Annual Conference Presentation Recorded 13 May 2018
The Wisdom of Finance: Discovering Humanity in the World of Risk and Return
Overview
Mihir A. Desai, Mizuho Financial Group Professor of Finance at Harvard Business School, discusses demystifying finance to allow outsiders to appreciate its logic and heart in the hopes that they stop demonizing it. He shares his thoughts on rehabilitating finance so that the industry self-regulates and corrects the misbehavior of the past. One way to accomplish this, Professor Desai believes, is through the use of humanities to humanize finance.
This is the archived version of a live broadcast that took place 13 May 2018 at the CFA Institute Annual Conference in Hong Kong.
About the Speaker(s)
Mihir A. Desai is the Mizuho Financial Group Professor of Finance at Harvard Business School and professor of law at Harvard Law School. He has taught public economics and entrepreneurship to undergraduates, finance and international finance to MBA students and executives, and tax law and policy to law students. Professor Desai’s work has emphasized the appropriate design of tax policy in a globalized setting, the links between corporate governance and taxation, and the internal capital markets of multinational firms. He is a research associate in the National Bureau of Economic Research’s Public Economics and Corporate Finance Programs and served as the co-director of NBER’s India Program. Professor Desai has worked at CS First Boston and McKinsey & Co. and advised a number of firms and governmental organizations. His most recent book is "The Wisdom of Finance: Discovering Humanity in the World of Risk and Return." Professor Desai was a Fulbright Scholar to India, and he received a bachelor’s degree in history and economics from Brown University, an MBA as a Baker Scholar from Harvard Business School, and a PhD in political economy from Harvard University.