The Economics of war and peace
Nov
16
09:00 AM - 07:30 PM
Video playlist
Press reviews
Die Ökonomie des Terrorismus NZZ vom 16.11.2015 lesen
Krisenregion Nahost - Europa muss sich stärker engagieren Radio SRF - Echo der Zeit vom 16.11.2015 hören
Luftschläge werden den IS nie besiegen Schweiz am Sonntag vom 15.11.2015 lesen
Die Kosten des Grauens SRF TV - ECO vom 16.11.2015 schauen
Friedensnobelpreisträger über Terror SRF TV - Tagesschau vom 16.11.2015 schauen
Bis Terroristen Atomwaffen haben ist es nur eine Frage der Zeit Tagesanzeiger vom 16.11.2015 lesen
Vom Ende der Barbaren UZH News vom 18.11.2015 lesen
Insight
On war and peace
After the devastating attacks in Paris, this year’s UBS Center annual Forum for Economic Dialogue took on an unexpected and somber significance. A packed auditorium in Kaufleuten attended an event featuring a list of famous keynote speakers and panelists, including Nobel Peace Prize Winner Mohammed ElBaradei, Federal Councillor and Swiss Foreign Minister Didier Burkhalter, and bestselling author Steven Pinker.
Read our full Insight on The economics of war and peace by Maura Wyler, Head of Communication.
On war and peace
After the devastating attacks in Paris, this year’s UBS Center annual Forum for Economic Dialogue took on an unexpected and somber significance. A packed auditorium in Kaufleuten attended an event featuring a list of famous keynote speakers and panelists, including Nobel Peace Prize Winner Mohammed ElBaradei, Federal Councillor and Swiss Foreign Minister Didier Burkhalter, and bestselling author Steven Pinker.
Read our full Insight on The economics of war and peace by Maura Wyler, Head of Communication.
Mohamed ElBaradei during his keynote lecture
Intro
The world is facing a resurgence of violent conflicts - from civil wars in Africa and the Middle East, to global terrorism, to an East-West conflict in the Ukraine many believed had vanished with the end of the Cold War.
At the Forum the analysis of economic drivers for, and economic consequences from, current conflicts took center stage. Panel sessions included "The economics of war and peace", "The economics of terrorism", and "Russia and the West - an economic perspective". In addition to these sessions, the Forum featured keynote speeches by Mohamed ElBaradei, Didier Burkhalter, and Steven Pinker.
Panel speakers included Ethan Bueno de Mesquita (University of Chicago), Tim Harford (Financial Times), François Heisbourg (Chairman of the International Institute for Strategic Studies), Ambassador Wolfgang Ischinger (Chairman Munich Security Conference), Sergey Karaganov (Dean, School of World Economics and International Affairs, National Research University, Moscow, and Honorary Chairman of the Council for Foreign and Defense Policy, Moscow), Ambassador Livia Leu (State Secretary for Economic Affairs SECO, Switzerland), Edward Miguel (Berkeley University of California), and Vaira Vike-Freiberga (Member of the European Council on Foreign Relations, former President of Latvia).
More than 500 people attended this years'' forum at the Kaufleuten. The audience seemed intrigued with the insights that the speakers shared with them and many engaged in the Q&A sessions, taking the opportunity to receive answers from various experts.
The world is facing a resurgence of violent conflicts - from civil wars in Africa and the Middle East, to global terrorism, to an East-West conflict in the Ukraine many believed had vanished with the end of the Cold War.
At the Forum the analysis of economic drivers for, and economic consequences from, current conflicts took center stage. Panel sessions included "The economics of war and peace", "The economics of terrorism", and "Russia and the West - an economic perspective". In addition to these sessions, the Forum featured keynote speeches by Mohamed ElBaradei, Didier Burkhalter, and Steven Pinker.
Didier Burkhalter (Head of the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs)
Prof. Steven Pinker (Harvard University)
Photo gallery
Program
Speakers
For the past two decades, Nobel Laureate Mohamed ElBaradei has played a key role in the most high-stakes conflicts of our time. Unique in maintaining credibility in the Arab world and the West alike, Dr. ElBaradei has emerged as a singularly independent, uncompromised voice. From 1997 to 2009 he was the Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). ElBaradei and the IAEA were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2005. During his tenure at the IAEA, ElBaradei employed diplomacy to deal with nuclear rows over Iraq, North Korea and Iran, and insists that even in the most difficult situations, progress can be made. A prominent voice for peace, freedom and democracy in the Arab and Islamic worlds, he played a leadership role in the Arab Spring of 2011 and was asked to take on the responsibility of interim Vice President of Egypt, a position from which he resigned in 2013. ElBaradei has received many global awards for his work as a public servant and as an advocate of tolerance, humanity and freedom.
Ethan Bueno de Mesquita is Professor, Deputy Dean for Research & Strategic Initiatives, and Director of the Center for Policy Entrepreneurship at the University of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy. Before coming to Chicago Harris, Bueno de Mesquita taught in the department of political science at Washington University in St. Louis and was a Lady Davis Fellow in political science and visiting fellow in the Center for the Study of Rationality at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is an applied game theorist whose research focuses on political violence – especially terrorism, insurgency, and rebellion – and on democratic accountability.
Former Federal Councillor and Swiss Foreign Minister
Didier Burkhalter
Didier Burkhalter obtained a degree in economics from the University of Neuchâtel. Before his move into politics, he held a number of posts in the academic world and the private sector. In 1991 he was elected to the executive (town council) of Neuchâtel, which he chaired for three legislative periods. In 2003 Mr. Burkhalter was elected to the National Council, and to the Council of States in 2007. During this time he served on a number of parliamentary committees and also was a member of the Swiss delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). Didier Burkhalter was elected to the Federal Council on 16 September 2009 and appointed as the head of the Federal Department of Home Affairs (FDHA), a post he held until 31 December 2011. Since 1 January 2012 Mr. Burkhalter is head of the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs (FDFA). In 2014 Mr. Burkhalter assumed the presidency of the Swiss Confederation and held the chairmanship of the OSCE.
UBS Foundation Professor of Globalization and Labor Markets, Research Fellow CEPR
David Dorn is the UBS Foundation Professor of Globalization and Labor Markets at the University of Zurich and the director of the university-wide interdisciplinary research priority program “Equality of Opportunity.” He was previously a tenured associate professor at CEMFI in Madrid, a visiting professor at the University of California in Berkeley, and a visiting professor at Harvard University.Professor Dorn’s research spans the fields of labor economics, international trade, economic geography, macroeconomics, and political economy. He published influential studies on the impacts of globalization and technological innovation on labor markets and society. David Dorn is among the 100 most highly cited economists worldwide in the last decade. In 2023, he was awarded the Hermann Heinrich Gossen Prize for the most accomplished economist in German-speaking countries under the age of 45.
Professor of Economics, Direktor am UBS Center
Ernst Fehr promovierte 1986 an der Universität Wien. Seine Arbeit hat gezeigt, wie soziale Motive die Zusammenarbeit, Verhandlungen und Koordination zwischen Akteuren beeinflussen und wie sich dies auf das Funktionieren von Anreizen, Märkten und Organisationen auswirkt. Seine Arbeit identifiziert wichtige Bedingungen, unter denen die Zusammenarbeit floriert und zusammenbricht. Die Arbeit an den psychologischen Grundlagen von Anreizen informiert uns über die Vorzüge und Grenzen finanzieller Anreize für die Vergütung von Mitarbeitern. In anderen Arbeiten hat er die Bedeutung der Unternehmenskultur für die Leistung von Unternehmen gezeigt. In neueren Arbeiten zeigt er, wie sich soziale Motive darauf auswirken, wie Menschen über Fragen im Zusammenhang mit der Umverteilung von Einkommen abstimmen und wie Unterschiede in der inneren Geduld der Menschen mit der Ungleichheit des Wohlstands zusammenhängen. Seine Arbeit hat innerhalb und außerhalb der Wissenschaft mit mehr als 100.000 Zitaten von Google Scholar große Resonanz gefunden, und seine Arbeit wurde mehrfach in internationalen und nationalen Zeitungen erwähnt.
Tim is an economist, journalist and broadcaster. He is author of the million-selling "The Undercover Economist", a senior columnist at the Financial Times, and the presenter of Radio 4’s "More or Less". Tim has spoken at TED, PopTech and the Sydney Opera House and is a visiting fellow of Nuffield College, Oxford. He is Economics Commentator of the Year 2014, winner of the Royal Statistical Society journalistic excellence award 2015, and also won the Society of Business Economists writing prize 2014–2015.
François Heisbourg is chairman of the council of the Geneva Centre for Security Policy and of the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies. He is special advisor of the Paris-based Fondation pour la Recherche Stratégique. His career has included positions in government (member of the French mission to the UN, international security adviser to the Minister of Defence), industry (vice president of Thomson-CSF, i.e. the present-day Thales; senior vice president strategy at Matra Défense Espace, today part of EADS), and academia (professor of the world politics course at Sciences-Po Paris, director of the IISS). He has sat on a number of national and international blue-ribbon bodies (most recently, the French Defence and national security White Paper, the International Commission on Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament, the International Commission on the Balkans, the EU Commission’s group of personalities on security research and development).
Ambassador Ischinger is Chairman of the Munich Security Conference (MSC), and former Deputy Foreign Minister (State Secretary) of Germany, 1998 to 2001. From 2006 to 2008, he was the Federal Republic of Germany’s Ambassador in London and from 2001 to 2006 in Washington, D.C. In 2007, he represented the EU in the Troika negotiations on the future of Kosovo. In 2014, he served as the Special Representative of the OSCE Chairman-In-Office promoting national dialogue in the Ukrainian crisis. He currently chairs the OSCE "Eminent Persons Panel on European Security" which is mandated to offer recommendations on how to build a more resilient architecture of European security.
Dean of the School of International Economics and Foreign Affairs, National Research University
Prof. Sergey A. Karaganov
"Sergey Karaganov is Dean of the School of International Economics and Foreign Affairs of the National Research University Higher School of Economics. He is the author and editor of more than 28 books and around 500 articles on the problems of international economy, foreign policy, national security strategy, and Russia’s foreign and security policy. Positions include: Member of the Academic Council of the MFA of Russia (since 1991), Member of the Academic and Advisory Council, Russian Security Council (since 1993), Member of the Council for the Development of Civil Society and Human Rights under the President of Russia (since 2004). He was one of the founders of the Institute of Europe of the USSR (Russian) Academy of Sciences. He was the founder and now serves as the Honorary Chairman of the Presidium of the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy. In December 2014 Sergey Karaganov was appointed to "High-level Panel of Eminent Persons on European Security as a Common Project" under the OSCE."
State Secretary for Economic Affairs SECO, Switzerland
Ambassador Livia Leu
Ambassador Livia Leu is Head of the Bilateral Economic Relations Division at the Swiss State Secretariat for Economy and Delegate of the Federal Council for Trade Agreements since August 2013. From 2009 to 2013 she was Swiss Ambassador to the Islamic Republic of Iran. Prior positions include head of Policy Division for Africa/Middle East in the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs, 2006 to 2008, deputy head of Mission at the Swiss Embassy in the Arab Republic of Egypt, 1998 to 2002, counsellor at the Swiss permanent observer mission at the UN in New York, 1994 to 1998. Livia Leu is a career diplomat in the Swiss Foreign Service. She was trained as a lawyer and admitted to the Bar of Zurich.
Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ)
Dr. Martin Meyer
Martin Meyer is a Swiss journalist, publicist, essayist and author. In 1974 he started his career at the Neue Zürcher Zeitung as editor for the Feuilleton, and became editor-in-chief of the Feuilleton in 1992. In addition to his work as a journalist Martin Meyer has written and published several books, among others about Ernst Jünger, Thomas Mann, Switzerland and Europe, Ende der Geschichte? and the debates about Krieg der Werte. Recently, he published a biography about Albert Camus. Meyer is corresponding member of the Deutsche Akademie für Sprache und Dichtung and received an honorary PhD of the University of St. Gallen.
"Edward Miguel is the Oxfam Professor of Environmental and Resource Economics and Faculty Director of the Center for Effective Global Action at the University of California, Berkeley, where he has taught since 2000. Edward’s main research focus is African economic development, including work on the economic causes and consequences of violence; the impact of ethnic divisions on local collective action; interactions between health, education, environment, and productivity for the poor; and methods for transparency social science research. Miguel has written two books, \"Africa’s Turn?\" (MIT Press 2009), and, with Ray Fisman, \"Economic Gangsters: Corruption, Violence and the Poverty of Nations\" (Princeton University Press 2008)."
Steven Pinker is a Johnstone Family Professor at the Department of Psychology at Harvard University. He conducts research on language and cognition and writes for publications such as the New York Times, Time, and The Atlantic. He is the author of ten books, including The Language Instinct, How the Mind Works, The Blank Slate, The Stuff of Thought, The Better Angels of Our Nature, The Sense of Style, and most recently, Enlightenment Now - The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress. He is a two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist, a Humanist of the Year, a recipient of nine honorary doctorates, and one of Foreign Policy’s “World’s Top 100 Public Intellectuals” and Time’s “100 Most Influential People in the World Today”.
Vaira Vike-Freiberga is President of the Club de Madrid and former President of Latvia (1999–2007). She was instrumental in achieving membership in the EU and NATO for her country and was Special Envoy on UN reform. She was vice-chair of the reflection group on the long-term future of Europe, and chaired the high-level group on freedom and pluralism of media in the EU in 2011–2012. She is a member, board member or patron of 30 international organizations, including the European Council on Foreign Relations and two high-level groups on European security and defense, as well as five academies. From 1965 to 1998 Prof. Vike-Freiberga pursued a professorial career at the Department of Psychology of the Université de Montréal. She has published extensively and is much in demand as speaker.
UBS Foundation Professor of Macroeconomics and Financial Markets, Research Fellow CEPR
Joachim Voth received his PhD from Oxford in 1996. He works on financial crises, long-run growth, as well as on the origins of political extremism. He has examined public debt dynamics and bank lending to the first serial defaulter in history, analysed risk-taking behaviour by lenders as a result of personal shocks, and the investor performance during speculative bubbles. Joachim has also examined the deep historical roots of anti-Semitism, showing that the same cities where pogroms occurred in the Middle Age also persecuted Jews more in the 1930s; he has analyzed the extent to which schooling can create radical racial stereotypes over the long run, and how dense social networks (“social capital”) facilitated the spread of the Nazi party. In his work on long-run growth, he has investigated the effects of fertility restriction, the role of warfare, and the importance of state capacity. Joachim has published more than 80 academic articles and 3 academic books, 5 trade books and more than 50 newspaper columns, op-eds and book reviews. His research has been highlighted in The Economist, the Financial Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Guardian, El Pais, Vanguardia, La Repubblica, the Frankfurter Allgemeine, NZZ, der Standard, der Spiegel, CNN, RTN, Swiss and German TV and radio.
Fabrizio Zilibotti is the Tuntex Professor of International and Development Economics at Yale University. He was Professor of Macroeconomics and Political Economy at the Department of Economics at the University of Zurich and both Scientific Director and Deputy Director of the UBS International Center of Economics in Society. He is the President of the European Economic Association and co-editor at Econometrica. His research interests include economic growth and development, political economy, macro-economics, financial economics, and the Chinese economy.
For the past two decades, Nobel Laureate Mohamed ElBaradei has played a key role in the most high-stakes conflicts of our time. Unique in maintaining credibility in the Arab world and the West alike, Dr. ElBaradei has emerged as a singularly independent, uncompromised voice. From 1997 to 2009 he was the Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). ElBaradei and the IAEA were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2005. During his tenure at the IAEA, ElBaradei employed diplomacy to deal with nuclear rows over Iraq, North Korea and Iran, and insists that even in the most difficult situations, progress can be made. A prominent voice for peace, freedom and democracy in the Arab and Islamic worlds, he played a leadership role in the Arab Spring of 2011 and was asked to take on the responsibility of interim Vice President of Egypt, a position from which he resigned in 2013. ElBaradei has received many global awards for his work as a public servant and as an advocate of tolerance, humanity and freedom.
Ethan Bueno de Mesquita is Professor, Deputy Dean for Research & Strategic Initiatives, and Director of the Center for Policy Entrepreneurship at the University of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy. Before coming to Chicago Harris, Bueno de Mesquita taught in the department of political science at Washington University in St. Louis and was a Lady Davis Fellow in political science and visiting fellow in the Center for the Study of Rationality at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is an applied game theorist whose research focuses on political violence – especially terrorism, insurgency, and rebellion – and on democratic accountability.
Former Federal Councillor and Swiss Foreign Minister
Didier Burkhalter
Didier Burkhalter obtained a degree in economics from the University of Neuchâtel. Before his move into politics, he held a number of posts in the academic world and the private sector. In 1991 he was elected to the executive (town council) of Neuchâtel, which he chaired for three legislative periods. In 2003 Mr. Burkhalter was elected to the National Council, and to the Council of States in 2007. During this time he served on a number of parliamentary committees and also was a member of the Swiss delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). Didier Burkhalter was elected to the Federal Council on 16 September 2009 and appointed as the head of the Federal Department of Home Affairs (FDHA), a post he held until 31 December 2011. Since 1 January 2012 Mr. Burkhalter is head of the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs (FDFA). In 2014 Mr. Burkhalter assumed the presidency of the Swiss Confederation and held the chairmanship of the OSCE.
UBS Foundation Professor of Globalization and Labor Markets, Research Fellow CEPR
David Dorn is the UBS Foundation Professor of Globalization and Labor Markets at the University of Zurich and the director of the university-wide interdisciplinary research priority program “Equality of Opportunity.” He was previously a tenured associate professor at CEMFI in Madrid, a visiting professor at the University of California in Berkeley, and a visiting professor at Harvard University.Professor Dorn’s research spans the fields of labor economics, international trade, economic geography, macroeconomics, and political economy. He published influential studies on the impacts of globalization and technological innovation on labor markets and society. David Dorn is among the 100 most highly cited economists worldwide in the last decade. In 2023, he was awarded the Hermann Heinrich Gossen Prize for the most accomplished economist in German-speaking countries under the age of 45.
Venue
Kaufleuten Zurich
Pelikanstrasse 18, Zurich
(Google Maps)