the Assistant Professorship of Economics of Innovation and En-trepreneurship, endowed by the UBS International Center of Economics in Society.
David Hémous joined the Department of Economics at the University of Zurich in 2015. His work centers on Economic Growth, In-ternational Trade, and En-vironmental Economics. In particular, he has worked on the role of innovation in climate change policies, the long-term growth impact of
countercyclical fiscal policy, the labor adjustments to international trade, and the impact of relational contracts on innovation. We would like to invite you to his inaugural lecture.
Forum for Economic Dialogue “The Rise of the Machines” on November 7, 2016
We are delighted to invite you to the 2016 Forum for Economic Dialogue at the Kaufleuten in Zurich. Please join us and hear leading international figures from science, business, and politics assess potential options, share their recommendations, and enter into open discussions with the audience.
The program consists of three main sessions • Morning Panel Session: The Rise of the Machines – Revolution or Evolution? • Afternoon Panel Session: Policies for the Machine Age• Disputation: The End of Work?
The event will start with a keynote lecture by Jeremy Rifkin and will conclude with the Zurich Lecture of Economics in Society delivered by Prof. David Autor (MIT).
Further speakers include Nick Bostrom (Oxford University), Alessandro Curioni (IBM), John Martin (OECD), Joel Mokyr (Northwestern), and Roland Siegwart (Professor of Robotics, ETH).
The detailed program together with further infor-mation on the speakers and how to register will be available in due course onwww.ubscenter.uzh.ch
About the UBS International Center of Economics in Society
The UBS International Center of Economics in Society is an associated institute of the Department of Economics at the University of Zurich. It aims to become a center for world-class research in economics that investigates the interdependencies between the economy and society and fosters knowledge transfer. To achieve this goal, the UBS Center will recruit top international researchers and nurture young academic talents who focus on economi-cally and socially relevant topics. Their research will go beyond disciplinary boundaries and take into account business perspectives. The UBS Center will furthermore establish a continuous dialogue between academia, business and society. This exchange will foster the transfer of new knowledge and will further encourage solutions to key economic questions of our time.
