 Hernsfer, professor de la Universitat de Zurich, va impartir la lliçó inaugural d'economia del curs 2015-2016, patrocinada per la UPF i els laboratoris doctora Esteve. El professor Hernsfer ha investigat sobre l'evolució de la cooperació humana i és conegut per les seves aportacions en el camp de la neuroeconomia. Aquest any, la lliçó va ser presidida per Rose Marie Nagel, professora del Departament d'Economia i Empresa, Walter García Fontés, de Gada a la Facultat i José Luis Urbiata, en representació dels laboratoris doctora Esteve. El tema principal de la lliçó va ser les preferències dels agents econòmics. Hernsfer va començar la lliçó a establir el marc teòric i preguntant-se si es podien decidir sobre les preferències de les persones. Per mostrar el seu punt de vista, Fer va estructurar la lliçó a través de tres preguntes. La primera es qüestionava si els moviments dels preus dels actius afecten les preferències de risc. Cóndize değil. asset prices in the U.S. should have been if they would have been rational, okay. Now, the actual, what you see is that actual asset prices, they show huge volatility, they show huge volatility and note, I mean, they deviate from the broken line sometimes for a decade or more. This is not just a short run phenomenon, this is really, prices are wrong sometimes for years and the question is why. And our strategy imports a technology from psychology, which is called priming. What is priming? Priming is the activation of certain mental concepts. So I can prime a memory, for example, I can make it salient in your mind. Priming is about making things salient in your mind, okay. And that's what we did here. So we rendered booms and busts mentally salient in people's minds. Even the mere priming, and you will see, it's totally innocuous what we did. Even the mere priming, if even the mere priming of a boom and bust changes people's risk preferences, how much more likely it is that a real boom or bust, which really gets you in the, your mind is really in the grip of a bust if you have assets and they lose value. How much more likely it is that a real bust will affect your risk preferences. If I can even produce that effect already in the laboratory with a priming technology. La segona pregunta que el professor Fer va proposar era si la cultura empresarial afectava els treballadors de la banca. Well, here you see Sharon Kerviel, who created the last for Associated General through on our authorized trading for about 5 billion euros. And when he was asked why he did it, he said, well, the culture of the trading room was to make as much money as possible as quickly as possible. Even the economist who is not known to be a left-wing journal has a story about the rotten heart of finance in 2012. So there are many commentators who think there is something wrong with the business culture. We ask in which industry do you work, at which bank do you work, what is your function in this bank, how many years have you been working in this bank. We just make it salient that you are a bank employee. And in the other situation, we make it salient, we ask you about your leisure activities. So it's your private identity and your banker identity. One journalist said bankers are honest unless they are reminded that they are bankers. Now, we have to keep in mind that, I mean, it has been used for very polemical arguments, this paper, but that's also why I point out that the bankers are the most honest population I have found. And from a scientific viewpoint, the nice thing is that it's very hard to assign the change in honesty to anything else but a preference change. La tercera i última pregunta analitzava l'impacte de la catàstrofe nuclear de Chernobyl sobre les preferències de la població ukrainèsa. La tercera pregunta és la inauguració oficial del curs d'acadèmia. Bon dia i bona feina a tothom.