“Is crypto about to go extinct?” The question posed by numerous media in January followed a number of major crypto companies collapsing in 2022. Global media concerns came to a climax in November with the FTX imploding and its founder Sam Bankman-Fried placed under arrest. To better gauge the stakes behind this crypto-crisis, HEC Paris Professor Bruno Biais held a Masterclass on January 19. It retraced the Bitcoin’s history, from its inception by Satoshi Nakamoto in 2008 to current calls for regulation. Here are five of the key takeaways.
HEC Paris Professor Hélène Löning shares insights on disruption in the way the four well-known auditing and consulting firms, or "Big 4", perform auditing, recruit and manage careers. In her view, the Big 4 and other consulting firms will have to take account of the new generations' expectations to find the skills and talents needed to add value and bring solutions to their clients.
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, interviewing 10 leading experts on the topic of uncertainty.
By Brian Hill , Itzhak Gilboa
Investor uncertainty plays a key role in economics, affecting asset prices and investment decisions. Getting a useful measure can be important to financial professionals and also government actors, to establish monetary policy. An HEC Paris researcher and two economists of the US Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors found a new way to gauge uncertainty: using data on internet clicks related to specific news.
By Thierry Foucault
The labor market is strongly polarized. What consequences on the society? Based on their latest research, professors of Economics Tomasz Michaslki and Eric Mengus explain this "Great Divergence", and give insights on how to find new ways to create added value, both in bigger and smaller cities.
By Tomasz Kamil Michalski , Eric Mengus
Legal Data Mining Conference gathered professionals and academics from the technology, Artificial Intelligence and Law fields to discuss the future of Law. The two-day workshop focused on both the fundamental and practical issues of legal data mining. The event was organized by David Restrepo Amariles (Assistant Professor of Law at HEC Paris) and Ken Satoh (Professor at the National Institute of Informatics of Japan) in March 2019 at the Barreau de Paris.
While scientific findings need to be assessed by peers and journal referees, the confidentiality of original data often makes the process arduous. An accredited organization launched by Christophe Pérignon (HEC Paris) and colleagues with access to the original research data can now ensure reproducibility of results. This not only promises huge gains in time and effort for researchers but will also shore up trust in scientific results.
Based on his recent research and work for the EU Commission, "Unlocking Privately-Held Data to Create Public Value", Alberto Alemanno, Professor of European Union Law and Regulation at HEC Paris, discusses the concept of "Data for Good", whereby private data such as those collected by social media, telecoms and banks, can be shared with public authorities so as to save lives, such as in natural disasters, and improve them through better designed and more effective policies.
Ratings and rankings have become powerful tools in global governance, frequently used to motivate companies to be good corporate citizens. A wide range of environmental and social matters such as access to medicine, climate change, obesity and working conditions increasingly transcend national borders and escape the reach of national regulators. For such issues, who should set the rules about the responsibilities of corporations? How can corporations that are by definition designed to generate profit, be guided towards making decisions that benefit society as a whole? Afshin Mehrpouya and Rita Samiolo explore the process behind the production of these rankings.
By Afshin Mehrpouya
Major advances in complex technologies require the cooperation of a broad range of parties – a whole business ecosystem. Professors Sihem Ben Mahmoud-Jouini (HEC Paris) and Florence Charue-Duboc (Ecole Polytechnique Paris) studied the case of the nascent hydrogen energy ecosystem to investigate how experimentation contribute to the emergence and consolidation of the ecosystem itself, and the characteristics of such experimentation.
By Sihem Ben Mahmoud-Jouini , Florence Charue-Duboc
