Gilles Arnaud is Professor of Organizational Behavior at ESCP Europe Paris Campus. He holds a Master in I/O Psychology, a PhD in Management Science from Toulouse University (in the field of organizational psychodynamics) and a French accreditation to supervise doctoral research. He has a strong interest in the application of psychoanalysis, especially Lacanian theory, to organization studies, work psychology and business. His other areas of interest include epistemological issues in social science, qualitative and clinical research methods, and critical management studies in a psychodynamic perspective. His research work has appeared in books and in a range of French and international academic journals. Moreover, Gilles Arnaud currently serves on the editorial board of Organization Studies, Management Decision, the Leadership & Organization Development Journal, Frontiers in Psychoanalysis and Neuropsychanalysis, as well as on the board of several French reviews. He is also a member of the Laboratoire de Changement Social (Research Centre for Social Change, University of Paris Diderot), a board member of the CIRFIP (International Centre for Research, Training and Intervention in Psycho-sociology) and a former board member of ISPSO (International Society for the Psychoanalytic Study of Organizations).

Francesca Cornelli, Head of the Finance Department at London Business Schools and associate editor of the prestigious Journal of Finance is truly one the most influential academics in Finance. She is a Research Fellow of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) and a member of the Scientific Committee of the Banque de France Foundation. With co-authors Zbigniew Kominek and Alexander Ljungqvist they have studied the role of the Board of Directors and the impact of monitoring on CEOs turnover. They have showed the importance of « soft information » in the board decision to dismiss the CEO. 

André Grimaud, who enjoys a worldwide fame for his various work, is a member of the Conseil Français de l’Énergie and of the Center for Economic Studies and the Institute for Economic Research. With co-authors Gilles Lafforgue and Bertrand Magné, they have written a paper that modelizes the economic effects of environmental policies. In the interview he gave us, he presents this model and explains the reason why it is so difficult to reach an international agreement over a global environmental policy.

Kai A. Konrad is Director at the Max Planck Institute for Tax Law and Public Finance. He completed his PhD at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University in Munich in 1990. From 1994 to 2009 he was a Professor of Economics at the Free University of Berlin (Freie Universität Berlin) and from 1994 to 2000 he also held a position as Adjunct Professor at the University of Bergen, Norway. From 2001 to 2009, while still a Professor at the Free University, he was also the director of the “Market Processes and Governance” unit at the Social Science Research Centre Berlin (WZB). He has been a member of the Council of Scientific Advisors to the Ministry of Finance since 1999 and was elected chairman of this Council in 2011. He is a co-editor of the Journal of Public Economics. His research findings in the fields of political economy, public finance as well as economic policy are published in top scientific journals like the American Economic Review and Management Science.

Alexander Ljungqvist holds the Ira Rennert Chair of Finance and Entrepreneurship at New York University’s Stern School of Business – which he joined in 2000, after receiving his MA, MPhil, and DPhil degrees in economics from Nuffield College at Oxford University and teaching at Oxford University’s Said Business School and Merton College. He also serves as Editor of the Review of Financial Studies, a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research in Cambridge, and a Research Fellow of the Centre for Economic Policy Research in London. His research interests include investment banking, IPOs, entrepreneurial finance, private equity, venture capital, corporate governance, behavioral corporate finance, and asset pricing. The recipient of the 2011 Ewing Marion Kauffman Prize Medal for Distinguished Research in Entrepreneurship and of several teaching awards, Dr. Ljungqvist teaches at the MBA, PhD and executive levels. He currently serves on the Nasdaq Listing Council and on a World Economic Forum working group tasked with “Rethinking financial innovation.” In the 2000s, he designed alternative investment strategies for Deutsche Bank Securities. Over the past 20 years, he has consulted widely on private equity, corporate finance, regulatory economics, and corporate strategy.