Invited Speakers

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

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: Mechanism Design and Smart Contracts

Presentation topic: to be advised