Sunday was another beautiful sunny day in Trento as the Economics festival continued with its fourth and final day of conferences. After three days full of high profile speakers, intense and enriching debate, plenty of thoughtful questions, and packed audiences, the 14th edition of the Festival is set to conclude this evening.
In the morning sessions, University of Chicago professor Raghuram Rajan issued a powerful lecture on internal community rebuilding. He claimed that communal problems need to be solved internally rather than externally. Citing the cognitive limitations of laypeople and the insanely complex nature of modern economic systems, Ben Gurion University's David Leiser gave a thought-provoking talk on the common misunderstandings of economics by the general public. David Blanchflower talked about the question of where all the good jobs have gone and why.
Despite the heat of the afternoon, Palazzo Geremia was full at 2pm when Nobel laureate Michael Spence and INET President Robert Johnson led a discussion on expertise, advocacy, and governance. Spence focused heavily on various vulnerabilities of expertise such as the wide variety in viewpoints among experts, political opportunism, and social media's role in the creation of advocates.
Together with Festival Scientific Director Tito Boeri, Dr. Rajan was back once again at 3:30 in Teatro Sociale to cap off the final event. They discussed a similar topic to the morning session on the state and internal community building.
Website: https://2019.festivaleconomia.eu/home
Twitter: https://twitter.com/economicsfest
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/festivaleconomiatrento
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/festivaleconomia/
