CUHK
News Centre

Sun Hung Kai Properties and The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) are marking the fifth year of their Nobel Laureates lecture series with a trilogy of lectures by Nobel prize winners in economics talking about the global economy. The first two lectures were well received by academics and the public, and the third will have Professor Douglass North (1993 Nobel Laureate) speaking about “The Dynamics of Societal Change: A New Approach”, on December 11 (Thursday) to an audience of The Chinese University faculty, students and alumni, along with political figures and business people.

Professor North will address the limitations of conventional economic theory, which only deals with how an economy operates at a moment of time. A new approach will be proposed for understanding the dynamic process of societal change that is at the heart of all economic development – whether the restructuring and rapid economic development seen in China over the past three decades, the prognosis for the decades to come or the need for system restructuring by the western world as it attempts to deal with the current financial crisis.

Professor North won the 1993 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences with Robert W. Fogel for “having renewed research in economic history by applying economic theory and quantitative methods in order to explain economic and institutional change”. His life-long quest has been complex variations on a simple theme: Why do some countries become rich, while others remain poor? During the past several years, he has begun to use insights from cognitive and behavioral science to better understand economic change over time. His research in this area is set forth in his book Understanding the Process of Economic Change. Another book: Violence and Social Orders: A Conceptual Framework for Interpreting Recorded Human History is forthcoming at the end of 2008.

The lecture will be shown live at local universities and the Hong Kong Science & Technology Parks to reach a wider audience, and it will be available on the Hong Kong Education City web site for online viewing. There will also be a live feed to the Peking, Fudan, Shanghai Jiao Tong, Tsinghua, Zhejiang, Nanjing and Sun Yat-sen Universities on the mainland.

Free tickets will be available so that people can benefit from the distinguished scholar’s insight. Details follow:

Lecture:
Date: December 11, 2008 (Thursday)
Time: 5:00 pm
Place: William MW Mong Engineering Building Lecture Theatre, CUHK, Shatin
Language: English

Tickets available from December 4 (Thursday) 

The Sun Hung Kai Properties Nobel Laureates Distinguished Lectures were inaugurated in 2004 with The Chinese University of Hong Kong. The series brings Nobel Laureates to speak to a broad cross-section of the community, to promote the discovery and the dissemination of knowledge, encouraging life-long learning and innovation. After this 16th installment of the series, 23 Nobel Laureates or renowned scholars will have lectured in Hong Kong.