How can the E.U. respond to the growing clamor for more citizen participation in its institutions? In a wide-ranging podcast, the Jean Monnet Professor in EU Law, Alberto Alemanno, proposes a permanent European Citizens Assembly to bring E.U. voters and their representatives closer together. The HEC professor also explores how lobbies can become a force for promoting social change. And he points out structural problems within the E.U. which are stymying the continent’s youth. Finally, Alemanno’s research with fellow academic Elie Sung pinpoints the oft-neglected impact of lobbies on judicial courts by interest groups– which are having devastating effects on societal issues like women’s and LBGTQI+ rights. Extracts.
On the eve of the 11th annual D-TEA conference, promoting Dialogues between Theory, Experimental findings and Applications of decision-making (hence the acronym), we talk to its co-organizer Professor Itzhak Gilboa. Last year, the professor of decisions sciences was ranked by Stanford University in the world’s top six theoretical economists. Gilboa’s research centers on decision under uncertainty and decision models whereby uncertainty can’t be quantified. That is called non-Bayesian decision models – as opposed to the Bayesian approach which assigns probabilities based on experience or best guesses. The HEC Paris academic questions these axioms, or self-evident truths. He believes his research can help answer unforeseen crises, called black swans, like the war in Ukraine, health pandemics or the climate crisis. Extracts.
HEC Paris Associate Professor Guillaume Vuillemey explores the ways the maritime shipping industry has evolved in the past 40 years to systematically evade its corporate responsibilities. In his groundbreaking research he reveals how this industry – which handles over 80% of global trade flows – uses flags of convenience and limited liability to flout international and moral law. This has repercussions on the environment and basic human rights. In a 30 minutes interview, Vuillemey outlines his approach of this industry and its links to what some are calling the “dark side of globalization”. Extracts.
Top personalities from the political and academic worlds, including Pascal Lamy, Peter Altmaier, John Denton and Merit Janow, were amongst the 17 speakers at a September 29 conference at HEC Paris on constitutionalism. Over three intense sessions, the policymakers and professors of law explored reforms in governance of public goods. In this article, however, our focus was on how innovative research in faculties should and sometimes does lead to concrete policy proposals.
The COP27 summit begins on November 6 in Sharm al Sheikh, Egypt, exactly a year after COP26 in Glasgow. A year is a long time and challenges have piled up: a world divided by war in Europe, where the world sees an acceleration of climate changes and global warming has beaten all modern records. In this light, Knowledge@HEC discusses the 12-day summit’s agenda and objectives with two guests: Igor Shishlov, Academic Co-Director for HEC’s Climate & Business Certificate; and Shiraz Moret-Bailly, co-president of Esp’R, an HEC student association devoted to sustainability and social economy.
Bertrand Quélin is professor of Strategy and the holder of the Bouygues-HEC Paris Chair in ‘Smart City and the Common Good’. He has been spearheading research on ways public bodies and private companies partner up to create both social and economic value. We discuss how the partnerships rely on a form of hybridization relying on three mechanisms: contractual, institutional and the ability to regularly partner up with public authorities.
How can private companies and public bodies reorganize their short- and long-term strategies in the current economic context? For years, Professor Bertrand Quélin has been researching the collaboration between private firms, public authorities and civil society to offer solutions aimed at building resilience in cities and designed to tackle the challenges of climate change.
In the United Kingdom, more than 700 Post Office workers were wrongfully convicted of theft, fraud and false accounting between 2000 and 2014. That was the result of a fault in Horizon, a Fujitsu computer system used by the UK Post Office. How can AI solutions be developed to detect and prevent such intelligent anomalies? To answer these questions and more we have turned to HEC Professor of Accounting and Management Control, Aluna Wang. She is also chairholder at Hi! PARIS Center on Data Analytics and Artificial Intelligence.
Professor of Finance and Executive Director of the Société Générale Energy & Finance Chair at HEC Paris, Jean-Michel Gauthier spoke to us on March 3, one week after Russia invaded Ukraine. Jean-Michel is a veteran of the energy business. After a start in the oil and gas industry, he moved to the energy consulting for 16 years as a partner at Deloitte. In parallel, he joined HEC Paris’ finance department in 2006. The school campus is where we discuss the dramatic events developing in Ukraine. Jean-Michel focuses on a key factor behind the conflict: the question of energy. Not just the pipelines that bring Europe 40% of its natural gas and much of its oil – but also the knock-on effects on all energy sources that prop up our global economy. He helps us understand what role energy is playing in this ongoing conflict and where these upheavals could lead the entire planet.
HEC Paris Assistant Professor in Marketing, Klaus Miller, analyzes the February 3 Facebook/Meta stock market plunge. What exactly does it tell us about private data on internet and its links to the advertising world? We meet Klaus on February 8, the very day he and five co-researchers self-published “The Impact of the GDPR on the Online Advertising Market”. This book focuses on Europe’s GDPR and how it affects online publicity. In a wide-ranging discussion on personal data and the advertising industry, Klaus provides insights on ad blockers on news websites and their impact on our reading habits.
