Choice with Reason
Abstract
This talk will draw from Richard Robb’s forthcoming book, Willful: How We Choose What We Do, Yale University Press, Fall 2019. This book identifies a new dimension of behavior that can’t be described by rational choice or behavioral biases: acting willfully on the world. These actions are undertaken for their own sake rather than to obtain a preferred outcome. Exploring this uncharted sphere, we learn to see time as a flow and economic life as a high-stakes game. Beliefs, which constitute our identity, are neither infinitely flexible or easily transmitted, even if every agent is rational, trustworthy and properly incentivized. The theory has far-reaching consequences for institutional investing, opportunities for individual investing, reformulated notions of market efficiency and the fundamental limits to communication that cause markets to seize up.
Bio
Richard Robb is Professor of Professional Practice at SIPA where he directs the Concentration in International Finance and Economic Policy. He is also CEO of fund manager Christofferson, Robb & Company (CRC), with over $4 bn under management. Prior to cofounding CRC, he was the Global Head of the derivatives and securities subsidiaries of the Dai-Ichi Kangyo Bank in New York, London and Hong Kong. He has a B.A. from Duke University and a PhD in Economics from The University of Chicago.
