News Room

As Gov. Mike Parson campaigns across Missouri to defend his widely criticized handling of the COVID-19 pandemic and asks voters to grant him a full term, he has promoted an eye-catching statistic that suggests his administration has tamed the deadly virus. “In April, when our death rate was at 8 percent – close to 8 percent – today, it is at 0.7,” Parson said at last Friday’s gubernatorial debate. He also cited the data while speaking to reporters last week.

The most celebrated theory in all of economics, the so-called First Welfare Theorem, says that, provided there is perfect competition and perfect information, free markets allocate resources resources efficiently. In other words, it says the father of economics Adam Smith was right, that the “invisible hand” of the market works in the best interest of society. Often the conditions are not met, and much of modern economics is about how to improve the otherwise suboptimal outcomes delivered by unfettered markets.

When Marshall Fisher recently reviewed the outline of his planned lecture series on global supply chain management at Wharton Business School which begins this month, he realised it required some extensive reworking. “I swallowed hard, decided to throw away the course and start again,” says Mr Fisher, professor of operations, information and decisions. He has since updated almost half his 13 scheduled classes with fresh examples linked to coronavirus. “I thought I just can’t teach the same course again. Every time you open the newspaper you see Covid and supply chains.”

The AI gold rush has been underway in the financial services industry for the past few years. According to the UK Financial Conduct Authority and the Bank of England, two-thirds of Britain’s financial services firms use some form of machine learning. Just over half have an R&D strategy to add even more to their AI capabilities. That strategy needs a well-developed ethical component.