As part of the Brown Bag Lunch series, the International Economics Department at the Graduate Institute is pleased to invite you to a public talk given by Kaushik BASU , Professor of Economics and the C. Marks Professor of International Studies at Cornell University, and former Senior Vice President and Chief Economist of the World Bank (2012-16). He will present his research recorded in his book The Republic of Beliefs: A New Approach to Law and Economics (2018).

The abstract of his Working Paper (2015), precursor of the book, reads:

The discipline of law and economics deals with wide-ranging topics, from competition and environmental policy to crime control, and has been instrumental in determining how an economy performs. Yet its success has fallen short of its potential. The discipline’s shortcomings are nowhere as visible as in developing economies, where a common refrain is how the law looks good on paper but does not get implemented. This paper articulates a methodological flaw that underlies much of contemporary law and economics, and argues that there is an intimate connection between human beliefs and expectations, on the one hand, and the effectiveness of the law, on the other. I propose a new approach to law and economics that is rooted in game theory and rectifies the flaw. It is argued that this approach can open up new areas of research and be marshalled to address some of the more pressing policy challenges of our time.

The Brown Bag Lunch is a weekly event organized by International Economics where professors and doctoral students are invited to present their ongoing research. For more details please send an e-mail to Rémi Viné or Maria Kamran.