October 31st 2007

Received wisdom holds that competitive markets are lean and efficient markets. How then can we explain the bloated scale and profits of the banks and financial institutions globally, the periodic share price bubbles and resulting misallocation of capital, and the regular systemic blow-ups, such as the current sub-prime lending debacle?

Can it be that Adam Smith's dictum that the pursuit of private gain leads to the highest utility for all, does not, after all, apply in financial markets?

Paul Woolley
Dr Paul Woolley's career has spanned the private sector, academia and policy-oriented institutions. He gained his BA and D Phil in Economics from the University of York (UK) and was a lecturer there in the early 1970's. He was then at the International Monetary Fund in Washington, latterly heading the division managing the Fund's investment and borrowing. He returned to the UK, as a director of merchant bank, Baring Brothers. For the past twenty years he has run the European arm of GMO, the global fund management business based in Boston, US.

He has now returned to academic life funding Paul Woolley Centres for the Study of Capital Market Dysfunctionality at the London School of Economics, UTS and the University of Toulouse. He is an Adjunct Professor at UTS and Senior Fellow at the LSE.

Resources

• flyer (PDF 52k)
• talk
• audio recording (MP3 28.8 MB)

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