Conference > Plenary speakers

Martin Dufwenberg is Karl & Stevie Eller Professor and Head of the Economics Department at the University of Arizona, and an Honorary Visiting Professor at the University of Gothenburg. He defended his PhD in Uppsala in 1995, and was subsequently affiliated with universities in Tilburg, Uppsala, Stockholm, Bonn, as well as Bocconi University in Milan. His research uses game theory and experiments to incorporate insights from psychology into economic analysis. His publications appeared in many scientific outlets including Econometrica, American Economic Review, Neuron, Review of Economic Studies, Journal of Economic Theory, Games & Economic Behavior, and Journal of Economic Literature. Much of his current work concerns developing and applying a formal framework called psychological game theory, which is useful for modeling, e.g., a host of emotions, reciprocity, social norms, or image concerns.

Eliana La Ferrara is Professor of Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School. She received a PhD in Economics from Harvard in 1999. Prior to joining HKS, she was the Invernizzi Chair in Development Economics at Bocconi University, Milan, where she founded and directed the Laboratory for Effective Anti-poverty Policies (LEAP). She is Vice-President of the Econometric Society, Foreign Honorary Member of the American Economic Association, and International Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She is also NBER Research Associate, Director of Development Economics at CEPR, and J-PAL Affiliate. She was president of the Bureau for Research and Economic Analysis of Development (BREAD) in 2016-2019 and of the European Economic Association in 2018. She is the recipient of the 2020 Birgit Grodal Award. Her research focuses on Development Economics and Political Economics, particularly on the role of social factors in economic development. Her work has been published in leading economic journals. *Photo credits @ Women in Economics

George Loewenstein is the Herbert A. Simon University Professor of Economics and Psychology at Carnegie Mellon University.  He received his PhD from Yale University in 1985 and since then has held academic positions at The University of Chicago and Carnegie Mellon University, and fellowships at Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, The Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, The Russell Sage Foundation, The Institute for Advanced Study (Wissenschaftskolleg) in Berlin, and the London School of Economics.  He is one of the founders of the fields of behavioral economics and neuroeconomics. His research focuses both on applications of psychology to economics and applications of economic-style thinking to psychology.

Dilip Soman is a Canada Research Chair in Behavioural Science and Economics at the Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto. He has degrees in behavioral science, marketing, and engineering, and is interested in the applications of behavioral science in organizations, and for welfare and policy. He is the co-author of Managing Customer Value (2022), author of The Last Mile (2015) and co-editor of The Behaviorally Informed Organization (2021) and Behavioral Science in the Wild (2022). He has taught in the U.S.A, Hong Kong and Canada, and has worked with several corporations, governments and start-ups. His non-academic interests include procrastination, cricket, travel, and taking weekends seriously.