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.