UniverCity Council Podcast : Prof. Chirantan Chatterjee, IIM-A India, Stanford Hoover Institution

UniverCity Council Podcast Series

Guest: Prof.Chirantan Chatterjee
IIM-Ahmedabad & Stanford University

Hosts: Carl Nielson and Apurva Kumar
UniverCity.ai and CITYDATA.ai

Time Tagged Excerpts:

4:20
The story of COVID has been about trying to contain the virus, prepare the public health systems while doing lock downs, at the cost of potential economic losses. The dichotomy between public health and the economy is worth studying.

6.50
COVID has enabled a huge influx of counterfeit products in places where the institutional settings are weak in terms of enforcement.

7:40
We are working with the United Nations to study the many disadvantaged countries and economies around the world like Guatemala and Kosovo where the governments are just not equipped to deal with COVID.

9.35
COVID is here to stay. The variants are going to keep us on the edge. There should be a global emergency assembly of nations like we did after the world war, to plan out the next 5 years with respect to economic losses, fiscal stimulus, vaccine distribution, intellectual property waivers, and cross-country migrants.

15:20
As we try to open up, we are going to experience second, third and fourth waves. We will need data philanthropy and public+government partnerships to measure mobility and COVID propagation.

17:10
Hopefully business schools around the world are thinking about becoming data hubs and producers of data as a competitive advantage and not just consumers of data.

20:40
Smartness is about improving the productivity of each household and that of the city overall.

22:40
The real world is not yet bouncing back like we might see on the airwaves or in the stock market. What we are picking up in the stock markets are the distortions of how our economies are set up globally. We are seeing a strong selection bias in the stock market performance.

25:20
Privacy as we know it is probably dead. But we will find new ways to know it. The human spirit is free. It does not want to be surveilled. And I have full faith in humanity.

About Chirantan Chatterjee:
Chirantan Chatterjee is an associate professor in economics and strategy at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, where he also holds the ICICI Bank Chair in Strategic Management. In 2019, Chatterjee was awarded the IIM Ahmedabad VVEF Outstanding Researcher Award. Chatterjee is also a 2018-2019 recipient of the prestigious W. Glenn Campbell and Rita Ricardo-Campbell National Fellowship award, at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He was also additionally appointed in 2019 as the Edward Teller National Fellow at Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He is currently a Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution for the period 2019-2021. Chatterjee's current research is being supported by the Wellcome Trust DBT India Alliance initiative, Alliance for a Healthy World at the Johns Hopkins University, Hoover Institution at Stanford University, Dinesh Thakur Foundation and the ICICI Bank Chair in Strategic Management at IIM Ahmedabad. Chatterjee was also selected in November 2020 as part of an international group of experts to work on Socioeconomic Research for the United Nations, evaluating and drawing early lessons for its UN MPTF program in responding to Covid-19. Later in 2021, Chatterjee is joining the Science Policy Research Unit at University of Sussex Business School as a tenured faculty member and Reader in Economics of Innovation.

Relevant Links:
Website:
https://www.chirantanchatterjee.com/
Stanford Hoover Institution:
https://www.hoover.org/profiles/chirantan-chatterjee
IIM-Ahmedabad:
https://www.iima.ac.in/web/faculty/faculty-profiles/chirantan-chatterjee
Twitter:
@chiruchat