Rational Policymaking in Times of Uncertainty

Policymaking during two simultaneous crises such as the COVID 19 pandemic and climate change can be extremely challenging. In both crises, global impacts are unprecedented, and decisions are taken in a highly uncertain, complex, and rapidly changing environments. In such a context, in which human lives, the environment and the economy are at stake, using ideas and constructs from modern decision theory can make policymaking a more responsible and transparent process.

This webinar brought decision theorists and decision makers together to discuss the decision-making process under uncertainty.

It stemmed from an article co-authored by Prof. Valentina Bosetti, Prof. Itzhak Gilboa and Prof. Massimo Marinacci, which can be found here.

This webinar was part of The AXA Research Fund Expert Series, which brings together experts in academia, business, and public policy to discuss key risks in health, the environment, and the economy to promote informed decision-making.

Moderated by:

Anne McElvoy, Senior editor at The Economist and Head of The Economist Radio.

Anne McElvoy is Senior Editor of the Economist and was its global Policy Editor from 2010-16. She writes on political and international affairs and runs Economist Radio, the company’s audio arm. Anne has also written  politics column for the Evening Standard for the past 17 years – the paper’s longest serving columnist.

A presenter of Start the Week on BBC Radio4, the Moral Maze and Free Thinking for the BBC, she is an experienced live broadcaster and series maker of political history and current affairs, currently making a documentary about the three months leading up to official Brexit date.

As The Times’s correspondent in East Berlin, she reported the fall of the Berlin Wall. Subsequently she covered the Yugoslavia and Chechnya wars and was the paper’s bureau chief in Moscow during the rise of Vladimir Putin.Anne received the Journalist of the Year/Women in Public Life award in 2015. She is an education board member of the World Economic Forum at Davos and the digital planning board of the Royal Opera House in London.

Panel:

Valentina Bosetti, Professor of environmental and climate change economics at Bocconi University.

Valentina Bosetti is full professor at the Department of Economics, Bocconi University and a senior scientist at the RFF CMCC European Institute on Economics and the Environment. Valentina is currently serving as chairwoman of Terna S.p.A.

She holds a PhD in Computational Mathematics and Operation Research from the Università Statale of Milan and a Master Degree in Environmental and Resources Economics from University College of London.

Professor Bosetti worked at Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei from 2003 to 2018 and collaborated with CMCC from 2006. She also served as a Council Member of the European Association of Environmental Economists and as the President of the Italian Association of Environmental Economists. She has published several papers in the field of economics of climate change and of clean technologies innovation.

Antoine Flahault, Professor of Public Health at Université Paris Descartes and Director of the Institute of Global Health at the Université de Genève.

Antoine Flahault MD, PhD in biomathematics, is professor of public health at Faculty of Medicine, University of Geneva where he is the founding director of the Institute of Global Health, at Campus Biotech (since Jan. 2014). He has been elected as deputy director of the Swiss School of Public Health (Zürich) in 2019. He has been appointed founding director of the French School of Public Health (EHESP, Rennes, 2007-2012), co-director of Centre Virchow-Villermé for Public Health Paris-Berlin  (Université Descartes, Sorbonne Paris Cité) up to 2014, co-director of the European Academic Global Health Alliance (EAGHA) up to 2017, president of the Agency for Public Health Education Accreditation (APHEA) up to 2018. He has conducted his research in mathematical modelling of communicable diseases ; has chaired the WHO collaborative centre for electronic disease surveillance ; has coordinated research on Chikungunya in Indian Ocean and in French Caribean Islands (Inserm Prize, 2006);; was scientific curator of a large exhibition Epidemik, la Cité des Sciences et de l’Industrie, Paris, Rio and Sao Paulo, 2009-2013); is member of the Swiss National COVID-19 Science Task Force (2020-21). He was elected corresponding member at Académie Nationale de Médecine (Paris). He has chaired in 2016 the World Health Summit, the M8 Alliance, and since 2016 the Geneva Health Forum. Last December 2020, he had 314 scientific publication referenced in Medline.

Itzhak Gilboa, AXA-HEC Chair for Decision Science.

Itzhak Gilboa works in decision theory and other fields in economic theory such as game theory and social choice. His main research areas are decision under uncertainty, focusing on the definition of probability, notions of rationality, non-Bayesian decision models, and related issues. He has been teaching a variety of courses on microeconomics, decision theory, game theory, psychology and economics, and related fields, at the undergraduate, graduate, and MBA levels.

His recent research papers are published in prestigious scientific journals such as American Economic Review, Games and Economic Behavior, Annual Reviews in Economics, BE Journals in Theoretical Economics, Econometrica, Economics and Philosophy, Journal of Economic Theory, Journal of Economic Perspectives, Mathematical Social Sciences, Review of Economics and Statistics, The Journal of Econometrics.

Christophe Mugnier, AXA Group Deputy Chief Risk Officer

Christophe Mugnier joined AXA in 2001. Before becoming Deputy Chief Risk Officer, Christophe served as Chief Financial Officer at AXA Belgium and as the Group Head of Life Savings Health.

With an introduction by:

Massimo Marinacci, AXA Chair in Risk at Bocconi University.

Massimo Marinacci is Professor in the Department of Decision Sciences of Bocconi University. Since 2011, he holds the AXA-Bocconi Chair in Risk. He started his academic career in 1996 as assistant professor in the Department of Economics of the University of Toronto. In 1998 he was promoted to associate professor in the Department of Economics of the University of Bologna, and, in 2000, to full professor in the Department of Statistics and Applied Mathematics of the University of Torino. He has been department chairman twice (in Torino from 2003 to 2009 and at Bocconi from 2013 to 2019).