Invited Speakers

SWAN LECTURE 2023 – Oliver Hart

Nobel Laureate in Economics 2016

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Oliver Hart is currently the Lewis P. and Linda L. Geyser University Professor at Harvard University, where he has taught since 1993. He is the 2016 co-recipient of the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, a Fellow of the Econometric Society, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the British Academy, and the American Finance Association, a member of the National Academy of Sciences, and has several honorary degrees.

Hart works mainly on contract theory, the theory of the firm, corporate finance, and law and economics. His research centers on the roles that ownership structure and contractual arrangements play in the governance and boundaries of corporations. He has published a book (Firms, Contracts, and Financial Structure, Oxford University Press, 1995) and numerous journal articles. He has used his theoretical work on firms in two legal cases as a government expert (Black and Decker v. U.S.A. and WFC Holdings Corp. (Wells Fargo) v. U.S.A.). He has been president of the American Law and Economics Association and a vice president of the American Economic Association

Presentation topic: Exit vs Voice: The economics of socially responsible investment

Presentation topic: Exit vs Voice: The economics of socially responsible investment

BARTON LECTURE 2023 – Stephanie Hurder

Prysm Group

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Dr. Stephanie Hurder is an entrepreneur working at the intersection of emerging technologies, education, and economics. A Harvard-trained economist, Dr. Hurder co-founded Prysm Group, the leading provider of emerging technology advisory and education to the world’s top professional services, financial services, and technology firms. Prysm Group was featured on the 2022 Inc. 500 list of the most successful companies in America. As a Partner and Founding Economist, Dr. Hurder co-leads the advisory, research, and educational development divisions of the firm.

Dr. Hurder is a frequent speaker and writer on economics and emerging technologies. She has been featured at SXSW, the Federal Reserve, Consensus, CESC, Harvard, Stanford, MIT, and the Simons Institute at Berkeley. As a Visiting Scholar at the University of Southern California’s CCI, Dr. Hurder co-developed and taught the first course on economic design for distributed ledger technology in the nation. She is an advisor to the World Economic Forum and an Opinion Columnist for CoinDesk.

Prior to co-founding Prysm Group, Dr. Hurder was a management consultant at the Boston Consulting Group and an academic researcher at the MIT Sloan School of Management. Dr. Hurder has an AB in Mathematics Phi Beta Kappa and magna cum laude, an AM in Economics, and a Ph.D. in Business Economics from Harvard University, where she received the Sandra Ohrn Family Fellowship

Presentation topic: Smart Contracting in Practice

Presentation topic: Smart Contracting in Practice

Richard Holden

UNSW Business School

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Richard Holden is professor of economics at UNSW Business School, and President of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia. He received a PhD from Harvard University and was a faculty member at MIT and the University of Chicago before returning to Australia.

He has published in leading economics journals such as the Quarterly Journal of Economics, American Economic Review, Journal of Political Economy, and Review of Economic Studies. His popular writings have appeared in outlets such as the New York Times, Australian Financial Review, The Australian and The Sydney Morning Herald. He is currently a regular columnist for the Australian Financial Review.

He is a fellow of the Econometric Society, and of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia. His most recent book is Money in the 21st Century: Cheap, Mobile, Digital (University of California Press).

Presentation topic: Mechanism Design and Smart Contracts

Presentation topic: Mechanism Design and Smart Contracts

Simon Loertscher

University of Melbourne

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Presentation topic: to be advised

Presentation topic: to be advised