Dr Pranab Bardhan, Professor of Graduate School at the Department of Economics at UC Berkeley, delivering the inaugural address at IFMR’s two-day research symposium on finance and economics, said that a long-term rise in inequality can push the economy into a deep recession. “It may hurt macroeconomic performance by making it difficult to stimulate enough mass consumer spending,” he said. Dr Bardhan’s talk focused on the economic impact of inequality and inefficiency.
The symposium, organised by the IFMR Graduate School of Business (GSB) at Krea University at its campus, focused on various areas such as financial globalisation and economic development, emerging trends in corporate finance and governance, behavioural finance, digital finance, financial inclusion, asset pricing and financial markets. The symposium saw over 50 participants and 20 paper presentations.
The two-day meet included a pre-symposium workshop on empirical corporate finance, plenary sessions, technical sessions and a panel discussion where speakers from various parts of the world, including the US and Australia, participated. Thought leaders such as Dr Pranab Bardhan from UC Berkeley, Dr Nagpurnanand Prabhala from Johns Hopkins Cary Business School, Dr Paresh Narayan from Deakin University and Dr Bala Balachandran from La Trobe University, engaged in active discussion.
Dr V Anantha Nageswaran, Dean, IFMR Graduate School of Business, in his welcome address said , “IFMR has a rich tradition of academic and research excellence. Research pursued at IFMR has a practical orientation and policy relevance. This research symposium is a platform for exchange of ideas, questions and answers between academics, students and industry practitioners from many corners of the world, making it an intellectually stimulating and enriching experience. The high quality of sessions and paper presentations is testimony to the high esteem in which participants hold Krea University and IFMR GSB.”
Vice Chancellor of Krea University Dr Sunder Ramaswamy said in his opening message that IFMR GSB had begun a new journey under the aegis of Krea University, pioneering interwoven learning to prepare students for a dynamically diverse world. He reiterated that for the historically research-focussed IFMR GSB, the symposium is an important initiative.
A unique feature of the symposium was a panel discussion on "Blockchain, Big Data and Business: The Way Forward" where distinguished experts from the industry like R Vivekanand (VP & Co-Head, TCS Financial Solutions), Rangaraj Sriramulu (SVP, Digital Transformation Alorica), Rajaram Venkataraman (Founder, Navya Insights) and Dr Madhan Kumar Srinivasan (Analytics Innovation Principal and Lead, Cloud Innovation Centre, Accenture) participated and deliberated upon the critical issues related to a range of topics.