Privacy in the Digital Age

I think being a good economist is just like in any profession, is just loving your work and doing it right. Do things you believe in and then listen because there will be lots of criticism. Many of those criticisms actually very useful to make progress.

I hope that people looking back at my work will realize that it's part of, , life of passion, you know, passion for research. It's also a style. And, my own style is to try to combine theory with, knowledge of the facts and institution and try to mix because I really think that SIR and empirical work are compliments.

I think relevance is very important, but also we have to be tolerant of people who do very abstract theory. Not everybody should do relevant stuff. I mean, this is my own taste, but I think it's very important that people understand what economics is about. It's a food chain where people supply inputs to the others, and in the end, people are trying to make this world a better place.

All right. Good evening everyone. Um, it's a very, emotional moment, for me to, welcome, Jeanti here on campus. Um, I think 27 years ago, for the first time I put a, a foot on the ground that was not teso at the moment. , it was not called, Tous School of Economics, but it was, it was my, my first time in Toulu.

And I decided to move from Paris, to, to Toul Lose. And there was, there was a gathering on the first day with faculty and , and young student like me and role in the, in the PhD track. , so we were very excited and Jean came to me and said, I don't think we ever met. , nice to meet you.

My name is Jean Tiroll and you know, welcome to, welcome to Tudos. So I think I said thank you, but deeply inside of me. I say, you know, you are the reason why I am here. So, I know exactly where, who you are. And it was also the case of, of Jean Jacque. Um, and I think going to Toul Lose was the best decision ever take ever taken in my life.

It was, it was an amazing moment. It was really enlightening. And when you are in Toul lose in the PhD, you have. Amazing seminar every week. And, when you have faculty presenting, it's pretty crowded in the room and you have tons of questions to the presenter. In 99% of the case, the presenter already thought about the question and has the answer, Jean doesn't speak much, but when Jean asked the question in 99% of the case, the speaker didn't think about that question and don't necessly, you know, have the answer.

What I'm trying to say here is that,. I think, you know, and I, it's very, again, personal, the statement here, but only one of the brightest mind I ever met and one of the most humble and kind person I've ever met. And it's very hard to find those two qualities in the same person. , so, 27 years later, you know, it's my turn to say, we met so many times, but, welcome to Ashe.

Say Welcome back because you told me you came when you were a student at Poly Technique to have a, a tennis, you know, tournament here, a couple of years ago. And it's, it's again, it's a great honor, a great pleasure to welcome you Atash say. So thank you so much, for being with us, Jean and Natalie.

It's the first time we meet, so, it's a great pleasure and thank you for being here with us too. The tradition is that I leave the floor to, the Dean of Faculty to, present you a little bit, more so, Andrea, the floor is yours. Thank you.

Thank you Lilli. Welcome everyone. It's emotional for me as well. It's difficult having to introduce a monument and have to find the right words. So there are faculty students on our guests. I think today we have the privilege of welcoming, one of the most influential, successful in distinguished scholars of our time.

Clearly not easy to summarize, in a few words, all his career, his accomplishments, his contribution to the field and beyond. I think Jean started his academic journey not far away from here. , he called Polytechnique and he called the Upon, and please correct me if I'm, forgetting something. And then he continued in the United States.

At the, MIT where he obtained his PhD in 1981, if I'm not mistaken. And of course, he held faculty positions in many places, initially at MIT, then at Harvard, then at the School of Economics, where I think he was a member of the faculty in a pillar of the Department of Economics for many, many decades.

And he has trained generations of scholars in economics, and I think among them, some of my colleagues here. And I think you can all testify to the extent to which a career your life was influenced by the work of John. I don't need to, I need to recall all the achievements, the honors, the awards that we received.

, of course, you know, he was awarded the Nobel Prize, for the economic sciences in 2014, primarily for his work on regulation, especially in industry where companies have a large market power. And his work really helped us understand how those industries have to be regulated to create, you know, commonwealth social.

Also to help businesses thrive and develop. He also, he was also honored with the, CRS Gold Medal in 2007, and he had distinguished, position such as the presidency of the Economic Society, the Econometric Society, and the European Economic Association. And I can, you know, count many other of them.

I think what is most important is to try and understand why his work was, was so important. I mean, I don't want to cite the fact that he had, if I'm not mistaken, more than 200,000 citations on Google Scholar to give you an idea that is more than the cumulative amount of citations that the total number of faculty members of a typical university would have.

To give you an idea of the impact on the academic field. I'm a humble professor of operations management and therefore I don't pretend that I can fully explain the contribution that he made, to the field of economics, to industrial organization, to game theory. At the same time, I want to say with certainty that his contribution extends way beyond economics.

His ideas have shaped the thinking of scholars in strategic management, in operations management. I remember using his book, trying to use his book in my own research and in many other disciplines, and certainly, they have influenced the way in which we think about 

businesses regulation and, competition in general. His work on regulation provides a framework for understanding how governments can intervene or should intervene in these areas, in these industries where you have monopolies or oligopolies. And I think this is something that we see more and more these days with the growth of largest of very large, firms.

His research is also masterclass in how rigorous analytical thinking can help solve real world problems and real world challenges. His work on industrial organization game theory has, has influenced scholars in strategy, for instance. Providing deep insights into the behavior of firms, into market dynamics.

And of course, these are all important to understand how firms take decisions, how they, protect themselves from new entrants, how they develop and sustain competitive advantage. Also, his research on this two-sided market platforms help us understand business models in this context where you have intermediaries, working in an industry in operations.

Again, my field, his work was absolutely fundamental to understand the mechanism to design supply contracts. I'm referring to this work on contract theory procurement agreements, and how to align incentives in supply chains, which is obviously an essential, task today, especially when 

we are fragmented in, large supply chains. These models on dynamic competition and investment decisions also provide a valuable perspective on capacity planning, on technology adoption, and on resource allocation, which  again are important, decisions to ensureoperational efficiency and um, efficiency in complex business environments. I mean, it 

is a larger than life, figure in academia. But a similar work was important to make a significant impact beyond academia and really change the way in which industry operate. The ways in which policies are made, for instance, in public policy is work, have guided regulators in designing policy that balance the interests of consumers and businesses, particularly in industries like telecommunication or energy, where you have large players with a very significant amount of market, of market power.

So the fact that regulations can be tailored, tailored to specific industry conditions assure that, you can access, access, you can prevent excessive pricing, but also, you know, support innovation and ensure that companies have a sufficiently large amount of profit. The work on two-sided market was relevant for the video game industry and I know that, you know, some of the, at this tonight certainly play with video games and we know how important it is to understand how.

You know, developers of games, console developers and users interact to provide, an efficient industry. But beyond his intellectual contribution, I think what sets Professor Thiol, apart is his work ethics and his passion for his work. If I may, I would like to illustrate an anecdote or to share an anecdote with you that happened when, he received a Nobel Prize about 10 years ago.

, it was at that time preparing a grant, if I'm not mistaken, and the phone of course, rang and the call was from Sweden, but it was so deeply immersed in the preparation of that, the grant that he didn't answer once, twice, three, I don't know how many times until eventually picked it up and received the news.

And I think that shows to what extent what you're passionate about, research and your work. You can forget about anything else. Now, for our students, I know we have a few of them tonight. I would like to know that his work exemplifies how you can match the rigor of academic research using rigorous frameworks, models, passion for your work, but also the application of those frameworks and those rigorous models to real world challenges and problems.

And the combination of that provides, of course, a long-lasting impact that makes our life better, that has an impact on our society and on our economy. Of course, I could continue forever to, you know, side contributions to go through the papers, cite hundreds. But I think you're not here to listen to me, right?

So you're here to listen directly from Professor Thiol, his journey, his perspective on. Challenges that we are observing these days. So please join me in welcoming him on stage. So thank you very much, Jean, the floor is all yours.

Well, thank you elo. Thank you Andrea, for those extremely kind words. , it's my turn to be emotional to that now, but it's very, it's a pleasure and an honor to be here with you tonight. , it's a pleasure because I see lots of, old friends and it's always nice 

to, and young students, young faculty also. It's, it's a great. Opportunity for me, but it's also an honor, of course, because of the nature of HEC, which is a role model in Europe for, you know, combining a top, teaching institution, which has been for a long time, but also transitioning into a top research institution. And, you know, the quality of the research and the quality of students I've seen today is very impressive.

And you know what, what? People have been doing here is, is is really a change in Europe. Um, in the us traditionally, people have seen research as a compliment, not as a substitute for teaching, including in business school. And that's very important that in Europe, we do that. And of course, what the best 

institution to do that, you know, as is HEC. So thanks so much for the honor. I'm, I'm really very pleased to be here tonight and I'm going to talk, about the following, topic, which is, privacy. Um, and I have to warn you, I'm giving you an economist view, so you know, I'm not going to tell you everything about price, even from an economic point of view, but that will be an economic view because I'm an economist in the end even so have a strong interest in other fields.

But I want to, give you this view. So let's, let's introduce a topic by the Surveillance Society. Um, we have had a technological evolution, which is very fast. You know, we have smartphone, we have face recognition, smart cities, and many of the things, which makes it very cheap for platforms and governments to actually have access to information about we are, our preferences or behavior or social graph who, our friends and so on.

And you know, the question that, given that the marginal cost of knowing contrary to, to the past has become very small, then that means also that if we don't do anything. The information about who we are is going to be public, or at least will belong to the government and the platform. So we have to think about the economic consequences.

We are going to think about our likely behavioral, reaction to this evolution. We have to think about political implications. I'm not going to mention political implications, but they are very important. And we are going to talk about the rise of the surveillance society. And let me start with three observations.

So first observation we have the right to know, was our data and what's being done with our data. So when you start saying, well, that's dangerous to have a platform to actually, dealing with our data, the platforms will say, no, no, don't worry. Um, if there's a breach or if I misuse the data, then I will suffer a reputation cost from that.

That's correct. That's correct. But that's not a complete argument because whenever there's a breach or whenever data, is being used by others, first we may not even know. But even if we know, we still suffer a loss and we are not compensated for this loss, there is an externality.

Another issue is that we often grant what I call an uninformed consent. So I dunno about you, but you know, I want to know the score, the current score of the stat to loser. And I, I'm willing to click very fast, without checking anything, just to know what's going on. It's, it's only five minutes. Between half time.

I really want to know what's going on. Um, I'm very impulsive and I'm very careless with that. So I even, so I value my privacy or I believe I value my privacy. I'm very careless with it. I click and I click and I click. Um, why? In part because it'll be very difficult for me actually to know what's going on.

I don't know the 150, uh. Partners with whom the data will be shared, are they have acronyms, they have policies I don't know about. It'll take me hours just to understand the consequences of my refusing con, of my giving consent. I don't know whether the right to o obligation will be satis, will be respected and so on.

So I want to make a call for regulation. I know, you know, I'm French. You're going to say, okay, I'll call. You know again, a French regulator. We are fed up with those French regulators, but in the end, it's too much for me. We need a regulator to basically do the job. Just analogy, you know, if you go tonight to the restaurant, you're not going to to check the entire supply chain of the restaurant to see if your food is safe.

If you have some money in your bank, then probably you are not going to spend the night. Studying the off balance sheet and the balance sheet activities of your bank so as to be able to run tomorrow morning before the bank opens, you withdraw your deposits. That will be impossible, but that will be also very wasteful, even if it were possible.

So we need people, we need delegated monitoring and we need that in the realm of, of consent. And finally, there is something more subtle, which is this sharing by our peers. So if you, even if you go. You know, in a very remote area of, or something like that, and you, you don't have any computer access.

You actually, you didn't take your computer with you. Then still the platforms will know everything about you to some extent because your family, your friends, people you love are going to share data about your health, about your politics, about your activities. And those data will be spied by the platforms and possibly by the governments.

So there's direct information supplied by our social graph, which in the end makes us believe that even if you are very careful about the consent policy, you know, in the end you are going to, you, you, the information about your. Who you are is important. Second observation before I start. Transparency or privacy is not just an individual choice.

The first reason for that I just gave, is that there are data externalities. Um, the fact that we give data about other people, then there's bounded rationality, or rationally, I don't know how to call it actually, because, there are high transaction costs actually of checking what is being done with our data.

Um, but it's compound, compounded by impulsiveness. I, I know, I want to know right away what the statu is doing, right? So there is this mixture of high transaction cost and, and impulsiveness, which is kind of dangerous. And finally, there's the issue of what economists call unraveling. So imagine that. You apply for a job and your, you know, prospective employer tells you, okay, why don't you share your pride Facebook page?

Um, you'll feel uncomfortable about that. But if you say no, of course, your employer, prospective employer will believe that you have something to hide and you may be able actually to disclose it even so you don't want to, and even so your, your prospective employer say, you don't have to tell me. You know?

So for all those reasons, you know, there is a market failure in the market for privacy, and that part of it explains the pricey products. I think most of us in this room actually will say, okay, I care about my privacy. It's important to me. And then might behave like me clicking impulsively without thinking, okay, so there is importance of the strong legal framework.

Third observation, transparency may be costly. Um, in here I'm going to start with just two application of straightforward economics. Um, the first is that transparency may imply the violation of the right to be forgotten in a certain sense. So there is a fundamental principle in law and also in almost all religions, that once you commit a midi misdeed, you pay for this misdeed.

But once you have paid for this misdeed, then you start with a clean slate, you have a second chance. , this fresh start exists. For example, in bankruptcy, there is a discharge of debt, another legal obligation. If you are a young person and you, you, you commit a misdeed, then your record is being sponge.

And in the US for example, most crimes, not sexual offenses, but most crimes, I mean with trumpet, may change in either direction, but most crimes are subject to the right to be forgotten. Right now, the prime, you're asking you where, where is it going with this? Well, the point is that now with, records which are being kept on the internet forever, then you'd never get a second chance.

You never get a second chance because people can find out that you did something wrong in the past. And you know, it just incentive theory tells you that if you don't get a second chance, you only choice is crime. Okay. In order to start a new life, a better life, you need a second chance where you, you'll be able to be trusted by your employers, your friend, your partners, and if it's on the web for the rest of your life, life, you won't get this second chance.

So it's just an incentive theory. If you want people to start on a better path, you must have, you know, the right to, to be forgotten. The second classical application of economics in the, in this matter is market segmentation. So it's a technical term, but simply saying. Platforms know everything about you.

And because they know everything about you, they may actually capture your consumer surplus. Um, they may obtain a bigger share of the pie, because they know your behavioral, your geography, your demographic, your, your demography and so on through your location, your consumption pattern, whether you have an apple or an Android, and so on your social graph so they know roughly how much you're willing to pay for everything.

But I just accent of course. But you know, if they know exactly how much you, you're willing to pay, for everything, then that means that with, you know, individualized pricing, you are not going to get, to get much surplus. Um. Another issue is if you are someone like me and you don't have a clue about many things, then you know the platform can basically sell me, the lemons because the platform knows from my search behavior and from my overall behavior that I don't have a clue.

So basically they can, they can basically, recommend a lemon to me. Okay? Now, a very old example in economics due, over 50 years ago due, due to Rifer, is about the breakdown of, insurance. , that can be explained very simply. , imagine that you had an insurance market, which is not regulated.

And, the, the, the platforms or the, the insurance companies can have access to your genomics. Then they can know whether you are very high risk of a low risk of getting cancer or something like that. And of course, if you have a high risk, you'll never get insurance or you get insurance at prices, which are outrageous.

So the destruction of insurance, oh, you, you can, you tell me, you don't have to give it, but the answer is yes for the unraveling reason I was giving earlier. So if the insurance company gives me your genomics, ask for your genomics, then, then if you don't give it, that's suspicious and automatically you won't get insurance either.

So there is unraveling and there are lots of other examples I'm not going to go through, but that's, that's really an issue. So that's actually why in countries where insurance is private, the pride companies are not allowed to actually discriminate on the basis of various things. Okay? The, the, it's not just not allowed.

You need a regulation for that. So I come to the outline. , I'm going to try to go beyond the standard economic view, building on image concerns. Um, we certainly all care about the image, which is projected by our behavior. I will start with something which is called consensual behaviors. So consensual behaviors are behaviors on which we basically all agree on what's right and what's wrong.

I think we all agree that crime is not very nice. Emitting carbon is not very nice. Being individualistic is not very nice. So there's a clear ranking of of, of the behaviors. Then we'll move on to divisive behavior, where in contrast, we don't all agree on what's right and what's wrong. So that characterizes politics, religion, sexuality, social roles and so on where there are different views on, on those thing.

And that gives rise to different patterns. I will say a few things about social scores, which are record systems that evaluate for trustworthiness individuals and businesses. The most important cases, China, but it's, it's being spread to, to many countries. And I will just have a very quick, discussion on the way we could cont , techno authoritarian power.

And then once you are really depressed, we'll stop. Okay. So, uh. Consensual behavior. Let's start with consensual behavior. Um, now we know that there are benefits from transparencies, right? We know that transparency is the fact that your counterparties actually know about what you have done in the past actually is going to discipline your behavior, right?

So that's why, you know, suppliers, for example, we are very happy to know, to have ratings of suppliers, you know, goods, restaurants, ESG ratings and financial products workers. Of course that gives rise to career concern and makes us work harder. Sometimes there's too much of those career concerns, but you 

know, that's part of, our incentive scheme. It keeps politician and countries on their toes to some extent. , if you have free press and, and transparency of, of, of behavior by politician, that's actually a good thing. And in some countries people believe that it's also good for citizens, you know, in their usual life that, outside work. Now, transparency creates incentives.

There is no question about that. If people know what you're doing, then you will have incentive to, to change your behavior, okay? And there is a huge literature, experimental literature showing that actually when people observe, then they behave better in a sense. Okay? So if you are watching me, help the little old lady cross the street in front of HEC, you know, of course, we'll have more incentive to help the little old lady cross the street, okay?

Um, and that's true for, there is huge amount of, of experiments showing that we may, you know, we, we may vote more, we may give more blood. We can do this or that. If we're observed by other people, because we care about our image, we care about the esteem of others. Okay. Um, with a caveat, which is there is a very entre, interesting literature on excuses and what's called more wiggle room.

Um, the fact that if we have an excuse that may reduce a lot the incentive of transparency because we can say, oh, no, no better. You know, I was in a rush. I had to give my a class at HCC, so I, I was not able to, to have the little old lady cross the street. Right. So that's, that's, that's a story here. Okay.

So, so far, so good. So just two or three slides with, with the model. Um, and based on work I've done with, with Holland bbu, by the way. I should have said that right away. This is totally self-centered talk. So, take that with a grain of salt. , I, I have the excuse that, that actually I know my work better, but, you know, it's, it's, it's not a very strong excuse.

Um, so the decision of whether we act pro socially, where we, which means in terms of economics, we exercise positive externality, as is triple. So the first is that we may be sincere. So we have a true empathy. , we want to be altruistic, to help other people so that that exists. But that's not the only motivation, of course, one is material.

Um, it could be that we get money for paying our blood. That happens in a number of countries. It could be that we are, you know, we, conversely, they, it could be a cost, so we may not want to do it because it's, it's time consuming and we have other things to do. So that's extrinsic motivation. But what's interesting in our research with, and the research of other people is adding image concerns, which is that other people are going to draw, draw inferences about who we are from our behavior.

So you don't know who I am, but you can see my behavior and you may update about who I am from my own behavior. Now why do we care about that? Because of pure self or social esteem? Concern. So I want you to think that I'm a good person or whatever. Um, I want to think myself. I mean, that was Adam Smith, you know, the inner spectator.

I want to think myself that I'm a good person. It's not only that I want you to think I'm a good person. , so I'm signaling to myself as well, but it could be more functional, more instrumental, so, you know, prospect of having better friends, better partners, at least in our ordering, whatever it is. Um, or we may count on reciprocal altruism.

So it may be the case that if you see me being nice to someone, you might be nice to me. Even so I was not nice to you in the first place, but you know. , I didn't interact with you, but if you see me being nice with someone, then, then you might be nicer to me. That's called indirect altruism. Um, and that's of course a concern.

A behavior is authentic if it reflects the first two payoffs. So basically we behave through because of our intrinsic and ex motivation, but we don't take into account the social reputation payoff. So it's as if nobody, nobody observes. At least we, of course we observe ourself. But, you know, so the way, and that will 

be the only question, in the presentation. The way we, we formalize that is basically by having a pro-social action choice. A, so AI means that we, we are nicer, we exert a positive anxiety. So the first time V time C is basically visa type, who we are. Our intrinsic motivation, how much do we internalize the welfare of others? That's our altruism parameter.

E might be the society into, onto the other party. And a might be, for example, let's take zero or one. So we are nice or not nice equals one is being nice. But then the third term is really the term coming from reputation in an image. So basically you are going to update your view about me, the expectation of V given you don't, you don't know my v you don't know my type, but you know, you, you observe my actions and therefore you are going to update based on my actions.

So that's, that's a very simple framework. You can develop this framework and you get some. , prediction, which are very simple and natural in a sense. So if we have higher image concerns, so for example, we're observed by more people or by by people we care about, then we are going to behave more ethically.

Um, and there is a lot of evidence on that. Um, if the matter is more important, so the anxiety on the, on the other person is important, then we'll behave more ethically. And finally, if there are high monetary stake, of course you get a standard stand out result that you actually also more incentivized with the caveat I'm going to come to.

Now, the caveat is this, if people defer in their grid, in their marginal utility of money, then incentive may have some, some bad implications. So let me explain. So here I drew. I drew Omo economics. So, I mean, doesn't have to start at zero, but basically when you increase the reward for acting process release, so when you increase wire in the previous model, then if you increase wires, then you just increase the supply of, that's an average of all V.

So the population, you increase the supplies of pro-social behavior. That is start economist, economist conclusion. Now, if you start increasing image concerns here, so increase mu so the person becomes more and more, concern about is or image, then something bizarre happens. I mean, it takes the red curve, for example.

So at some point actually you have a downward sloping supply curve, which means that you pay people for giving their blood and they're giving give less blood. And for an economist, it's really something bizarre, right? If you pay for giving the blood, then you should get higher supply of blood. But that may not be the case.

And the experiment that show that it's actually a phenomenon, which is very well known in psychology, is called over justification. Um, so, and the reason why you get that, in the work with is, is really to say, okay, if you pay people for giving their blood, they may give because they're generous, or they may give because they want the money.

And if you don't know how much they want the money. Then you, you might say, hmm, maybe that's because they really want the mon because they want the money, not because they are generous. So you cast a doubt. I mean, in economics we call that a signal extraction issue. Cast a doubt about why the person was do it in the first place.

Of course, if you, if you pay enough, that will be fine. But, you know, if you don't pay enough, actually that may reduce the supply. So that's, that's one imp implication of, of, of this kind of modeling. Another implication, which comes here from the heterogeneity image concern. So, you know, people have different muse in the model, the previous model.

So, some people are totally image obsessed. You know, they, they, they're obsessed by the image, the project unto others. Some people just don't care and most people are in the middle. And actually from point of view of view of an organization. We could discuss exactly which kind of person you want to have.

You don't want people to be too obsessed by their self image, but you also don't want people who are not obsessed at all with their self image because those is, they're very difficult to control through, through social, social pressure and the like. Um, so, but you know, so let me go, come, come back to the little old lady.

Okay. Now you are not here this morning. That's too bad. So I, I came this morning, by the way, and I, I want to tell you, I, I help a little old lady in front of HC. You didn't know about that. Now, how are you going to, to react? I mean, in principle, I, I've done something nice. So you should, I can show you the picture if you want.

You know, I've done something nice. So you should say, oh, joy is, is a great person. He helped the little old lady. Now, is that the way you will react? And my guess is that it's not the way you react. You say Sean is an asshole and he is, he is, he is trying to buy social prestige. Um, he wants a, he wants to, to show off in front of us.

And the reason he helped the old, little, old lady is actually, he is totally image concern and say he wanted to buy a social prestige, not because he was generous. So again, a signal extraction issue. And you know, this is very interesting because that's, that's the kind of game we play. I mean, this is maybe not this particular game, but that's the kind of game we play many times each day.

And much of social interaction is about, you know, social signaling and image concern. So, and, and that gives, that's, there's a lot of signal extraction there. Okay, so I told you transparency. Is good if you have consensual behavior because that promotes, pro-social behavior. Um, but with the caveat that you can have some crowding out effect of incentives.

Sometimes, you know, the, the inferences are complicated even so we intuitively, you know, understand them. Um, the other benefit of, of, of transparency is that, it promotes allocative efficiency. So avoidance of wrong matches. You know, if you know that someone is sexual predator or the politician you wanted to vote for is actually corrupt, of course, you know, that's, that's, we are going to get better matches.

Um, and, and conversely, if, if we share information, we can get good matches. Now let me come to the cost of transparency. So the first cost, which is not that important, but it can exist, is that sometimes you get over incentives from, from, from transparency. So if we're observed, we can actually be too accountable and engaged in excess posturing.

Okay? And that will happen when you have small externalities. So you want to show off, but you know, the externality is not big enough to justify. So the social prestige that you buy exceeds somehow the externalities that you exert onto other people. So everybody knows what this is. What are you doing at HEC?

I mean, what do, what do you teach them? Okay, so that's Black Mirror season three. Okay? So. That is Paul Lucy. Um, this, this is a dystopic series and this dystopic series in that particular episode has basically some kind of social rating system. It's an old thing, a social rating system where whenever you meet someone in the elevator or in the street, you, you raise a person in front of you.

So whether a person smile and so on and so on. And of course, lo and behold, you know, person, you, you, you're smiling all the time. Um, and of course this Paul Lucy actually, there is a lot of bad things that happen to her and a rating goes down and she becomes a social player and, and so on and so forth.

But the point is that, you know, if you observe all the time, then you are going to be nice, even when being nice is not that important. So I will celebrate your Facebook birthday even so, you know, you know. I may not even know you in a sense. Um, you know, all kinds of things that, you know, leads to an excessive attention to self presentation.

And that's what has led philosophers actually to talk about authenticity because we, economists were often seeing as transparency as being a good thing. And in some areas it's a very good thing actually. But of course you distort your behavior to look good and you are under social pressure. And that was discussed by sar.

But you know, Bernard Williams, for example, a philosopher was saying to act morally is to act autonomously, not as a result of social pressure. Me equal zero, me equal zero. So as if you were not observed, that's exaggerated. I think it's way EEC exaggerated, but , there's something to it. Sometimes we actually under too much social pressure.

Okay. Other cost of transparencies is, what's called more licensing. So what is more licensing? More licensing is basically, and those are psychologists, you know, saying it is when people initially behave in a more way, they later on are more likely to display, to display behaviors that are unethical. So you, you have an opportunity to show that you're nice and then the next time you do the wrong thing.

So, for example, there were some experiment after Barack Obama say, you know, election people who voted for Barack Obama, you know, took the license of sometimes having, almost racist comments somehow, because of course they're not racist. They are, they voted for Barack Obama. You know, that's the kind of thing that, that may happen.

So, so basically what what we did with, with this team is really to think about the theory behind that, beyond moral licensing. , that requires multiple activity, as you might, as you might imagine. You know, you get brownie points in one dimension and then you can span your brownie points or your reputation in, in other dimension.

Um, and that's linked with multitask concern or image concern. Okay? And in that case, the single task prediction, giving a social valued behavior, more visibility, makes it more prevalent. Does it still apply? And the answer is not, and we both have the theory and, and the experiment that shows that this may happen.

Okay? So let me, let me go very quickly through that. Um, finally, let me say a few things about the link between, the incentives that economists emphasize and the notion of a norm. Um, the, you know, we, economists and I do that all the time, and many people in this room also do, basically emphasize the role of incentive.

Okay, we pull you too much, let's have carbon price. Okay. Um, they, there are too many layoffs. Let's, let's have a bonus model, experience rating, and so on. Of course, much of our research is trying to say there are caveats when you design incentive, you have to pay attention to, the way you design them.

So it's more complicated. But by and large, our message is incentive, and there is not enough of this message in the public debate. Of course, at the same time, legal scholars emphasize. They do emphasize the law, which is an incentive. It's, it's, it's a price for good and bad behavior. You know, you go to prison, you don't go to prison.

That's clear and incentive, but they also emphasize that the law is going to express and shape the value of society. That's called expressive law. Sociologists that tend to emphasize,

which is, the idea of disclosing information that alters the agent's perception of the social norm or the consequences of their action. Now, what we do in this paper, again, with bu is, is to reconcile the, the various viewpoints, the economists, the legal scholar, and the sociologist by noticing that expense, you know, incentives may be expensive to administer, and therefore if you can substitute for incentives, that's, that's good.

They may be impossible or just very expensive to administer. So then you have to unleash a social norm. You have to unleash other types of things. Okay? So what we do is to assume that the policymaker has information about societal values. So for example, the government might know that, the tax evasion rate, I don't know the tax evasion rate in France, what does it mean?

But the government may have, you know, the service, the, the Minister of Finance has information about tax evasion. He or she has studies for that, or the government may know better about the social cost of carbon, okay. Than the average citizen. So in that case, what can you do? So let me just give you an example just to.

Explain what the prime is. Imagine that, I tell you, okay, the French, public debt is pretty high. The deficit is not going down. We really need money, and this money is going to be important. Unfortunately, most of your compatriots, and I realize some number of are not French here, but a number of the French taxpayers are taxes.

So I come to you, I'm a politician. I'd say, you know, the, the politic, the, the French people if their taxes. So that means we don't have a little, we have very little money. Please pay your taxes because the marginal utility of your taxes then is very high, which is true 'cause there is no money left. Now what are you going to do?

Are you going to pay more taxes or less taxes? And you know the answer is it's going to change the social norm. If you learn that your compatriots are not paying their taxes, then you are less likely, not more likely to pay your own taxes. Okay? And that means that you have basically sent a message about the goodness of society and this message goes in the wrong direction.

So basically saying, you know, you should pay your taxes because you are. Your compatriots are not paying their taxes and is a non-starter. Okay? So what we do is, is really to imagine when, think about whether expressive law should be soft or tough. Okay? So it turns out that if you, I'm going to go a little bit fast through that, but if you want to signal something about goodness of society, you, you want to say to, to send a signal, which is consistent with this message, and usually you want to have soft law.

So you, you don't want to, to basically say things are wrong and have to be very tough. Okay? And by the way, that's, that has, that creates some sort about the role of economists. Okay? Economists are the bearers, bearer of bad news by and by and large, right? Because economists, there. Say, incentives are important, but when you say incentives are important, you know, you, you have a study saying, you know, whatever.

I mean, if, if you give incentive, people will behave better. And here, here is evidence, then um, you are re saying, well, society is not as good as we wish it to be. Right? Because people need a need, a stick and a carrot. They don't do everything through an extrinsic, intrinsic motivation. And our message, by and large, is a message which is not very good for society because it's really saying, you know, we need, we need those.

Otherwise, I mean, we, we economists who have been saying for 30 or 40 years, we need a carbon price with the success. We know, I mean, there are other reasons why it has been, it has been a failure, but, you know, and I still think it's the right policy, but you know. , yeah. At the same time you people say, but no, no, no, no.

People are so nice that they, they will end up, you know, doing the right thing for, for mankind for the planet and the, all the evidence shows they don't. Um, but we know we economies, we come with the bad news and say, no, society is not quite as good as you think, and therefore we need incentives. And there's a lot of resistance to that.

Um, so, but if you want to express the magnitude of the anxiety, so if you have information about the social cost of emissions, for example, of carbon, then you require tough loss. You have to increase incentive to send this message. Now, this is not what we have done in the last 30 years. I, I, as I was just mentioning actually, we, we have used very soft law in matter of soft carbon, right?

We have carbon prices, which are all over the world, are very low. And creates a huge, a huge prime for us. So I'll let you think a little bit about what's happening. Why is that, that for something that, we, we should actually have a tough flow when you're saying it's really bad, what you're doing with, with carbon emission?

Actually, we do the reverse. We are very soft low. Okay. So let me see how long I am. 15 minutes. Oh. But I guess it's pretty late and I really appreciate your being here. Time. Oh, that, that's fine. But you know, it's, it's mainly about you because I realize that I'm the last obstacle before you and dinner.

Okay. So maybe I could just, just mention a couple of topics that I, are was, and so I mentioned divisive issues. Um, so those are issues on. Which people disagree on what's right and wrong and wrong. , there are many of those. And then transparency, of course, you might imagine may not be as good. I mean, we saw some caveats, transparency on their consensual behaviors, but under divisive issues, you'll have even more caveats of course, because, you know, if, if we have different views, I mean here we are among civilized people, but you know, if we have different views, we might end up actually, getting a very tough relationship and getting all kinds of things like, discrimination, violence and things like that.

Um, so is transparency desirable? The answer, of course, is not necessarily, but what we have to see, and I was talking earlier about the, the behavioral reaction in of society. Is that people are going to change their behavior under transparency. So in the case of, say for example, you're a sexual minority, you are going to basically change your behavior in two ways.

One is basically to hide in a safe space, so in a kind of ghetto. , so the only people who see you are people of the same sexual minority, or you're going to add a behavior which basically make other people believe that you don't belong to a set minority or the like. Um, and in the end, you're going to end up in a safe space.

It could be for politics. You, you meet with your friends with the same, same opinion. It could be the religion, it could be whatever. Um, and that's, that's one reaction is that you hide in a safe space. The other is that you might change your behavior. And, you know, do not engage in the behavior, that you would like to engage in.

And that's another cost of it. Um, and there are many costs of, of, of, of transparency. So in that area, of course we would like to have more, more safe space, more hiding in a sense, but we don't want to make the cost of hiding too high. And basically what I do study is to try to understand when it's important actually, to be able to keep a pride space.

Okay. So let me, let me, let me, let me finish here with, with this and a remark afterward. So one of the thing which combines actually, uh. Consensual behaviors and divisive behaviors is the notion of a social score. So if you take, for example, China's social credit system, it's nothing about China by the way, because I mean, it's of course a regime, which is, makes it easier to do that.

But also it's China is very technologically advanced. Um, but it's coming to many countries. Um, the, the Chinese, social credit system is about aggregating various criteria, to give you a number, 537. Okay? , 537, but I don't know if it's good or bad, but, on basis of things which sound reasonable, like do we pay, do reimbursement loans, do we pay our taxes?

Do we emit carbon? Fine, fine. I mean, there's still a question about whether they should be public, but there's nothing wrong with using this kind of thing, spreading of fake news. Well, in principle, we are all against fake news now. Do you want Donald Trump to really, discipline you and define what the fake news is?

No, I'm, I'm not sure I would like this to happen. Right. Um, and some are very unappealing, which is, you know, we're social graphs. So I'm a friend of El Loic and basically, El Loic did something wrong. And then, or I do, I did something wrong. I did something wrong. And then, you know, E loic score is no longer 537, but 450, because actually that was what has was happening with Lucy in, in Black Mirror.

So e loic you meets with me. I mean, worse, you know, it's part of a celebration or something like that for me. And then, you know, El Loic is no longer, 537 is only 450. Um, of course, the goal of that, you can see it right away, is that El Loic won't talk to me because I have a low score, so I'm going to be isolated.

And that's part of the punishment. By the way. It's, it's not new. I mean, religions have been used that for using that for a long time. It's called excommunication. So if you eyes communicate excommunicated in, in many religion, not only you excluded from the community, but your, your spouse, your, your, your friends are not supposed to be meeting with you, seeing you, because otherwise this themself will be excommunicated.

So it's a technique that, that is an old technique to make the punishment to people who deviate from whatever the religion or the government wants, to actually, to actually, increase the pressure on people. So what I show in this paper is basically there are two ways in which you can use social scores, to actually put pressure against dissent.

The first is to mix divisive issues. Things like, are you favorable to the government? Are you practicing a religion, which is not the state religion or something like that? Are you saying something bad about the president? Okay. And you combine that with more natural ways, the criteria. Like, you know, are you reliable, are you trustworthy?

Did you cheat on your friends? And so on. You put the, you bundle the two together. That's the first way you do things. So you create the interest in the score, and then you add, it's an information design thing where if you, if you know about information design, you, you, you put into there a few things which are convenient for the government or the religion or whatever you, you have in mind.

The platforms can do that as well, actually. So, you know, if I, if I speak again the platform, the platforms actually could put lots of things about me in the newsfeed for of, of others, for example. So this is, this is a bit scary. And the second one I already mentioned, which is basically, you know, using, using the social graph actually to, to be 

able to, to basically, using guild by association. So gild by association is really a very old technique. Has been used, was used a lot in Eastern Germany. Byi. Now the new thing is that the Stai, the Stai actually had hundreds, maybe millions of informers. They were paying lots of people. It was very, very high cost thing. And they did a lot of damage nonetheless.

But, you know, they, they actually, were spending a huge amount of money trying to, to basically have everybody in forms on everyone now, not today. And I come back to the first slide. Is, it's costless. A few, you know, facial recognition cameras, you know, ai, which is going to analyze all kind of messages and phone calls and whatnot.

It's, you know, it's costless and then it's very, to use guild by association to really ostracize completely anyone who has deviated. You don't even, you don't have even have a, to engage in violence. Actually, there is a, an interesting exchange when 1984 was published, by George Orwell, basically oxley, what written earlier the Brave New World, said to our, well, they sent a letter basically saying, this is a wonderful book.

But it's totally irrelevant. That's why basically, I mean, he said it more politely, but it said basically your boot in the face, strategy using violence, you don't even need to do that. Um, you actually, you, you can use other ways of, of keeping social control. Um, ley hadn't thought about ai. Of course he had thought about other means, but he hadn't thought about ai.

But the moral version of Leys letter to, to our world is really, that which is now, it's, is very cheap actually to discipline society if you, you're a government. So that will be my, basically my penalty mid slide. Um. How do we counter techno authoritarian power, given that most countries are leading heading this way?

So the first important thing, which has worked very well in history is a strong Supreme Court, basically, counterbalancing power for the government. Um, but we see now, and that's pretty clear, even the us, which has a long democratic tradition, but in many other countries that, you know, one of the first thing that an autocrat does is to attack the Supreme Court.

The court system Morely. Um, the other thing you, he or she does is really to, to attack the press, of course, and to, to monopolize the media. Okay? So Supreme Court can be a very good counter power, but, we are learning now that even in countries with democratic elections that may not work. And that's, that's a very bad news.

Um, we should not leave legacy data around, and I come back to the right, the right to oblivion, but with a different meaning, which is, you know, even if the current government is benevolent, it's not never going to make use of the current data. The next government might not do that, right? And that's, that's a danger.

You could think about international agreements. So we, we do have Geneva conventions, you know, to maintain some humanity in armed conflicts. In Europe, we have rules about prisons, which are actually not always respected and so on. You could have protest movements, but you know, if you ask me, you know, can you have Budapest or Tianmen Square nowadays?

Um, I'm not sure. I'm not sure because now with. Facial recognition and ai, you know, any beginning of a demonstration, even a small demonstration will be basically, seen by the government and you know, that will be, that will be, kind of difficulty. So it's going to be very difficult actually, but then the last resort and will be the revolt within the party between the rule, within the ruling elite within the military or something like that.

But it's not going to be easy. So that there is a big social science issue. I don't have the answer, but we have to think about that because, you know, this liberal path we are taking in all over the world is, is very dangerous. So, early geo future, of course, you know, there's a more optimistic view, which is that, it promises a lot.

So our living standards, which will be much higher. , else. I mean, it's amazing what's is happening in the matter of, of, of, of drugs, new drugs and the like. Education will be much cheaper in even a small village. You could have much better education than that. You have now, you can have more inclusiveness, many, many things.

I mean, so, so the, the sky is a limit in a sense. But you know, at that point of time we, we see democracies, tumbling, fumbling, and you, you see, you see climate change not being solved. You see this and that. So, we see the issue with, with the future of work. Um, so it must be addressed and, you know, privacy is one of the things to be addressed, of course.

And of course, you know, I strongly believe it's that social science could be an instrument. You will be an instrument actually to, to build a smart regulation that we need for, to preserve privacy. Thank you very much.

Thank you very much. Very inspiring speech. I know time is flying. Let's see if there is any questions from, from the group

hour. Never most opportunity questions. Winner. We have many here. We, have one, which has to do with the, analogy used about climate change. And today what we hear a lot is that if we implement regulation here, but they don't do it elsewhere, then it kind of symmetry of productivity and competitiveness and therefore, as a result, nobody wants to do it.

Would you see something similar with respect to the regulation of,

can that be enforced even locally? Would that require a global , well, we, of course, you know, we, we know the causes for carbon regulation failure, you know, multiple countries and, and the fact that there's an, everybody's free riding. Um, we talk a lot about climate clubs. We talk a lot about, carbon ca, carbon border tax adjustment, CBAs.

Um, and price is a bit different because in a sense, when we meet a ton of carbon, it's going to be exerting a negative anxiety on the entire world. Now the direct anxiety of the lack of privacy will be on the citizens of the country. Now, you could have, I mean, that's why prisons, for example, is, is a better example because, a better comparison because, after all, you know, if, if French prisoners are not treated well, why is that of interest to Germans?

Right. You might say, but what you could have is to have behind the ve of ignorance, basically have some kind of inter international agreement. So we, the, the milit, the, the war thing is, is not perfect as analogy, but the prison one is a good one, which is that, we commit collectively the countries of Europe actually to have minimum standards for prison so that we don't treat prisoners in an inhumane way.

And that way we protect our populations together against people who might actually want to mistreat them. Okay. But then how do you implement, look at what Trump wants to do with transgenders in pri in prison. Um. You know, how do you protect those, those people? You, you, the, the US hasn't signed, of course, the European agreement, but even if it had signed it, what would we do?

I mean, will we go to war to protect prisoners in, I I somehow very much doubt it. I mean, it's not going to happen. So, you know, neman shame can be useful, but again, Neiman shame is complicated because if you're in a country without the freedom of the press, the media are just all governmental in some way or are moving toward governmental.

I mean, that's what's happening in the us. Um, especially given that you have bubbles, information bubbles,. You know, so you can say no, but that's, you know, they don't do, the Europeans don't do the same. They, they treat their, their prisoners better, for example. But you know, who knows about it and who wants to know about it.

So, so there is a prime of collective a action. I don't have the answer, but we, you know, this, this is a very difficult thing to do, but, you know, I'm all in favor of behind the radar of ignorance, trying to, to, to constrain the governments to, from taking bad action to other citizens. But to do that, you need a constitutional court.

We have one in Europe, we have one within the countries, but the desert courts are being challenged by the government. There's not much you can do up except for a revolution, right? There's not much you can do. And you know, if, if Trump, for example, gets rid, he has already conquered the, the Supreme Court.

If he gets rid of the judges or if he doesn't get rid of the judges, but he doesn't enforce our decision because you need a police to enforce the decision, then you are, you are no longer in a democracy. Right? And, you know, at that point of time, you know, except that basically, you know, re rebelling collectively, assuming that you don't have Big Brother 

watching you all the time, may be the only solution. Unfortunately, the other solution will be a rebellion within, within, within the elite. Professor. Hello. As you know, we've opened these talks to a global audience, a live audience, and I've been mandated to, to look at them. And your talk has inspired questions that are well half a page long, so I'll try and paraphrase them and in advance, my apologies.

, now far is an executive, MBA here at HEC, has asked, where firms prioritize market share and data accumulation. Do you believe reputational risks alone are enough to drive ethical AI practices any as a follow up? Well, that's an interesting question. I'm not sure that's going to discipline the platforms.

, for one thing. We don't know where the leakage comes from. You know, if I go and see the start to lose and score, then the platform is going to share with 150 partners and, you know, maybe the leakage, and so on will have occur somewhere else, and I won't even know. , so it is very hard to, to actually discipline the platforms on, on this thing.

And they want to mo monetize data. Okay? So they want, I mean, we see that, for example, they're very happy when something exciting goes on. Exciting, not for us, but, you know, for, for the population, basically there's blood, you know, there are some insult flying and so on. And, you know, they report all of that, of course, because they're going to make money out of the attention of the listeners.

So I don't, I don't think it's going to happen that you'll get this discipline without regulation. , for the, non-specialists of, rugby, we're talking about a passion in the south of France, especially that's, equivalent to a religion, I think. , so he, he suggests or he wonders if, we need stronger economic, economic disincentives to ensure responsible innovation.

Well, I think the platform in general don't have much incentives in terms of, of liability. So there was this 1996 rule in the US Article 230, which basically said the platforms are totally exonerated from any liability. So if the data leak, if you, if Amazon sells goods, which are, are not good, that's not the responsibility of Amazon.

Okay? If things have moved a little bit or if there is. , slender, or if there are insults or antisemitism or whatever, that's not the platform's responsibility. , now in Europe, we are trying to make the platforms accountable, which, which is important because if we want them to behave well, it's like for carbon.

I mean, you need an incentive at some point. So you have returning to be an economist. Um, and you know, that's very important. But of course the platforms don't want that to happen because they make their money from various things like this and, you know, they, they are resisting. So the interesting thing, which is going to happen now is how much pressure the American administration is going to exert on Europe and how is going to, to, to basically exert this pressure in a differential ways across country, so as to make sure that Europe's gets rid of its regulation.

Um, we'll see. Um, hi Professor. I'm Xi Jin, I a PhD d student. The economics suggest that the deregulation seems to be the mainstream in the future, and, regulation has become a comparative disadvantage, such as for Europe. I say, how do you view the baggage between the development and, the regulation?

Thank you. Okay. So that's a good question. And , you know, Europe is often accused of being a regulatory giant and, and an economic, you know, we, it's true that we like to regulate. Now, personally, I'm pro-regulation, but pro smart regulation, so, and then you're going to ask me now, what is smart and stupid regulation?

There's a lot of stupid regulation in Europe and every European country, and there's no question about that. That should be suppressed. Now, how do you recognize good regulation? Well, you look at market failure. Do they correct the market failures? Okay. That's one of the things that you can use, you know, as a compass.

Um, you know, are we social scientists in agreement with that? Is it going to help with society and all the rest should be gotten rid of? And yeah, the prime is that as we know, you know, people who have a, who have a job, they want to justify their presence of a job. So often they, they want to, to create new regulation without necessarily realizing that they're going to make the life of firms, for example, much more difficult, making them non-competitive respect to the rest of the world.

So I'm not against Europe regulating, I think it's a good thing. But, you know, people, the critics of course, of regulation, they're also right, which is are we have to, to, to have the smart regulation, not the others. Oh in, in your, thank you so much for the talk. I would love to be the last one. I hate to be the timekeeper.

Sorry. No, no pressure. Thank you for the interesting overview and talk throughout your talk, I had the feeling that you were flipping between kind of the state being the savior in the sense of imposing smart regulation and the state being the problem when they become corrupt, and then the uncertainty between elections and even democratic governments flipping.

Do you see any kind of hope or way out in the sense of is there regulation that can protect us from corporates that might wanna harm citizens and from future governments that might wanna harm citizens? Well, for one thing, of course, having transparency can discipline the state a little bit. , and the government in general don't like transparency for good reasons.

, so that can help a little bit of, to have this transparency, uh. Now what's going to happen with, with the future of the state? I, I don't know. Because you, you know, at some point you, you need to, to have the courts I implementing things. So the state will, lots of people are wanna be, autocrats, you know, they want to, to be strong rulers of their countries.

And there are lots of people like that. There is an infinite supply of that. Some are more gifted than others, but, you know, by and large, and you, you must, we must have the institution that prevent this from happening. Um, now there is a broader question which will affect, so what, what do experts do in, because you know, it's easy to say, okay, just have the smart regulation, not the others, but you know, who decides what's smart?

Is that Ian? Yeah, maybe. , I think, I think so. But you know, this is, this is an issue. Who are we? Somehow. So what what we can do is basically explain, you know, what our science is about and, you know, share this knowledge. Now are we going to convince people that's difficult? That's difficult. And you know, I'm, I'm mentioning Yan because Yan knows a lot about those things.

You know, convincing the people is very difficult because, you know, if you want to convince, you can write an article in Lamar, but that's not going to have much effect. Honestly. That's not going to have much effect. I mean, that's what we do. But in, in, in fact, the impact is, is relatively limited because, you know, the people who should read those articles, they are somewhere else, and those people don't read, want to read LA mode or, or the, the star newspapers, they want to read something else.

And, you know, reaching those people,. You know, maybe, you know, I have a colleague at MIT who, who is a strong Democrat, and he goes to Fox News, and I think that's wonderful. I mean, I'm not doing that myself, so I'm not courageous enough. But you know, the, I think it's wonderful, you know, and he gets beaten all the time, but you know, at least he, he confronts the people who has to, to learn about it.

Now those people will say, oh no, is it crazy? We don't want, but yeah, at least he's trying. Um, but that requires a lot of courage, to be honest. So the role of experts, we could talk for an hour about the role of experts in, in the current society, but it's not an easy one. It's not an easy one. , professor, actually, I just wanted to build upon what you just said because,.

While we understand that there's issues around, you know, the carbon emissions, there's issues around data privacy. A lot of people live in willful ignorance right now. And you know, my question is more about how do you incentivize governments to create regulation around it when in a lot of countries these same governments are sort of using these divisive, you know, issues to, you know, capitalize on them for votes?

Well, I mean actually they, they, they get votes actually from not doing it. Right. So, so that, that, that the issue and, and you know, that means in the end we get the politicians we deserve, right? We get the politicians we deserve. And, if we don't have a clear view about how society should be organized, and that's, that's, that's something we have to start teaching.

A school is really, you know, it is, we don't realize. You know, I'm always upset by, by the French system and so on. I always complain about it, but in the end, we don't realize how happy we are. You know, we have a society which actually has a lot to, to say about it even so, there are lots of things that annoy me.

, but you know, in the end when you, we, we value, you know, what we have been living through for decades now, a mixture of democracy and, and social progress and economic progress even so, it's very imperfect and, lots of wrong things. It, we just don't realize. And, you know, people listen to, to the crazies who are promising them a lot and you know, and they have never been tried.

So, which, and even better things. But then we have to realize that we might be in Germany in 1932. , with, with the media actually, and the bosses basically serving the power. And, you know, once all those countries have taken away the Supreme Court and the court system, there's no return, no easy return. So we should also appreciate what we have.

But how do you convey that? And, you know, that's part of the challenge for us to actually, and maybe I should be more positive and actually say, no. Look, look, you know, we, it's not perfect far from it, but you know, the, there's something that we have and we could lose very soon.

Thank you very much once again,

on behalf of the HEC academic community, we are proud to be still upon you. It is gonna argue Gary. Testament and contribution to the Thank you very much. Thank you so much.

Really appreciate all of you being here so late in, in the evening. But as I said, it's a very great honor.

Thank it's time to, thank you all for joining tonight.