A striking feature of the ongoing COVID-19 crisis is the boom in house prices. Economists are debating on the origins of such a spike. Based on his recent publication coauthored with Boston College Professor Ryan Chahrour, HEC Paris Professor Gaballo explains how housing prices generates waves of optimism and pessimism causing sizeable fluctuations in the business cycle. A spike in housing prices can then effectively fuel the optimism needed to trigger a quick, persistent recovery of the US economy.
Social entrepreneurship is characterized by a deep commitment to a social cause and the desire to develop new business models with economic, social, and ecological impacts. But can people be trained to become better at social entrepreneurship? HEC Paris Professors Thomas Åstebro and Florian Hoos found that social entrepreneurship training works, but only if carefully designed.
By Thomas Åstebro , Florian Hoos
The 2020 Nobel Prize in Economics recognized Paul Milgrom and Robert Wilson of Stanford University for their research on auctions. In this interview, Jean-Edouard Colliard, Associate Professor of Finance at HEC Paris and author of "Les Prix Nobel d’Economie", explains their research, and its role in the economy, society, and the perception of economists.
New research analyzes how activist short sellers’ “research reports” convince investors that the companies they target are overvalued. Professors Luc Paugam and Hervé Stolowy of HEC Paris and Yves Gendron of the Université Laval found that the share price of companies targeted by major activist short sellers drop by 11.2%, on average, over three days. Target firms are also more likely to be subsequently delisted, suspended from stock exchanges, or to go bankrupt. Who are activist short sellers and how do they police financial markets?
By Luc Paugam , Hervé Stolowy
Research by Johan Hombert (HEC Paris) recently published in The Journal of Finance shows that well-designed unemployment insurance is key to foster business dynamism. As unemployment is surging in the wake of COVID-19, the post-crisis policy toolkit should take special care of the design of unemployment insurance.
By Johan Hombert
This in-depth dossier features the latest and cutting-edge research findings on decision making from HEC Paris' professors. We hope that the tools presented will help you think your decision making from new angles and to elaborate appropriate strategies in various situations, especially during these times of uncertainty.
When will be the next financial crisis? Who is going to win the next US presidential elections? How do we create beliefs about such events? By understanding how probabilistic beliefs form, economic theorists can now explain and predict phenomena that depend on rational beliefs. Latest research by Rossella Argenziano and Itzhak Gilboa equips economic modeling with a theory and a set of tools of belief formation, based on statistics and psychology. Some of the immediate applications are the equilibrium selection in coordination games.
By Itzhak Gilboa
HEC Paris Ph.D. student Fan Wang unveiled a new definition of ambiguity attitude during the latest D-TEA conference on decision making, organized by HEC Paris Professor Itzhak Gilboa. This was acknowledged and congratulated by decision-theory expert Peter Wakker. In this interview, Mr Wang explains what does he brings both to the field of decision sciences and to practice.
We, individuals and society, are faced today with many important decisions involving radical degrees of uncertainty. To better communicate on the current state of knowledge about uncertainty, and incorporate it into decisions, Brian Hill, CNRS and HEC Paris Professor of Economics and Decision Sciences, initiated the "Uncertainty Across Disciplines" project.
By Brian Hill
Uncertainty is an invisible trap, set to blind our capacity to avoid nonsense and create actual intelligence. Why invisible? Because uncertainty is powered by what we do not know, which is particularly difficult to become aware of. Anne-Sophie Chaxel, HEC Paris Associate Professor of Marketing and expert in cognitive biases, gives three objectives to keep in mind to embrace uncertainty, along with practice tool boxes to create intelligence.
