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To celebrate the fifth year of the Sun Hung Kai Properties Nobel Laureates Distinguished Lectures, Sun Hung Kai Properties (SHKP) and The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) announced earlier that three Nobel Laureates in Economic Sciences have been invited to deliver three lectures to address the current state of the global economy. Unveiling the new economic lecture series, the first lecture will be delivered next Monday (3 November) by Professor Kenneth J. Arrow, 1972 Nobel Laureate in Economic Sciences, who will speak on “Economic Analysis and Social Obligation”.

Professor Arrow will discuss a major question of government policy and one of the most important issues facing the world in 2008 – the extent to which the government should intervene in the workings of markets: for example when markets fail to operate properly, or when it is desirable to make the income distribution more equal than the market outcome.

Professor Arrow is a professor at Stanford University. Together with John R. Hicks, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences in 1972 “for their pioneering contributions to general economic equilibrium theory and welfare theory”. Four of his students have also won the Nobel Prize: John Harsanyi, A. Michael Spence, Eric Maskin, and Roger Myerson.

He has published work on a variety of topics in economics, including work on social choice, the use of securities for risk-bearing, general equilibrium theory, the economics of information, with special reference to asymmetric information, inventories, economic growth and its measurement, medical economics, and the economics of innovation. He has also received a number of honours, including the John Bates Clark medal of the American Economic Association, and the John von Neumann Theory Prize of the Institute for Operations Research and Management Science, as well as 25 honorary degrees.

The lecture will be broadcast live to local universities, and the Hong Kong Science and Technology Parks with the aim of extending its benefits and raising public awareness of the leading scholarship in the six Nobel prize categories: Physics, Chemistry, Physiology or Medicine, Literature, Peace and Economic Sciences. It will also be available on the Hong Kong Education City web site for online viewing by secondary school students and teachers. There will also be a live feed to Peking, Fudan, Shanghai Jiao Tong, Tsinghua, Zhejiang, Nanjing and Sun Yat-sen Universities on the mainland.

A limited number of free tickets are still available to give Hong Kong people a chance to benefit from the distinguished scholar’s insight. Details are as follows:

Details of the Lecture:
Date: 3 November 2008 (Monday)
Time: 5:00 pm
Place: Shaw College Lecture Theatre, CUHK, Shatin
Language: English

Ticket collection:

Tickets are distributed on a first-come, first-served basis – one per person. Public is also welcome to apply for the online registration at http://www.cuhk.edu.hk/nobellectures/
Enquiries: 2609 8893

The Sun Hung Kai Properties Nobel Laureates Distinguished Lectures were inaugurated in 2004 in conjunction with The Chinese University of Hong Kong. The series brings in Nobel Laureates to speak to a broad cross-section of the community, to promote the discovery and the dissemination of knowledge, professional and entrepreneurial expertise and contributions to humanity. Including this, the fourteenth installment of the series, 21 Nobel Laureates or renowned scholars will have lectured in Hong Kong.