R. Kent Dybvig

Transcription

UC Santa Cruz on a Thursday morning, a doctoral student delivers his make it or break it presentation and Professor Dan Friedman remembers the feeling. He too was at Santa Cruz, living in the counterculture and for his thesis attempted to explain the mathematics of DNA, but but, "it didn't work out and as far as I know no one else has made that work out either since, but in any case then I dropped out." Faced with supporting his new family Dan the counterculturist took work with a Boston investment firm. It became a pattern with him soon it was back to UC Santa Cruz for his PhD and then to Bank of America as an economic analyst. With all this back and forth, Dan had a life-changing epiphany. "I knew the counterculture well I didn't know the mainstream culture, and I got a chance to see that, it was more resilient than I thought." By 1985 Dan was professor of economics at UC Santa Cruz with an independent streak challenging the longtime assumption of economics that buyers and sellers will act rationally. Dan devised human experiments that showed people in reality act irrationally. For example, buying things they can't possibly afford. What Dan can do, is predicting it ahead of time and this is pretty damn difficult. Elisandra Kasar is associate professor of economics at the University of San Francisco and collaborates with Dan she says his ability to predict irrational behavior and markets has huge implications. If we know that too much greed if left unchecked will give us a financial crisis we can devise an institution that prevents this from happening. She and Dan co-wrote an influential course book on experimental economics but Dan wasn't done he began opening his traditionally isolated field by collaborating with UC Santa Cruz colleagues in biology, psychology, anthropology it was an unorthodox approach. And it's one at that that strikes me deeply because it's not taking an isolated view of economics, it's looking at in this wider human system. The result is his new book, Morals and Markets, showing how successful societies have balanced both. Even Nobel prize-winning economist Vernon Smith who knows Dan says he expertly addresses the most important issues confronting morals and institutions. Given our economy, Dan's timing is perfect. He's never had an economics course but he won the Royal economic society prize for best paper. His seventh grade teacher told him he dabbled too much but he chose to be curious about everything and he inspired it in others I am still working with him I go to Santa Cruz as often as I can and there's not one single visit in which I don't come back, driving back on Highway 17 in awe for the new things that I have learned. Dan Friedman never really chose between counter-culture or mainstream culture, he found a campus where he could harness both toward one goal. Helping transform the world, that was part of the original vision and you know, I guess it's in the DNA of this campus. I've been able to do more what I want to do than I would've guessed possible, and it's been great.