Humboldt Distinguished Lecture Series in Applied Mathematics

The 2011 Humboldt Distinguished Lecture Series in Applied Mathematics is given by Ivar Ekeland, on Asymmetry of Information in Finance. Prof Ekeland is a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and a member of the Norwegian and Palestinian Academies of Sciences. He was president of the University of Paris-Dauphine and director of the Pacific Institute for the Mathematical Sciences and has made pioneering contributions to optimization, symplectic topology, microeconomics and finance. He is well-known for the Ekeland variational principle and the Ekeland-Hofer capacities.

The talks take place

• April 12; 16:oo-17:oo and 17:3o-18:3o
  Johann v. Neumann Haus; Room 1.115
• April 13; 17:oo-18:oo and 18:3o-19:30
  Johann v. Neumann Haus; Room 1.115

and covers the following topics:

• Asymmetrie of information (adverse selection, moral hazard, the principal-agent problem)
• Adverse Selection (generalized convexity, the principal's problem as an optimization problem with convexity constraints, existence theory)
• Moral Hazard (limited liability in finance, Sannikov's method)