Global Strategy - blog

The public lecture super-week at LSE was launched by Gerd Gigerenzer, a German psychologist whose main work concentrates on bounded rationality and heuristic decision-making. His main thesis was the re-evaluation of the unconscious processes taking place in human heads that are commonly seen as, at best, obscuring so called rational ones. The people that think so, let us call them ‘limitationists’, seem to be mainly the same individuals that received the bulk of criticism during the lecture held last Monday. The bottom line is that there can be something happening beyond the realms of language.

The Finnish government decided on October 21 that state-owned equities in eight non-strategic listed companies to be transferred to the entirely state-owned company Solidium Oy. The rationale for this decision is that Solidium could manage the holdings in a way that ensures the highest possible yield for the State. The decision was claimed to be “a natural continuation to the State’s active ownership policy, adopted by several previous Finnish governments. The global financial crisis that has been expanding rapidly makes it even more urgent for the State to come up with a tool that can be effectively used in ensuring a Finnish ownership in Finnish key companies” (Government Communications Unit, press release 322/2008).

Paul Krugman was awarded The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel "for his analysis of trade patterns and location of economic activity". While this prize is in each year given for an economist due to her/his notable earlier achievements, this tribute has also wider implications on the field. First of all, we may see it as recognition for the specific area of scholarly research; it pinpoints the topics and research results that are seen as providing significant advancement for our understanding of the economic activity. By so doing it also underlines the importance of related questions in the future research. One may even say that the prize helps to institutionalize certain research topics, approaches and theories both in- and outside of the academy. Thus, let us briefly consider some of such implications that Krugman's Nobel Prize could have.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb agreed to give ‘a boring philosophy lecture' at LSE approximately six months ago, discussing mainly epistemology. Retrospectively not surprisingly, the focus of his attention was shifted to our contemporary financial turmoil (which also resulted in a flood of spectators and a spillover room). Hence the name of his lecture, ‘Decisions, Probability and Beliefs: beware Mickey Mouse probability'. The details of his argument are available and discussed elsewhere .

Good news

Summer 2008 was very successful for the Glostra group. Juha-Antti Lamberg, Mikko Valorinta and Henri Schildt were nominated for the Carolyn Dexter Award at the Academy of Management Conference in Anaheim. At the same meeting, Juha Mattsson was the finalist for the best doctoral dissertation in entrepreneur studies (Heizer & NFIB Doctoral Dissertation Award).

Last week, after few ‘nothing scheduled' days, my overly planning-oriented mind had already begun to show symptoms of anxiety. There was, quite understandably, a fair amount of ambiguity concerning my future studies. No student handbook, no precise timetable (later I learned there was, but I had been looking in all the wrong places). Then, on Thursday, the induction circus finally commenced here at LSE.