www.cid.harvard.edu/gem

“Trillion Dollar Ideas to Build Prosperity” October 16-17, 2013

Wednesday, October 16, 2013

Loeb House at Harvard University 17 Quincy St. Cambridge, MA. T: 617.495.5758

RECEPTION AND DINNER

4:00pm–4:30pm Registration

4:30pm–4:45pm Welcome Remarks DAVID ELLWOOD Dean of the Harvard Kennedy School; Scott M. Black Professor of Political Economy

at the Harvard Kennedy School

4:45pm–5:40pm Keynote Speaker The Stories Behind Behavioral Economics RICHARD THALER Ralph and Dorothy Keller Distinguished Service Professor of Behavioral Science and

Economics at the University of Chicago; Author of “Nudge: Improving Decisions

About Health, Wealth, and Happiness”

6:00pm–7:00pm Cocktail Reception

7:00pm–9:00pm Dinner & Book Launch: Scarcity, Why Having Too Little Means So Much

A surprising examination of how scarcity—and our flawed responses to it—shapes our lives, our society, and our culture. Cutting-edge research from behavioral science and economics shows that scarcity generates a similar psychological reaction for everyone struggling to manage with less than they need. The dynamics of scarcity reveal why dieters find it hard to resist temptation, why students mismanage their time and why sugarcane farmers are smarter after the harvest than before. Once we start thinking in terms of scarcity and the strategies it imposes, the problems of modern life come into sharper focus. Scarcity provides a new way of understanding why the poor stay poor and reveals not only how scarcity leads us astray, but also how individuals and organizations can better manage scarcity for greater satisfaction and success.

Presented by: SENDHIL MULLAINATHAN Professor of Economics at Harvard University; Assistant Director of the Consumer

Financial Protection Bureau, United States Department of the Treasury

www.cid.harvard.edu/gem

Thursday, October 17, 2013

Harvard Kennedy School, Taubman Building, 5th Floor 79 JFK St. Cambridge, MA. T: 617.784.3857

MORNING SESSION

7:30am–8:30am Breakfast

8:30am–10:30am Session: Harnessing Know-How

We have shown that what an economy produces determines its wealth. And what it produces depends on what it knows how to make. Knowledge needs to be accumulated, aggregated and integrated among individuals, firms, locations and societies in order to transform it into products, and consequently generate economic growth. Knowledge exists within all these levels: individuals translate their skills into tasks, firms translate the skills of its employees into products, and cities combine these products into value chains that generate wealth. But knowledge operates in a tacit way, making it difficult to understand and replicate. In this session, we will explore how knowledge operates and how we can harness this amorphous power to help societies prosper.

Presented & Moderated by: RICARDO HAUSMANN Director of the Center for International Development at Harvard University;

Professor of the Practice of Economic Development at the Harvard Kennedy School; George Cowan Professor at the Santa Fe Institute

Presented by: DAVID BOJANINI President & CEO of Sura Group ROBERT BOYD Professor at the School of Human Evolution and Social Change Arizona State

University

KARIM LAKHANI Lumry Family Associate Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard

Business School and Principal Investigator of the Harvard-NASA Tournament Lab

10:30am–11:00am Coffee Break

11:00am–11:15am Feature: The Atlas of Economic Complexity

A brief presentation of The Atlas of Economic Complexity, its new features and the questions it can help answer. www.atlas.cid.harvard.edu Presented by MARCELA ESCOBARI Executive Director of the Center for International Development at Harvard

University

www.cid.harvard.edu/gem

11:15am–12:30pm Session: Dangerous Ideas and the Seduction of the Kinky: Does “a Dollar a Day” Really Define Development

The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) outline a distorted vision of “development”, targeting low bar goals for a few indicators: the poverty agenda is defined by a “dollar a day”, the education agenda by primary school completion, and the health agenda by a few conquered diseases. All worthy, but limited aspirations. The culmination of the existing MDGs in 2015 creates the opportunity to articulate a new vision for “development” and improved ways to measure progress, so that development remains relevant in a world of emerging low and middle income countries and growing middle classes.

Moderated by: VUK JEREMIC President of the 67

th Session of the General Assembly of the United Nations

Presented by: NANCY BIRDSALL Founding President of the Center for Global Development LANT PRITCHETT Professor of the Practice of International Development at the Harvard Kennedy

School; Fellow at the Center for International Development at Harvard University .

HOMI KHARAS Senior Fellow and Deputy Director for the Global Economy and Development

Program at Brookings; Lead Author of the Secretariat supporting the High-Level Panel for the Post-2015 Development Agenda

LUNCH SESSION

12:30pm–2:00pm Lunch Keynote LARRY SUMMERS President Emeritus of Harvard University; Charles W. Eliot University Professor at

Harvard University

AFTERNOON SESSION

2:00pm–3:15pm Interactive Session: Innovation in Development

As society grapples with increasingly complex problems, the Innovation field has the potential to add a new way of thinking to catalyze systemic change. The Innovation field describes an interdisciplinary approach integrates sociology, economics, engineering, and ethnography—among other fields. In this session, world- renowned designers, researchers and strategists will share how they are turning to new approaches in design-thinking to create effective implementation frameworks that might solve society’s increasing complex problems.

Moderated by: BANNY BANERJEE Professor of Mechanical Engineering & Director of the Stanford ChangeLabs

Presentations by: ANNE DORTHE COO of the Danish Design Center

FAWWAZ HABBAL Senior Lecturer on Applied Physics, School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at

Harvard University

NABIL HARFOUSH Assistant Professor of Strategic Foresight & Innovation Program at OCAD. Director

of the Strategic Innovation Lab (sLab)

www.cid.harvard.edu/gem

3:15pm–4:00pm Interactive Session led by: BANNY BANERJEE Professor of Mechanical Engineering & Director of the Stanford ChangeLabs

4:00pm–4:15pm Coffee Break

4:15pm–5:00pm Discussion: Shaping Beliefs and Culture To what extent is socio-economic development in societies influenced by cultural traits, such as individual values and beliefs? Are such behavioral factors determined primarily by persistent historical forces, or can they be altered and shaped in the short-run as well? This session explores cutting-edge research ranging from examining the historical roots of cultural norms, to an examination of how religious beliefs and political experiences can have profound impacts on individual and group decision-making. The session will offer insights into whether beliefs and culture matter, and the extent to which they can be influenced by policies.

Presented by: ASIM KHWAJA Sumitomo-Foundation for Advanced Studies on International Development

Professor of International Finance and Development at the Harvard Kennedy School

NATHAN NUNN Professor of Economics at Harvard University DAVID YANAGIZAWA-DROTT Assistant Professor of Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School

5:00pm–5:30pm Book Launch: The Limits of Institutional Reform in Development

Developing countries commonly adopt reforms to improve their governments, yet these reforms usually fail to work. Matthew Andrews argues that such reforms are often unable to make governments better because they are introduced solely as signals to gain short-term support. These signals introduce unrealistic best practices that do not fit the contexts of developing countries. The result: a set of new forms that do not function. However, there are some realistic solutions emerging from institutional reforms in a few developing countries. Lessons from these cases suggest that reform might work by focusing change on problem solving through an incremental process involving multiple agents. Presented by: MATTHEW ANDREWS Associate Professor of Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School

5:30pm–6:00pm TED Style Presentation: Dawn or Dusk? Envisaging the Aftermath of Today’s Global Economic

Conundrum by Looking at the Past

How do we make sense of the current economic situation from a historical perspective: are we re-visiting the 1970s when rich countries stagnated in an economic morass, while natural resource exporters boomed? And what is to come: will our era be followed by a decade like the 1980s, when developed countries rebounded and natural resource economies collapsed? Or, are there other historical parallels more enlightening for today’s context?

Presented by: NIALL FERGUSON Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History at Harvard University; Author of “The West

and The Rest”

6:00pm Closing Remarks & Cocktail Reception