“You need to think carefully before you jump into this deep sea,” said Professor Daniel Levy at the very beginning of a presentation entitled “Why can a Ph.D. be bad for you?”. While this statement sounded frightening to those who were planning to pursue a Ph.D. or other further studies, it appeared to be more bemusing for others who were not considering a career in academia.

On Friday, July 15th, Professor David D. Friedman of Santa Clara University gave a presentation entitled “Market Failure Considered as an Argument both for and Against Government”. Professor Friedman is one of the leading libertarian thinkers in the USA and, together with Murray Rothbard, the most influential proponent of so-called anarcho-capitalism.

On June 14, Maksim Obrizan, a Professor of the Kiev School of Economics, gave a presentation entitled “The Impact of War on Happiness: The Case of Ukraine” at ISET. According to Mr. Obrizan, his work was influenced by cases and papers described in Frey and Stutzer (2002) and Stutzer and Frey (2012), and the impact of wars according to Blattman and Miguel (2010). This has become a particularly poignant topic for Professor Orbizan, as more than 100 Ukrainian soldiers have committed suicide since coming off the front line in the ongoing war against Russian-backed separatists. Previous papers on war and happiness suggest that in 44 countries, the intensity of the war reduces happiness (Welsh 2008).

On Monday, June 13, ISET hosted Miranda Svanidze, an ISET graduate and current Ph.D. student of Leibniz Institute for Agricultural Development in Transition Countries (IAMO). She gave a presentation entitled “Spatial Integration of Wheat Markets in the South Caucasus and Central Asia”.

On Thursday June 9th, Professor Bruce Boghosian of Tufts University gave a presentation entitled "The Statics and Dynamics of Wealth Distribution", a fascinating topic which detailed the use of an innovative approach to investigate inequality dynamics. Professor Boghosian first reviewed the history of measuring inequality, and discussed the works of well-known scholars of the field such as Pareto, Gibrat, Lorenz, and Gini, and then shared his own fascinating research with the audience. Though the mathematical rigour of the models was interesting, the results were fascinating; Boghosian showed that under certain conditions (when total wealth is unchanged and transactions between economic agents are conducted with few mistakes), societies are consistently prone to wealth concentration and Gini coefficient trends increase.