Below you can find details on our featured speakers. We will post the conference agenda and more information on this page soon.
Julie Agnew is the Director of the Boehly Center for Excellence in Finance and an Associate Professor of Finance and Economics at the College of William and Mary’s Mason School of Business. In addition, she is a TIAA-CREF Institute Fellow, a Research Associate for the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College, and a former member of the Defined Contribution Plans Advisory Committee for the Virginia Retirement System. Her research and consulting activities focus on the interplay between financial literacy and behavioral finance with a specific focus on financial decisions made by individuals in their retirement plans. She frequently presents her research at conferences around the world and has testified as an invited expert witness to the Senate’s Committee on Health Education, Labor and Pensions. Funded by several nationally competitive research grants, her research has been published in top journals, including the American Economic Review and the Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis. Prior to pursuing her doctorate, she worked as an Analyst in investment banking for Salomon Brothers in New York City and as an Equity Research Associate for Vector Securities International in Chicago. A 1991-1992 Fulbright Scholar to Singapore, she co-authored a book examining strategic business opportunities in Asia. Dr. Agnew earned a B.A. degree in Economics (High Honors) and a minor in Mathematics from the College of William and Mary. She graduated Magna Cum Laude and is a member of Phi Beta Kappa. She received a Ph.D. in Finance from Boston College in 2001. In 2012, she was a Senior Visiting Fellow at UNSW in Sydney, Australia.
Nava Ashraf is an Associate Professor at Harvard Business School. Professor Ashraf teaches a second-year MBA course she designed called "Managing Global Health: Applying Behavioral Economics to Create Impact". Her research combines psychology and economics, using both lab and field experiments to test insights from behavioral economics in the context of global development in Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia. Her recent field experiments have been carried out jointly with the Government of Zambia in the areas of improving health services delivery and education. She has also conducted research on questions of intra-household decision making in the areas of finance and fertility. Her research is published in leading journals including the American Economic Review, the Quarterly Journal of Economics and the Journal of Economic Perspectives.
Dan Benjamin is an Associate Professor (Research) of Economics at CESR at USC. His research is in behavioral economics (which incorporates ideas and methods from psychology into economic analysis) and genoeconomics (which incorporates genetic data into economics). Some current research topics include understanding errors people make in statistical reasoning; exploring how best to use survey measures of subjective well-being (such as happiness and life satisfaction) to track national well-being and evaluate policies; and identifying genetic variants associated with outcomes such as educational attainment and subjective well-being. Other ongoing work addresses how economic behavior relates to cognitive ability and social identity (ethnicity, race, gender, and religion). Dan received his Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard University in 2006.
Marcel Bilger is an Assistant Professor & Assistant Director for Education, Signature Program in Health Services & Systems Research at Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School Singapore. His main domain of research is health insurance with the dual perspective that it both improves access to healthcare and entails cost containment incentives that aim at ensuring long-term sustainability of the scheme. More generally, he applies econometrics methods to various health-related policy issues including health care demand modeling, analysis of equity in the health system, prevention use, and obesity. Before joining Duke-NUS, Dr. Bilger worked as a consultant for the Development Research Group at the World Bank where he analyzed the health system of several Asian and African countries. He also contributed to developing the World Bank software for economic analysis ADePT as an advisor for the health financing and health outcomes modules. He previously was a postdoctoral fellow at the Harris School of Public Policy at the University of Chicago, researching on social health insurance, healthcare costs, and health system performance. He also worked at the Laboratory of Applied Economics at the University of Geneva where he carried out several mandates for various public institutions. Dr. Marcel Bilger's academic work notably includes publications in the Journal of Health Economics and a book on health equity and financial protection. He holds a Ph.D. in econometrics from the University of Geneva with a specialization in health economics and policy having completed the international doctoral program from the Swiss School of Public Health
Ciarán Forde graduated with a BSc in Food Chemistry before completing his PhD in Sensory Science at the Department of Nutrition at University College Cork in Ireland. For his PhD project Ciarán worked on the EU Fifth Framework "HealthSense" study which aimed to understand how changes in sensory perception influence food acceptance and intake in elderly consumers. Ciarán then joined Glaxo-Smith-Kline in the UK as a Sensory Scientist in their Nutritional Healthcare division and later the Commonwealth Scientific industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) in Sydney, Australia where he led a multi-disciplinary research programme for the next 6 years, responsible for research linking physicochemical properties of food to perception, acceptance and intake. In 2010 Ciarán joined the Nestle Research Centre in Lausanne Switzerland, as a Senior Research Scientist to focus on understanding sensory and cognitive influences on food intake behaviour. Since the end of 2014 he is Principal Investigator in Sensory Science and Ingestive Behaviour at A*STAR’s Clinical Nutrition Research Canter and is also a Research Associate Professor within the National University of Singapore Medical School (http://www.nutritionresearch.edu.sg/).
Rory Gallagher is Managing Advisor and Director of International Programmes for the UK’s Behavioural Insights Team (BIT). The team (commonly known as the 'Nudge Unit') was established by British Prime Minister David Cameron in 2010. It aims to use insights from the growing body of academic research in the fields of behavioural economics and psychology to encourage, enable and support people to make better decisions. In February 2014, the BIT was spun out of government as a mutual joint venture with the NESTA charity and the Cabinet Office. Rory is currently working for the New South Wales Department for Premier and Cabinet, where he helped set up and heads the Behavioural Insights Unit. Rory has led a range of successful trials with the Office of State Revenue, Ministry of Health and the Treasury Managed Fund, ensuring a significant return on investment for NSW. He also led BX2014 – the world’s first behavioural insights public policy conference, held in Sydney in June. Rory also provides advisory support to government departments in Singapore, and is a visiting Fellow at the Singapore Civil Service College. Before heading overseas, Rory led the Behavioural Insights Team's work on countering fraud, empowering consumers and helping people find work, including through the development of large scale randomised controlled trials and authoring our Fraud, Error and Debt report. Rory previously worked at the Prime Minister's Strategy Unit and holds a PhD from Cambridge for his work on HIV/AIDS and behaviour change.
Varun Gauri is the team leader of the World Bank's Behavioral Innovations Lab, and Senior Economist with the Development Research Group of the World Bank. He was Co-Director of the World Development Report 2015: Mind, Society, and Behavior. His current research examines why public agencies comply with human rights court rulings and why individuals support public goods. His publications include the books Courting Social Justice: The Judicial Enforcement of Social and Economic Rights in the Developing World and School Choice in Chile. His research has appeared in top journals in the fields of political science, development, and economics. His work has been covered in The New York Times, The Economist, The Washington Post, and The Indian Express. He has BA from the University of Chicago and a PhD from Princeton University, and has held positions as Visiting Lecturer in Public and International Affairs at Princeton University and Visiting Professor in the Department of Economics at ILADES in Santiago, Chile.
Paul Gertler is the Li Ka Shing Professor of Economics at the University of California, Berkeley where he holds appointments in the Haas School of Business and the School of Public Health. He is also the Director of UC Berkeley’s Graduate Program in Health Management. Dr. Gertler was Chief Economist of the Human Development Network of the World Bank from 2004-2007 and the Founding Chair of the Board of Directors of the International Initiative for Impact Evaluation (3ie) from 2009-2012. After earning his Phd in Economics form the University of Wisconsin he held faculty appointments at Harvard University and RAND before joining Berkeley. Dr. Gertler has been a Principal Investigator of a large number of at-scale impact evaluations including, for example, Mexico’s CCT program PROGRESA/OPORTUNIDADES, Argentina’s Plan Nacer, Rwanda’s Health Care Pay for Performance scheme, slum upgrading in Latin America, and the World Bank’s program to eliminate open defecation world wide. He has published extensively in both scientific and policy journals on early childhood development, education, health, HIV-AIDS, energy and climate change, housing, job training, poverty alleviation, labor markets, and water and sanitation.
Angela Hung received her Ph.D. in Social Science from the California Institute of Technology, and is Director of the Center for Financial and Economic Decision Making (CFED) and a Senior Economist at RAND. She is associate director for the Roybal Center for Decision Making to Improve Health and Financial Independence in Old Age. She was previously an assistant professor of economics and public policy at the H. John Heinz III School of Public Policy and Management at Carnegie Mellon University and an affiliate of the Carnegie Mellon Center for Behavioral Decision Research. She has over 15 years experience in experiment, survey, and focus group design in studying individual decisionmaking. Her work focuses on how people collect and use financial information and how successfully they match their financial decisions to their interests and goals. Her work on financial literacy and financial decisionmaking has been sponsored by agencies such as the Social Security Administration, the DOL, the Department of the Treasury, and the National Institute on Aging. She was the principal investigator (PI) on a project for the United States Securities and Exchange Commission that examined the differences between broker-dealers and investment advisers and that explored investors’ understanding of these differences through the use of focus groups and surveys. For the DOL, she has led several projects on retirement investment decisionmaking that use primary data collection through experiments, surveys, and focus groups, including projects on the effects of fees on investment portfolio allocation, the relationship between financial literacy and retirement savings and decumluation, and the effect of advice on investment portfolio allocation. She is currently leading projects for the DOL on conflicts of interest in financial advising and on developing and testing materials to be used in financial statements.
Arie Kapteyn is a Professor of Economics and the Executive Director of the Dornsife College of Letters Arts and Sciences Center for Economic and Social Research (CESR) at the University of Southern California. He is a fellow of the Econometric Society, past President of the European Society for Population Economics, and Corresponding Member of the Netherlands Royal Academy of Arts and Sciences. Before founding CESR at USC, Prof. Kapteyn was a Senior Economist and Director of the Labor & Population division of the RAND Corporation. Prof. Kapteyn’s research expertise covers microeconomics, public finance, and econometrics. Much of his recent applied work is in the field of aging and economic decision making, with papers on topics related to retirement, consumption and savings, pensions and Social Security, disability, economic well-being of the elderly, and portfolio choice. At CESR he leads several projects, including one that incorporates internet interviewing into the National Institute on Aging funded Health and Retirement Study (HRS), a program on the analysis of health and economic determinants of retirement in the U.S. and Western Europe, and a center on the analysis of economic decision making related to retirement and saving and investing for retirement. He is also the director of the Understanding America Study, a nationally representative sample of 2000 households who are regularly interviewed over the internet.
David Laibson is the Robert I. Goldman Professor of Economics at Harvard University. Laibson is also a member of the National Bureau of Economic Research, where he is Research Associate in the Asset Pricing, Economic Fluctuations, and Aging Working Groups. Laibson's research focuses on the topic of behavioral economics, and he leads Harvard University?s Foundations of Human Behavior Initiative. Laibson serves on several editorial boards, as well as the boards of the Health and Retirement Study (National Institutes of Health) and the Pension Research Council (Wharton). He serves on Harvard?s Pension Investment Committee. He is also serves on the Academic Research Council of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Laibson is a recipient of a Marshall Scholarship. He is a Fellow of the Econometric Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is a recipient of the TIAA-CREF Paul A. Samuelson Award for Outstanding Scholarly Writing on Lifelong Financial Security. Laibson holds degrees from Harvard University (AB in Economics, Summa), the London School of Economic (MSc in Econometrics and Mathematical Economics), and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (PhD in Economics). He received his PhD in 1994 and has taught at Harvard since then. In recognition of his teaching, he has been awarded a major Harvard prize and a Harvard College Professorship.
Daniel Lim is an Associate Consultant in the Infocomm Development Authority's Government Analytics team, where he oversees data analytics projects relating to citizen engagement, healthcare, and risk management. His team works with government agencies to scope out problem statements and deliver actionable insights to their policy and operational challenges. As a member of Harvard’s Behavioural Insights Group, he has previously collaborated with the Ministry of Home Affairs, Land Transport Authority, and National Volunteer and Philanthropy Centre to design and implement randomised controlled trials and surveys. He graduated with a BSc. in International Political Economy (summa cum laude) and a MSc. in International Relations (valedictorian) from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service in 2011. He also earned an A.M. in Statistics and a Ph.D. in Government from Harvard University in 2014. He has been with IDA since September 2014
Olivia S. Mitchell Dr. Olivia S. Mitchell is the International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans Professor at the Wharton School, as well as Professor of Insurance/Risk Management and Business Economics/Policy; Executive Director of the Pension Research Council; and Director of the Boettner Center on Pensions and Retirement Research; all at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Concurrently Dr. Mitchell serves as a Research Associate at the NBER; Independent Director on the Wells Fargo Advantage Fund Trusts Board; Co-Investigator for the Health and Retirement Study at the University of Michigan; and Executive Board Member of the Michigan Retirement Research Center. She is also a Senior Research Fellow at the SKBI Institute of the Singapore Management University. Dr. Mitchell's main interests are public and private pensions, insurance and risk management, financial literacy, andsocial insurance. She was awarded the Fidelity Pyramid Prize for research improving lifelong financialwell-being; the Carolyn Shaw Bell Award of the Committee on the Status of Women in the Economics Profession; and the Roger F. Murray First Prize from the Institute for Quantitative Research in Finance. She was also honored with the Premio Internazionale Dell'Istituto Nazionale Delle Assicurazioni (INA) from the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei in Rome. Her Social Security reform study won the Paul Samuelson Award for “Outstanding Writing on Lifelong Financial Security” from TIAA-CREF. She received the MA and PhD degrees in Economics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and the BA in Economics from Harvard University. She has published 27 books and close to 200 articles, and she speaks Spanish and Portuguese, having lived and worked in Latin America, Europe, and Australasia. See her Wharton profile for more information.
Peter Ong Boon Kwee was born in Singapore. He was awarded the Colombo Plan Scholarship to pursue his Bachelor of Economics at the University of Adelaide, Australia and graduated with first class honours. He graduated top of his Masters in Business Administration class from Stanford University, USA in 1993 as Henry Ford II and Arjay Miller Scholar. Mr Ong was appointed as Head of Civil Service, Permanent Secretary (Special Duties) in the Prime Minister’s Office and Permanent Secretary (National Security and Intelligence Co-ordination) on 1 September 2010. This is in addition to his appointment as Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Finance to which he was appointed on 1 October 2009. On 1 October 2008, he was concurrently appointed as the 2nd Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Finance, while still holding the post of Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Trade & Industry. In his capacity as Permanent Secretary (Finance), he oversees the Ministry’s central role in managing public finances and ensures the Government’s budgetary objectives and policies are achieved. He relinquished his appointment as Permanent Secretary (National Security and Intelligence Co-ordination) on 1 November 2011.
He currently sits on the Boards of Monetary Authority of Singapore, Directorship & Consultancy Appointments Council, National Research Foundation and Singapore Telecommunications Limited. He is also Chairman of the Inland Revenue Authority of Singapore and Deputy Chairman of the Lee Kuan Yew Exchange Fellowship and Lee Kuan Yew Scholarship Fund. In addition, he has been conferred the award of Darjah Kebesaran PANGLIMA SETIA MAHKOTA (P.S.M.) (Honorary) (Knight of the Most Distinguished Order Of The Crown). Mr Ong has been Singapore’s G20 Sherpa and Finance Deputy since 2010. Mr Ong’s previous appointments were as Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Transport and 2nd Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Defence. His previous postings include stints at Temasek Holdings (Private) Limited – a Government investment holding company, Ministry of Communications and Information Technology and Ministry of Home Affairs.
He currently sits on the Boards of Monetary Authority of Singapore, Directorship & Consultancy Appointments Council, National Research Foundation and Singapore Telecommunications Limited. He is also Chairman of the Inland Revenue Authority of Singapore and Deputy Chairman of the Lee Kuan Yew Exchange Fellowship and Lee Kuan Yew Scholarship Fund. In addition, he has been conferred the award of Darjah Kebesaran PANGLIMA SETIA MAHKOTA (P.S.M.) (Honorary) (Knight of the Most Distinguished Order Of The Crown). Mr Ong has been Singapore’s G20 Sherpa and Finance Deputy since 2010. Mr Ong’s previous appointments were as Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Transport and 2nd Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Defence. His previous postings include stints at Temasek Holdings (Private) Limited – a Government investment holding company, Ministry of Communications and Information Technology and Ministry of Home Affairs.
Phillip H. Phan is a Professor and Executive Vice-Dean at The Johns Hopkins University Carey Business School and Core Faculty at the Johns Hopkins Medicine Armstrong Institute for Patient Safety and Quality. He is Visiting Professor of Medicine at the National University of Singapore Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine. His research focuses on agency theory and the role of governance structures and incentives. He has published more than 90 peer reviewed research articles in such journals as the Academy of Management Journal, Strategic Management Journal, Journal of International Business, Journal of Management, Journal of Business Venturing, and Research Policy. He is Editor of the Academy of Management Perspectives, Senior Editor for the Journal of Business Venturing, and Associate Editor for the Journal of Family Business Strategy, Journal of Technology Transfer, and Journal of Financial Stability. He served two terms on the editorial review board of the Academy of Management Journal. He has served on the boards of healthcare technology organizations and advised federal and state agencies in Germany, Ireland, Singapore, United States, and Hong Kong on technology driven economic development policies.
Thia Jang Ping is the Director of the Transformation Office, and the Security and Resilience Programme Directorate in the Ministry of Finance. His key responsibilities include overseeing the budget and manpower allocations to various Ministries, implementing transformation projects to improve public sector effectiveness, and the use of data analytics. He is also concurrently the Director (Social & Economics) at the Institute of Governance and Policy, Civil Service College. His key responsibility is to advance Public Economics and Social research, including use of behavioural insights in economic and social settings. Dr Thia received his PhD in Economics from the London School of Economics. His main professional interest is in International Economics. His secondary interests include economic geography and population issues.
Alberto Salvo is an associate professor in the Economics Department at the National University of Singapore, where he teaches environmental economics to undergraduates and industrial economics to graduates. Prior to moving to NUS in 2013, he was an assistant professor at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, in Evanston, IL, USA. He earned a PhD in Economics at the London School of Economics in 2005. His current research focuses on how the choices and behavior of energy consumers affect the environment, which in turn affects socioeconomic outcomes, such as health, labor supply, and school performance. He has collaborators across disciplines, including public health and atmospheric science. Some current projects focus on the effect of severe air pollution on manufacturing workers, school children and professional athletes in China. At Frontiers of Behavioral Economics, he will discuss his research on how Brazilian consumers choose among alternative fuels, gasoline and ethanol, at the pump, and the role played by price salience.
Wenlan Qian is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Finance at the NUS Business School. She joined NUS in 2008 after obtaining her Ph.D. in Business Administration from the University of California, Berkeley. Dr. Qian’s main research interests are household finance, real estate and the economics of information in financial markets. Dr. Qian is the recipient of multiple prestigious external grants, including NBER Household Finance/Sloan Foundation Research Grant, Real Estate Research Institute Research Grant, CAMRI Applied Finance Research Grant, and Investment Management Association of Singapore Research Grant. Wenlan Qian`s work also won the best paper awards at leading international conferences such as the Society of Financial Society Cavalcade conference. Her research appears in or is accepted at top economics and finance journals such as American Economic Review, Journal of Financial Economics, Management Science, and Review of Finance. She currently serves on the editorial board of Real Estate Economics.
Anya Samek is an Assistant Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, currently a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Economics Department at the University of Chicago. Anya received her Ph.D. in Economics from Purdue University in 2010 and was a Griffin Postdoctoral Scholar at the University of Chicago in 2010-2012. Anya's work focuses on using behavioral insights and experimental methods to improve decision-making in areas of health, financial literacy, and education. Much of her work focuses on using incentives and information to nudge decision-making surrounding food choice, both in school lunchrooms (with kids) and in grocery stores (with adults). Anya also worked on a field experiment with over 2,000 children in 2010-2014, which explored the impact of early childhood education on educational outcomes and preference formation in low income communities in the U.S.
Suzanne Shu is an Associate Professor of Marketing at UCLA’s Anderson School of Management, whose research focuses on behavioral economics and marketing. The types of decisions analyzed in her research include consumer self-control problems and consumption timing issues, with important implications for both negative behaviors (such as procrastination) and positive behaviors (such as saving). Her most recent work on financial decisions has focused specifically on Social Security claiming and annuity choices as well as on perceived fairness for financial products. Professor Shu received a PhD from the University of Chicago in 2004; she also holds a degree in Electrical Engineering and Masters in Electrical Engineering from Cornell University. Before arriving at UCLA, Professor Shu taught marketing and decision making courses to MBA students at the University of Chicago, Southern Methodist University, and INSEAD. She is currently also an NBER Research Economist, a Research Fellow at the USC Center for Economic and Social Research, and holds a joint faculty appointment at the UCLA Medical School.
Kevin Volpp is the founding Director of the Center for Health Incentives and Behavioral Economics at the Leonard Davis Institute (LDI CHIBE), one of two NIH- funded Centers on Behavioral Economics and Health in the United States. He is also a Professor of Medicine and Vice Chairman for Health Policy of the Department of Medical Ethics and Policy at the Perelman School of Medicine, a Professor of Health Care Management at the Wharton School, and Director of the University of Pennsylvania CDC Prevention Research Center. Dr. Volpp’s research on the impact of financial and organizational incentives on health behavior and health outcomes work has been recognized by numerous awards including the Alice S. Hersh Award from AcademyHealth; the British Medical Journal Group Award for translating Research into Practice; the outstanding paper of the year from the Society of General Internal Medicine; and a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE). He served as a member of the editorial board of the Annals of Internal Medicine previously and is now a Contributing Writer to JAMA. He is an elected member of several honorary societies including the Institute of Medicine (IOM) of the National Academy of Sciences. He is a board-certified general internist and practicing physician at the Philadelphia VA Medical Center. He is a principal at the behavioral economics consulting firm VALhealth and has collaborated with and advised a wide variety of private and public sector entities in the United States and internationally.
Joanne Yoong is an applied micro-economist conducting research on behavioural economics, health and financial decision making, and economic development. Dr. Yoong is a Senior Economist at the University of Southern California, where she is directing the research program for the Center for Economic and Social Research (East). She is also an Assistant Professor of Health Systems and Behavioral Sciences at the Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health, the current Director of the Asia Pacific Regional Capacity-Building for Health Technology Assessment (ARCH) Initiative, an APEC-funded multi-country collaboration to promote health technology assessment among member economies, and was previously Director of the RAND Behavioural Finance Forum 2012. She is currently the co-president of the Singapore Health Economics Association and the co-chair of its February 2014 inaugural conference. Dr. Yoong’s academic research has been published in leading economics and public health journals including the American Economic Review and PLOS One, and has been funded by the WHO, OECD, NIH, DFID, World Bank and USAID. She received her Ph.D. in Economics at Stanford University as an FSI Starr Foundation Fellow, and her AB in Economics and Applied and Computational Mathematics from Princeton.
Songfa Zhong is an Assistant Professor of Economics at National University of Singapore. His research interest is to understand economic behavior using a wide range of methodologies from behavioral economics and experimental economics, to genetics, neuroscience and neuroendocrinology. His current research projects include testing decision theoretic models (risk preference, time preference, and ambiguity preference) in laboratory setting, understanding the role of acute and chronic stress in economic behaviors and economic outcomes, and exploring the genetic basis of economic behavior using both candidate gene approach and genome-wide association study. Besides laboratory research, he is also interested in exploring behavioral insights from observational data. He received his PhD in Economics from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology in 2009, and his BA in Accounting from Peking University in 2003.