It's been an interesting journey for me because I never thought that I would be an economist. Let me see if we can pull this up. I was actually motivated to go into economics by wanting to work in development and realizing that in order to be able to get some of the ideas that we were seeing in the field, particularly some of the things that we're working in Baha'i projects, for example, some we needed to speak the language that would be understood and respected at the kind of tables of decision-making. So that's initially what led me to economics, never thinking that there might be a possibility within the field of economics, not just to learn a language that I could translate some ideas that we might have had from the field or from the writings into, but really a chance to move forward discourse and deepen ideas of the people within the discipline. And I think as I thought about that journey, I thought about what do we sort of traditionally think goes into the process of generating scientific knowledge. So we traditionally think of scientific knowledge as something that is generated by academics, kind of usually in a very stereotypical way, sitting in their Ivy League offices and coming up with some theories. And the idea is that they're supposed to be smart enough and engaged enough to have ideas that then inform and impact policy and practice in the field. And in fact, that people in the field, whether they're people who are actually, sort of for example in this case running NGOs or governments or policy makers, look to academic research to guide their actions. And yet, as we all know, there are tremendous gaps in that process. So in fact, a lot of knowledge is lost and never makes its way into policy or practice. And there's a tremendous amount of frustration in the dialogue between these two of the scientists and the practitioners. On the flip side, there are people who are generating tremendously valuable knowledge from the field. And that knowledge as well never makes its way back into scientific knowledge. So because of this lack of dialogue between these two types of people, I guess, or two areas, there is a tremendous amount of knowledge lost in the process. And so then we have the Universal House of Justice giving us this guidance. That access to knowledge is the right of every human being. And participation in its generation, application and diffusion. A responsibility that all must shoulder in the great enterprise of building a prosperous world civilization. Each individual according to his talents and abilities. Justice demands universal participation. When I first read this, it was like a very big shock to my system. I discussed it with every colleague I could find. Because to me what this said was, you know, we have always thought about academics. We as scientists being the ones that generate the knowledge. And then, you know, practitioners and policymakers and people in the field being the ones who apply it. And if we do a really good job, then we can actually disseminate this knowledge speaking the language properly. But the idea that there would be universal participation in the generation of that knowledge to begin with was quite revolutionary. And I thought about what that would look like in the scope of what we have. So how does this really allow us to not lose all of the knowledge that gets lost in the process. So that we take the academics and the practitioners off of their purchase in their respective places. And we put them together as they start building the scientific knowledge together. Now, that can be a very idealistic proposition. And there's a lot of reasons why that doesn't happen. The first is that academics and people in the field speak very, very different languages.  And there's some of that knowledge that then gets shared. But a lot that gets lost on the academic side because it's considered overly technical or even not relevant. And on the practitioner side because it's not considered rigorous enough. And this is really a shame because I was remembering when I was an undergrad, I did an internship at the World Bank and I was sitting around a table with a number of people who were making rural development strategy for Morocco. And I was just, you know, an intern so I was kind of just taking notes. But I looked around the whole table and I realized that not one of the people around the room had ever talked to a farmer in Morocco. And the idea that they would be actually engaging with farmers to understand how they're making decisions in the process of creating rural development strategy for those farmers was actually quite anathema. And I remember at that point thinking, I really need to figure out how to translate what's happening in the field into academia. And when I asked my mentors at the World Bank, they said, again, you need to speak this language. You need to go and get a PhD and come back here and be able to speak at the decision-making table. And so all of this shared knowledge that's coming, all this knowledge that got lost from the field, but just because it wasn't considered rigorous enough, there needed to be some translation of it. But then when I actually got to academia, there was this whole other process of thinking about how to make those ideas that come from the field or particularly that come from the Bahá'í writings and come from the way in which we actually interpret what's happening in the field through the lens of the Bahá'í writings and bringing them into the shared basis of scientific knowledge. And that's something that I'd want to say. I'm going to try to give some examples so that it's more concrete. But particularly for the students in the room now, you know, undergrad students, graduate students, PhD students, junior faculty, such a frustrating experience thinking, you know, there are so many gems that we know in the writings and so much that we come to with every discipline. But to try to think about how to make those ideas actually form their way in the discipline and become part of the discourse and the scientific knowledge is one that requires us to actually gain the greatest level of excellence technically in terms of the language that people can understand. And in looking at that, I thought about the role that radicals have played within academia. So how do radical ideas make their way into academic discourse? The sad thing is a lot of radical ideas basically just circumvent the whole scientific knowledge process. So they come from outside and they go right through. Some of it gets shared in practice but often doesn't make its way into academia. So what of economics? Economics is this really interesting discipline that's quite young, maybe only 160 years old compared to other social sciences, but actually came to greatly dominate the social sciences because of its approach of the rational actor, something that is predictable, something that is tractable. And in that process has lost a lot of the richness that economics started with. So who people consider sometimes the founder of modern-day economics, Adam Smith, was actually a moral philosopher. He talked a lot about the moral principles underlying our motivations and our decision-making, but none of those actually made their way into economics. And throughout the history of economics, you can even look at the history of publications. Every 20 years or so there's a sort of spike in the degree in which the discourse and the discipline is speaking about other types of assumptions. So for example, things like humans are not entirely self-interested, they care about other things, or there may be some boundedness to our rationality. And yet then it just goes down. And so what's been very interesting to watch now in the last 20 years is in the history of behavioral economics, there were a number of people who took some of these more radical ideas, created them using extremely technical tools that at first seemed very theoretical and then brought them into the discipline, created a kind of respect for them, and created this entirely new field which is now becoming more and more mainstream called behavioral economics. So as a process of, and I'll talk to you about some of the empirical evidence from behavioral economics in a second, that has allowed this discourse to move significantly forward. But in the process of preparing this presentation for today, I talked with a number of my colleagues who are from outside of behavioral economics just to say, what do you think about this idea of co-generating knowledge together with practitioners? What do you think about this idea of bringing radical ideas into economics and how we can do it well? And they said, you know, this isn't just behavioral economics that explains this. There's also, for example, development economics. So the field of economics that deals with developing countries was often considered something quite marginalized by people within the discipline. It was something that was sort of very soft and not respected and not mainstream until, again, people started to take it seriously, rigorously, do it technically. And then the idea is how do we take those sort of rigorous principles and theories and bring them into the field. So let's take one main assumption within economics, which is that our actions and our decisions reveal our true desires and preferences. So this is what economists call the principle of revealed preference. And this essentially means that you never do anything that you then later regret. And I know that introspection might tell you that that could be potentially wrong. But funny enough, I mean, it was a kind of assumption that made things a lot easier for the discipline to think about. And more or less it could be right. So what's important here is not that there's one instance in which it's wrong, but that it generally gives the right idea, that our actions reflect our true underlying desires. What that also means is that there's no scope for helping people to reach some other part of themselves because there's no conflicted selves. There's just what you do is what you want to do. So then you take significant ideas from all kinds of religion and philosophy. And let's take from Abdul Baha who said it very beautifully. In man there are two natures. His spiritual or higher nature and his material or lower nature. Signs of both of these natures are to be found in men. So now that suggests that in fact there could be times in which our actions and the things we do don't reflect our true preferences. So just by looking at actions that individuals do and their behavior doesn't mean that we understand what they truly want. And in fact there might be some scope for us to make sure that environments that we design, work organizations and products actually speak to people's higher natures rather than their lower natures. Without bringing in this deeper concept of the richness and complexity of human nature being one of a conflicted self that is trying its hardest to be the higher self but in fact has other forces pulling at it without that understanding we would have no actual justification for doing other types of things to help people move in that direction. And that's where economics had been for a long time particularly on things for example that economists would first talk about which is savings. So savings behavior is one of those where you think about the short term self and the immediate gratification of need right now versus a long term sacrifice for the future. So one way to interpret people not saving a lot or not thinking about future investment is to think that they actually just want to do that. That in fact this gives a lot of benefit and pleasure and in economist words utility and therefore there's no need to sort of try to encourage this longer term perspective. But fortunately within economics there had been some really smart scholars who had been considering what happens if individuals can't perfectly foresee what they're trying to do and can't get themselves to do the thing that would be in their best long term interest. And so there were a number of what might be called behavioral models of savings that posited what is called in economics hyperbolic discounting or time inconsistency. What that means is that we have inconsistency in ourselves. It's the exact same thing as the two natures that there is an inconsistency between what we think we want for the long term versus what we do and immediately want for the short term. And these suggest these models suggested that individuals might do things to help themselves get to their long term goals. So they might actually commit themselves to what people call commitment devices. And those are there are many financial instruments that can commit yourself to a long term goal but also from many ancient sources we find evidence as we say anecdotal evidence of commitment devices. So this is from the Odyssey and this is Odysseus saying but you can you must to his to his men. So this is what he was saying Odysseus as the person on the ship. They're about to go to these sirens who he believes are going to be extremely tempting. And what he wanted to make sure was that he would not be tempted by the sirens song to go from his path. He knew where the men needed to go. He knew where the ship needed to go but he knew there would be temptation and he acknowledged that there was a part of him that was vulnerable to that temptation critically. So he asked his men to bind me hard and fast so that I cannot stir from the spot where you will stand me. And if I beg you to release me you must tighten and add to my bonds. So this idea is completely I mean 20 years ago was totally crazy within economics. The idea that you would ask somebody to tighten and add to your bonds to let go of your freedom for a long term goal was something very difficult to accept. And even as these theoretical models made their way and we began to think about the ideas still the question is look we have these nice stories from Odysseus or we have these nice anecdotal examples of people having you know Christmas clubs or savings accounts where they try to bind their hands. And really how important could this actually be. So what we tried to do with some of my colleagues was to bring this into the field and try to actually generate together with a partner organization empirical evidence of one whether people actually have these types of time and consistent preferences. Two whether they demand to be tied to the to the mast in this way.  So with a microfinance bank in the Philippines with the largest one in the Philippines we designed a commitment savings product that was called the seed savings account. And it was essentially a locked box which many of you might have had as children. And here actually was part of the culture called the nuncha boxes and a contract with the bank that said please do not let me take out this money that I have put in until a certain date or amount has been reached. If I ask you to take it out before this data amount has been reached please don't let me. That's what the contract said. For standard neoclassical economic theory no one should want this account because it had the exact same interest rate as a regular savings account.  So you have full liquidity and that should be much more beneficial to you than having the bank hold up your money. And yet a number of people wanted this in fact 30 percent of people wanted this account. Those were exactly the people who actually we had in survey measures measured to have these timing consistent preferences. And turns out that for those people it was tremendously effective in helping them to increase savings. So after 12 months on average people increased their savings by 80 percent. For those people who took up the account they increased their savings by 300 percent. So these numbers were large enough within economics for people to take seriously and to say OK this is actually a serious phenomenon it's pretty important. And so it started to have a discourse within economics about commitment devices in general. Not only then within for savings but also for smoking and for fertilizer use for farmers and for a number of other papers that have been done since. Really taking into account how saving commitment devices in all ways can be used to help individuals. It's also had an impact in the field. So this is something that you can do if you ever have a challenge with your higher and lower self and you would like to commit yourself. You can get on stick dot com and this this website came directly out of this paper. And you can sign up to commit to a particular goal and and put up money that is sent to an anti charity if you don't make your goal. Or you can ask people to be your referees and to help keep you to that goal. So that's the way in which practice and academia sort of came together in this. I'm going to take you through one other study that talks about another sort of main assumption within economics. Which is the one that you hear maybe first when you go into say take an econ one on one class that human beings are driven by self interest. This is a very standard thing within economics. And yet we kind of have a sense that actually we do care about others. All of us do to some degree. The question is how important is that. And how can we actually put that assumption to the test. Telling an economist but we care about others doesn't really help when this is a fundamental assumption in the field. And it actually generates pretty good predictions about how people do. So this first started this discourse around whether self interest is actually a driving force or not. Or how to what degree it's a driving force started potentially within the lab actually. So there were a number of lab experiments that economists had done drawing from psychology. That showed repeatedly that individuals are willing to give up money to be able to meet the interests of others. And you know we don't have time now but there's a lot of really nice examples of lab experiments that individuals had done to show exactly how this process worked. But then it was very easy to poke holes in that and to say okay people are really willing to do that. The most simple one is I give you ten dollars how much of that would you like to give to someone anonymously in the other room. And people will give about 40% of that so they'll give about four dollars. And it doesn't matter if you triple that you quadruple that you make that three month salary where you do it in the world. People will give to others. But then a very natural criticism that somebody could have is to say well that's like in the lab you know you're giving people the money and then they probably think they should give it to someone else. How important is it when really some things are on the line. And in particular can this actually provide true motivation and mission. And one area in which this is really important is when we think about motivating employees in the world. And one of the things that come from the private sector is this idea of no margin no mission. So if you don't give people a financial margin they won't have a mission towards their job. That is how you provide employees with motivation is to give them financial margins. Paper performance and incentive design is entirely focused around that in the private sector. Question is is that true. And I was talking with a lot of NGOs who were struggling with thinking about okay well if we wanted those ideas seem to have worked in the private sector although there's a lot of debate about whether those actually worked in the private sector and whether they have actually very perverse effects on employees in their work. But the sad thing is a lot of people in the public health sector were taking these ideas full scale and saying okay well we're about to launch a delivery system for public health. Let's take this idea let's do no margin no mission and give people a financial margin in what they're doing. So what we did to test this was to design and implement a field experiment. So that's kind of like a randomized controlled trial the way you have in medicine but just on a very large scale and where you have control groups so that you can really rigorously test the causal impact of one thing versus another. We did this with an NGO in Zambia called Society for Family Health to look at the prevention of HIV AIDS. And in this process we recruited together with them 1200 entrepreneurs to be able to be part of this process of preventing HIV AIDS and randomly assign them to four treatment groups that kind of represent four different models of how you can motivate people. In the first treatment group was pure volunteer come and be part of our mission be part of this thing and this will be great. In the second we get really high financial margins so they would sell these prophylactics and they could get 90% of the margin back of the product that they sold. And there was low financial incentives and then there was a kind of social recognition or status treatment which I'll talk about in a second which basically helped to emphasize their connection to the work they were doing. So in fact what we ended up using were hairdressers and barbers who were entrepreneurs in every, not like the ones like the salons you have here they're on every corner in Africa and they do see themselves as entrepreneurs but in fact we tried to find something that for them would be very powerful and what we developed was a thermometer that as you progressed along this path you would get stars and the stars you can see on the left hand side it's like a representation of your contribution to community health. And the idea here was to match this idea that you know what are financial margins they're a way for you to feel connected to the profits of the company so your marginal, your additional piece of effort has an impact on the additional profit of the company and you feel connected to that. What we tried to do in designing this was to help individuals feel connected to the additional social impact that they were having and to see if they could find that connection. And what we indeed found was that that social impact and recognition treatment was twice as powerful as even the highest financial margins and we did a number of different tests to figure out why that was the case and it really looks like it was driven by a sense of wanting to contribute to others so we had in the baseline done some of these actually lab experiments where individuals who had given more, they had been given something like $10 give to an HIV AIDS charity, those who had been given more from the beginning were also those who were more likely to volunteer etc. Now those were then randomly assigned to all of these different treatments of those guys who had the highest kind of desire to serve from the beginning those were even more motivated by this social impact condition. So it was a way of leveraging, of harnessing that underlying desire to give and to serve with this. Now there were lots of other reasons here but it started, so there's a lot that we're doing now to kind of tease apart different things new ones that we're doing but it started the discourse on we need to take these non-monetary incentives, these non-monetary motivations seriously just look at exactly the comparison with financial incentives and what we called this was a form of altruistic capital that not only we as individuals have but that as an organization you can have so if you look at just the difference here as an organization the altruistic capital is actually twice as valuable to you as a financial capital that you could put towards the same thing and much cheaper. So what we've now done is try to think about the concept of leveraging this intrinsic desire to serve and to think about in a number of different organizations how do we harness and build altruistic capital both in individuals in academia in the field. I just was in London and we met with some of the folks at HSBC who are struggling a lot with the sense of meaning that has been lost in their work. So for example they told me about some of the employees that used to be very proud when they would go to a dinner party and their mother-in-law would say hey this person works at HSBC and he's a managing director there and now he just cowers in shame. And so their sense of purpose has been lost in their work and the entire organization is trying to think about what does this sense of purpose look like and yet their incentive schemes are exactly the same as they've had before and so they can have all this communications on one side but if they're not actually designing the incentives correctly then how does that work? So we were meeting with them with the colleagues who were, you know, study incentive design within academia and within economics to say okay how do we, I mean we had to struggle, how do we as academics and economists take into account purpose in our incentive design theories of motivation and incentive design and what does that imply for how we design incentives in a large bank like HSBC that has to think about now a very big thing that they struggle with and all of this was really that for no matter what field we're in I mean this, especially the conversation with the banking sector made me think, you know we have made heroes out of the doctors and those who work in the public health organizations or those who work in development. I think sometimes it's behind as we even make this mistake of thinking okay if you work in the NGO sector or you work in something called service then that's, you know, that's really where all the altruistic capital is and we've vilified for some reasons that we've seen over the last few years in the financial crisis the kind of greed that might go into this other sector of banking and yet again if we take our guidance from Adobe Ha we see that work, any work done in the spirit of service is the highest form of worship and so if we really take that seriously and we say any work done in the spirit of service is the highest form of worship and that that is the source of motivation how do we truly integrate that as a source of motivation into our theories of economic motivation and decision making and incentive design and into then how we design incentives and organizations and work environments in the field in practice. What I hope that all of us could potentially take from today and I'm so grateful actually for the Association for Baha'i Studies for choosing this topic of learning and action and this ability to try to have this discourse about co-producing knowledge is that we have such extraordinary gems in the Baha'i writings and in the way that those writings can change the way we interpret the data that we see in the world. How do we translate and bring those gems into a discourse that is affecting the base, the true base of scientific knowledge and not for us to need to think that we have to be completely in revolutionary fervor for us to affect the base of scientific knowledge then in fact science itself progresses incrementally and that incremental change is very powerful and if we can create that incremental change while co-producing that knowledge together with the field and with practice then that's maybe what we call Nur An Nur, you know, light upon light of what we can do to bring these things forward and just in this last thing of having ABS and you know these conferences not be one-off things we were just talking this morning about that. This is for me actually coming to the point of doing this presentation actually went through a lot of dialogue with my colleagues about this and actually started a whole discourse around what does this co-production of knowledge look like in macroeconomics what does it look like in market design who won the market design as a field that won the Nobel Prize in economics last year and in fact actually does this co-production really well what does it look like in development economics and for us to have these dialogues and what I hope for all of you is that you can take this and everything else that has happened over the last few days and be able to put it into practice and change the discourse in your fields as well.


Live from Stanford University, it's theCUBE, covering the Women in Data Science Conference 2017. Welcome back to theCUBE. We are live at Stanford University at the second annual Women in Data Science Conference. This great, fantastic one-day technical conference, and we are so excited to be joined by Yale Garten, who was one of the career panelists. Yale, you are the director of Data Science at LinkedIn. Welcome to theCUBE. Thank you, thanks for having me. So exciting to have you here. Everybody knows LinkedIn. My parents even have probably multiple LinkedIn accounts, but they do. You serve, what, 400 and plus million accounts. I'd love to understand what is the role, what's the data scientist role in the business overall? Yeah, so I guess when people ask me about data science, what I love to kind of start with is there are a couple of different types of data science. And so I would basically say that there are two main categories by which we use data science at LinkedIn. If you think about it, there's really data science where the product of your work is for a human to consume. So using data to help inform business or product strategy, to make better products, make more informed decisions about how you're investing your resources. So that's one side, which is often called decision sciences or advanced analytics. Another type of data science is where the consumer of the output is really a machine, right? So rather than human and machine, so basically these are things like machine learning models and recommendation systems. So we have really both of those. Second category is what we call data products. And so we use those in virtually everything we do. So on the data products, much of LinkedIn is a data product, it's really based on data, right? Our profiles, our connection graphs, the way that people are engaging with LinkedIn helps us improve the product for our members and clients. And then we use that data internally to really make better decisions to understand how can we better serve the world's professionals and make them more productive and successful. Right, fantastic. So tell us a little bit about your team. Sounds like it's sort of broken into those two domains. So you must have quite a large team or a lean team. So yeah, the way we have our team is that we work really closely within all of our product verticals. And we embed closely with the business to really understand kind of what are the needs. And then we work very cross-functionally. So we will typically have in any group sort of a product manager, an engineer, a designer, data scientist. Often it's from both kinds of data scientists. So sort of more on the analytics side, more on the machine learning side, right? Marketing, business operations, so really very cross-functional teams working together using this data. Very smart, sounds very integrated from the beginning really kind of by design. So that collaboration is really sort of natural within LinkedIn. That's fantastic, very progressive. Certainly something that everybody benefits from. Because whether you're on the advanced analytics side or on the machine learning side, you're getting exposure to the business side, vice versa, which that's really a great environment for success. Yeah, and part of I think what I love about LinkedIn is actually our data culture and how kind of data is infused in the culture of how we do things. Right, which is really, really, not always the case. It's not, and it's cultural shifts, we were talking about that with a number of guests today and especially depending on the size of the organization that's tough. Yes. So to have that built in and that integration as part of this is how we do businesses, really you can imagine all the potential and possibilities there. So we'd love to understand how is LinkedIn using data to recommend ways to evolve products and services to best serve all of its members. Yeah, so maybe two different examples of how we do this. One is what we do is every launch that we have, so every feature that we generate, we really do it in an online experimentation setting. So we have a certain feature that we're about to roll out to our members. We want to make sure that it's a better experience for our members and better as measured by kind of the metrics that we've defined in terms of measures of success. Which is really aligned to what value we believe we're delivering our members and customers. And so when we roll out features, we'll roll it out to a certain percentage of our users, test the downstream impacts of that and then decide based on that whether we actually roll that feature out to 100% of members. And so that's one of the things that my team is heavily involved in is really helping to use that data to make sure that we are structuring things in a way that's statistically sound so that we can measure the impacts correctly of rolling out certain features. So that's kind of one category of work. And the other category is really to do sort of opportunity identification and kind of deep dive insights into understanding into a certain product area where there are opportunities to improve the product. So one, let me give you a high level example. One of the ways we might use data is to say, okay, are certain members in certain countries accessing via iOS or Android? And if so, should we be developing more in differentiating between iOS and Android apps? One simple example, right? Where we'll actually just decide our R&D investments based on the data that we're seeing in terms of how people are using our products and do we think that that's important enough of an investment to make to improve the products and invest in that area? Wow, very, very smart. What are some of the basic ways that data scientists can deliver more value for their stakeholders, whether they're internal stakeholders across different functions within the organization or the members, the external stakeholders? I think one of the most important things is to really embed closely into these kind of functional or domain areas and understand qualitatively and quantitatively what's important, right? So understanding what the business context is and what problem you're trying to solve. And I think one of the most important ways that data scientists play a role is actually helping to ensure are we even answering the right questions? So as an example, a product manager might ask a data scientist to pull certain data or to do a certain analysis. And part of the conversation and the culture has to be, what are you trying to get at? What are you trying to understand? And really thinking through, is that even the right question to be asking? Or could we ask it in a different way? Because that's going to inform what analysis you do, really how you're delivering the results of this analysis to make better decisions. So I think that's a big part of it is having this iterative process of doing data science. Really, it sounds like such an innovative culture and you're right, looking at the data to determine, is this the right next step? Is it not? How do we maybe adapt and change based on really what this data is telling us? If we could have looked at collaboration for a second, you talked about the integrated teams, but I'm wondering, how do you scale collaboration within LinkedIn across so many businesses and engineering stakeholders? So the way I kind of like to think about it is, there's really, you have to invest in, in culture process and tools. So let me start from the bottom up. So on the tools or technology, one of the ways to do it is actually to create self-serve tools to really democratize the data. So first of all, investing in foundations of really good data quality, whether you're creating that data yourself or you're collecting that from externally, from different organizations. Once you have really good data quality, making sure that you have foundations that enable self-serve data basically. So for example, some of the things that data scientists are used today in various companies really doesn't need a data scientist if you've invested in ways where business partners, let's say, can query that data themselves. And they don't need a data scientist to be doing this role. So that's an important investment on the technology side. In addition, making data scientists really productive by using and investing in tools that will enable them to access the data is really important. So once you have that sort of technology, it enables your data scientists to be productive. The process is really important. So just as an example, we have a sort of playbook in terms of how do we launch features? And part of that is kind of bringing data insights in terms of which features we should be building. And then once you've determined using the data and those insights, it's okay, how are we going to launch this in terms of experimental design and setting? And then what are the success metrics? How are we going to know that this is actually a good feature? And then once we've launched the experiment, analyzing that, where all of the stakeholders are part of this, right? The product manager, the executive, the engineer, the data scientist, and then kind of iterating on the results and deciding what the decision is. So having actually a process that the whole team or the company abides by really helps in having this collaboration where it's clear what everyone is doing and what's the process by which we use data to develop and to innovate. And then finally culture, I think that's such an important part and that really needs to be sort of bottoms up, top down, everywhere. It really needs to be a community and a culture where data is discussed and where data is expected and where decision making really is grounded on data. I fundamentally believe that any product being developed or any decision being made really should be data informed if not data driven. Right, absolutely. One of the things that I'm hearing in what you're doing is enabling some of the business users to be self-sufficient. So you're taking that feedback and that input from the business side to be able to determine what tools they need to have and how you need to enable them so that you've got your resources aligned on certain products. Yeah, just as an example, one of the things that we do, for example, is we realized over time that this isn't actually productive and how do we make ourselves scale? So we started doing data boot camps, for example. Where we'll actually train new people coming into the company on data and our self-serve tools and on how to run experiments. And so a variety of different aspects and even how to work with data scientists productively. So we actually train that. So this data boot camp really helps us to instill a data culture and it really empowers the team. So this is anybody coming in, whether they're coming in for a marketing role or a sales ops role, they get the state of boot camp. Yeah, and it's open to anyone and it typically is going to be a certain subset of those people but it really is open to anyone and we're talking about more ways of how do we scale that and maybe how we put that on LinkedIn Learning and make that more broadly accessible. So you have quite a big team. How do you keep all of the data scientists that you've got happy? What are the challenges that they face? How do you evaluate what those challenges move forward so that they have an opportunity to make an impact at LinkedIn? So part of the things are actually the things that I mentioned. So a culture of data, it's really important and when we see that this is not happening, actually addressing that. So data scientists are going to thrive in a community and a culture where data is valued and where data scientists are valued. So that's actually a really important aspect and luckily people come to us because they know that we do value data but I think that that's very important for any company and so I advise startups as well and this is one of the things that I tell people that are founding companies is you have to have a culture which values data to attract data scientists because otherwise they have other options. The other thing is having these foundations that enable them to be productive. So these tools and these systems that enable them to really do high value work and invest in the right areas. So you start graduating from doing things that are more maybe repetitive or low level and figure out how do you scale that so that you can have data scientists really efficiently using their time for things that only they can do. Right, I love that this culture is sort of grooming them. One of the things that, a couple of things I read recently, one was that, I think it was Forbes that said 2017 the best job to apply for is data scientists but from a trends perspective it's looking at by 2018 this going to be a demand so high there's not going to be enough talent. How are, what's your perspective on LinkedIn? Are you, sounds like from a foundational perspective it is a data driven company that really values data. Is that something that you see as a potential issue or you really have built a culture of such not just collaboration and innovation but education that LinkedIn is in a very good position. Yeah, well so one thing that I didn't mention in terms of the happiness factor is that it is actually a place where data scientists look for a place where they can also grow and learn and be with other like minded data scientists. So I think that's something that we strongly support. Again, for companies that people that may be viewing this and are not in such environments there are a lot of ways to do this. So keeping data scientists happy also can be facilitating meetups with data scientists from your local region and so those are ways that people share information and share techniques and share challenges even because this is a growing and involving field. And so that's having that community and one of the things that's amazing about this conference is that it's creating this community of data scientists that are all sharing successes and failures as data science is evolving. The other thing is that data science draws from so many different backgrounds. It's a broad field and there's so many different kinds of data science and even that is getting both more specialized and once more broad. So I think that part of it is also looking at different backgrounds, different educational backgrounds and figuring out how can you expand the pool of people that you're looking at that are data scientists and how do you augment what skills they may not have yet on the job or through training or through online education. So we're looking at all these ways. That's fantastic. We've heard a lot of that today. The fact that the core data science skills are still absolutely vital, but there's some other sort of softwares because you talked about sharing. Communication has come up a number of times today. It's really a key. Not only to be able to communicate, to understand and interpret the data from a creative perspective and communicate what the data say, but to your point to grow and learn and keep the data scientists happy that social skill element is quite important. So that was an interesting learning that I heard today and I'm sure you've heard many interesting things today that have inspired you as well. Yeah and that's something that creating this culture is something that even data science leaders around the world were discussing this and talking about what are the challenges and how do we evolve this field and how do we help define and help kind of groom the next generation of data scientists to be in a more stable and maybe better place than where we were and help to continue to evolve it. And so it is, yeah. Evolution is a great word. I think that that's another theme that we've heard today. And as much as I'm sure you've inspired and educated these women that are here, not just in person today, but all of the 70 cities in 25 countries that's been live streamed. Yes, it's growing, it's amazing.  I'm sure that you're probably gleaning a lot from them as well. And we're scratching the surface. Yes, absolutely. And so there are many more years to come. Exactly, yeah. Well, thank you so much for joining us on theCUBE. It's a pleasure talking to you. We wish you continued success at LinkedIn. Thank you. And we want to thank you for watching theCUBE. We've had a great day at the second annual Women in Data Science Conference at Stanford University. Join the conversation hashtag WIDS 2017. Thanks so much for watching. We'll see you next time.


Hey, we're back in this part three of our watch along of non-thon case kodoo The 22 my leon film if you haven't seen part one or part two. What are you doing here? You can head or you can go check those out. They're already on YouTube get out I'd like to see the full-on cut version though because you can only use about five to ten minutes of each part I don't have an uncut version in each part You can head over patreon uploading description below in the pinned comment and at the end of this We will obviously talk about the film and show our cut versions Let's get back into this I Was just gonna say the publicity is gonna be great Nothing helps your political campaign like an indictment That's only in America.  That's why I've reduced the number of places. I didn't take any of that work. Honestly, I didn't want to work with people like them for a day or two. With the help of the party members, the officials, the shingles, and the private sector, the government's money should be paid. That's why I'm bringing the cutlass to you. Sir, this is for you. I'll take care of it. Do you have any proof of this? Yes, sir. There's proof of this. I'll get this done one by one. The road on the other side of the road was turned into a million-seater. And it was the origin of the car that was delivered by the minister.  The minister must have been interested in this. When the road on the other side was finished, the complainants who received the money to kill Rajiv and the complainants who refused to give the road were given a repair and a cutlass. Sir, is this a case trial or a parot? It's a case of a judge like Sam, who came to Kordi for murder. Rajeev and Gangaram are going to the police station. So, Gangaram's 315 petitions and a case of torture have come to Kordi. This is a pre-flying case, sir. This is the case of a lawyer, right? Yes, sir.  He could have been killed by the police. Sam and Kordi are well aware of this. I'll tell you if you accept it. This is Kordi, right? Yes, sir. Mr. Rajeevan, who just has a primary school education, is appearing henceforth as a attorney for the trial. The bad story of this case is... Nice transition. This is Rajeevan. Wow! What did you say? Since the death and the beating are of their own, this case has been filed in the head of the judge. If Gobi is the reason for this, then you are the judge of the case. The reason you are taking me as a ghost is because you have a father who will change the fate of the family, right? You are not related to this case, right? Spreading COVID around everywhere. New judge, Basil Joseph. I was wondering where he was going to show up. I am appearing for acquit number one. In this case, the prosecution examined five witnesses, including complainant. This is not possible. It is impossible. Document number two. Since the death and the beating are of their own, this case has been filed in the head of the judge. These two cases are not related to this case, right? Sir, the case is not filed in the head of the judge. These two cases are not related to this case, right? These two cases are not related to this case, right? They are not related to this case, right? They have... They have my humble submission. Accused number one, Mr. Preyaman may be acquitted from all charges. That is all you are on. At the age of 14, there was a war. He opened a hotel. He asked me, what is the matter? If the police had asked me the reason behind the murder, I would have gone to school. No one would have asked me that. I am not interested in asking the reason behind the murder. A few days ago, in Tamil Nadu, I took a bus to Kandeyan. I was 19 years old. The check on the car next to my house was on that day. I was 24 years old. I was given an RTO report within a week. The lawyer arrested me. I closed the case. I told everyone to leave. But I was not allowed to go to Manupur. I was told that the reason behind the murder was to be the culprit. I asked them to leave That is all. The person who left the container and the load on the container was also there. My truck was there in the morning. There was no other driver. There were no windows and doors. There was time to shut doors. There was no one on the train joining them. All the people in the village were not allowed to go out. They would have to go through the gate. The cyclists in the village were not allowed to go out. They were in a hotel. They were in a police car. When the police and the people in the village were caught, 5 people were seen in the sky. They were all injured. They were unable to come to the cyclists. 3 people died.  In any case, there is a student who says that he has a handkerchief and a horse on top of his horse. That is the case. What is the reason, sir? The reason for not being able to win. The reason for not being able to win. The reason for not being able to win. For Judgment, August 11th. This is exactly when this was. The price of petrol. The main reason for the problem is to make us feel guilty. It is not possible to make us feel guilty. In the direction of the new service, K.P. Preyman, who has called us, has made us feel guilty. In the last six months, K.P. Preyman, who has called us, has made us feel guilty. In the last six months, K.P. Preyman, who has called us, has made us feel guilty. The slow drip of justice. Look at how long the case took. I love the use of their relationship in the child to show you how long this thing took. Yeah. When did this release? This was last year. Same with Jai Jai Jai Hay, the Battle of Brawls, and the Associates. I'm assuming we didn't get it in theaters here. We hardly ever do, but damn. Yeah, the satire genre is not done as much anymore, especially satire like this. There might be comedy set in terms of like right over Barbie is kind of a satire a little bit, a little stuff like that, but then like subtle drama satire, it's not done anymore as much. Hollywood really doesn't do comedies very much anymore at all, especially like they used to. There used to be a couple comedies every single year, including some satire. Yeah, there's a Brazilian filmmaker who I think it's Brazil. His film is called El Conde that's out right now. That is dramatic satire taking... Anyway, yeah, it's not common. It's not common. Basically the point I was trying to make. But that was so good on many levels. And so I say it every time, Malialum just does what they want to do and says, here, if you like it, great. It's just like they're the A24 of the great of the Indian film industry. Amen. They're just like, I hope you like it. Yep. Because I just made it. I thought it'd be a cool idea. And we're going to make what we're going to make based on its artistic quality. Yeah. And we have a vision for what we want to do that's based on artistic merit. And that's what we're doing. And it also obviously makes a lot of statements, obviously. Oh my goodness. Which most satires are supposed to. That's the thing is where the early comparison to say Napoleon Dynamite in the comedic element of it. This was about as subversive as any film can be. This thing is magnificent in its symbolism, its imaging, its use of sound, its use of space and its messaging. It is about as subversive as a film can be. Absolute sheer brilliance. Just absolutely incredible. Obviously all the messaging was really great. I was actually anticipating it not working out in the end. And like them just going with what normally happens. Like the people in power just get away because of whatever. I thought that was actually how I thought that was where it was headed. I did too. I believe Rathish who wrote and directed this is probably a big believer in truth and justice ultimately winning. And the belief in the hope that ultimately no matter how corrupt systems and people can be, truth will prevail. Justice will prevail even though it gets bogged down within the slow drip of corruption, greed, lying, bureaucracy.  Which is one of my favorite things was a couple of times the pigeons are just watching the idiocy of the human beings. And how the white one was flying through the courtroom every once in a while. Yeah. And the comparison of certain things. You know, them running out of the petrol but him also having a mango and the differentiation between the things that we've created to sustain us that are naturally all around the idiocy of that. And the constant through line of the interconnectedness of things that just don't make sense. But they do when you realize gas prices don't go up by accident. And the reason they do has nothing to do with anything other than greed and bureaucracy and the broken system. Yeah. It's just, there's so much, so much you could talk about at every level which is what happens when you see something that is extraordinarily good artistically. And I'm sure there was a thousand things that we didn't pick up on just because we're not in the culture as well. I bet there's a thousand things we, if we watched it again we probably would see and then add to it the other things that we don't get because we're not Indian. We're not Malayalam. And we've seen him in many things. He was in Take Off, he was in, you were late to the theater, the 2018 film about the floods. Yeah, I remember. But we've seen him a few times a lead guy because I was wondering because he seemed so familiar to me. Was this in consideration at all for India's submission to the Oscars last year? I don't know, it could be this year as well. I don't know if it was after October, it technically still be. Yeah, depending upon the release date, even if it was possible, this should have been or should be in consideration. Yeah, I'm not sure. But the director, say his name for me again please. Rathish Balakrishnan Bodhava. And he's the writer as well, so hats off to you. Incredible. The way he decided to film this so quirky and the long shots of just unique looking people just staring off and just letting everything, I mean Malayalam has, for a long time, we've been watching it, been great at just patience. Right. And just be like, you're going to find this funny or this is, I want to stay on the shot for a long time. They have incredible patience and what's the word, conviction about what they've decided to put on film. This was as, well this was even way more. I mean I'm thinking of a film, I'm thinking of court. Yeah. But this is basically taking court. Social satire. Wrapping it in Napoleon Dynamite and then putting a bow on it of a lot more subversiveness. That was pretty, court was pretty straightforward in its messaging. This one is, this had theatrical release, didn't it? Yeah, it definitely did.  And I think that's probably what happened. I think a lot of stuff just snuck by the censor board. Well also in the Malayalam industry they're a lot more used to this style of, But it still has to get by the censor board. That's true. But yeah, and I think it was, I don't know how it did in terms of box office. Hopefully it did well, obviously. I would hope it did. Malayalam industry is obviously very unique. They don't do like the big box office numbers usually, but their people usually always support their cinema. Yeah. Which is wonderful to see. I hope it did well. Yeah. This is the kind of film that deserves to do well. I've heard a lot about it just because, And it's also, since obviously we saw Jai Jai Jai, The Associates One, Battle of Brawls, and this. And also if I redid my list for last year's favorite films, there'd be like now six Malayalam. Yeah, no kidding. I famously said in that video, normally Malayalam is always my favorite. They didn't come out with one this year and it's just we didn't see it. We didn't see them. Because it might have been the top five. I mean, our arc came out last year and so did Gala, which in the Hindi film industry was amazing. Yeah. But man, there would have been easily the Fa Fa films that made it into the list last year as well. So that would be, if you include these four that we saw this year, the Fa Fa one that we saw last year, that would be at minimum five out of ten because I guarantee all those films would have been in last year's top ten for me. Every single one of them. And I can't tell you which one is my favorite because I love them all for so many different reasons and they're all such brilliant pieces of cinema. Like The Associates One was so incredible. Similar, not really satire, but the comedy and it was so good. Yeah. In Battle of Brawls for a different reason. Jai Jai, hey. Kind of, I mean once again, drama with comedy in serious situations. Yeah. This one, just being such a unique film, like satire is just not done anymore very much. Like it's just not. It's not. And the reason it's not done is because it's really difficult to pull off, really difficult to pull off. And you have to know the intelligence of your audience is going to understand it. The Malayalam industry is obviously very good. I think the Tamil industry probably could have done it as well. It will surprise me if both Anyarag and LJP love this film. Yeah, it would shock me in the slightest. This is film festival stuff. This is put it in a time capsule. This is art holding the mirror up to society and blisteringly lambasting it. Yeah, I love how they kept new things just being introduced and like, no year to blame, no year to blame, no year to blame. But also I loved like obviously the lead performances of he did a great job. Kon, I say his name. It's a hard one for me. Konchakoboban. And then I believe this is. Yeah. Girl, right? Yes. Gayathri, if I've mispronounced your name. Did amazing jobs. I'm very sorry. I want to honor you. You did an amazing job. The whole cast did. But I love all of this. You guys love the charge. This guy right here. Yeah. Was Rajesh? Yeah. And the other guy that I loved. Oh, he's in the Nomanari. Okay, gotcha. The other guy that we loved who was the quirky dress guy and laughed in the courtroom. Everybody did just a superlative job. Superlative. A lot of great comedy. One of the things, the best things about it was the editing style and the, just the shots they decided to go with. Like something would happen. And then the next shot would be a guy just staring at camera. And that's just funny. And then obviously the composer is Don Vincent. One of the best scores you're going to hear. This would have absolutely been included for me. If not been the choice for best score of the year. The score was, the score was, show you how good the score was. The score is so good. Like the film, you could go back and just pay attention to the score. And you would have missed things the very first or even second time that you saw it. The obvious, most famous and wonderful thing is the incorporating of the judge going dot, dot and including that.  And there were other places where sound became part of what was going on. The sound design and the score. This is a perfect example of every element of your movie telling the story. The story itself is fantastic. But every element and every discipline in this thing was telling cinematography. Everything was part of the storytelling process. Yeah, it was. And yeah, there's not really, it was... Five stars, man. Engaging the entire time. Top of the game. It was only, I think, two hours 18. But it didn't drag for me. Not at all. I was interested from the beginning. There's so many elements for reasons for that. For writing, the directing, the editing choices. I would love to talk to them because I really do think like many things in this thing that were so subtle, they were so blatantly subtle. Them sitting at the table at the PM's place with all of that stuff on the table and nobody touched any of it and conveying government waste. So many things like that throughout. The constancy of us seeing the images of Gandhi. And the nation that now is... What would Gandhi think of the nation now? And so many other things that are messaging about in that regard. You could probably watch this film five times and pick up new chunks of brilliance. This thing is a pure cut diamond that every little turn and facet of it, you'll pick up some new thing that's brilliant about the filmmaking. Absolutely incredible. Would you have a favorite of the ones we've watched this year? The Associates, the... This is it. Over Associates, over Battle of Bra's, over Jai Jai Jai Hei. Love them all. Love them all. Over Jai Jai Jai Hei. Yeah, I love them all. My favorite thing about this is how difficult it is. Let me give an example. In gymnastics, you could watch four equally magnificent floor routines. A couple of them may have been more enjoyable for you in terms of the emotion that the gymnast exuded and you're just celebrating it. And then there's the one gymnast who pulls off a couple of moves that are technically far more difficult to pull off than a couple of other gymnasts. And they may not have the flash and the pizzazz and the emotion, but they have a technicality to them that is extraordinarily difficult to successfully pull off. And everybody got 10s. Judges are going to lean toward the one that had some of the technical brilliance that the others didn't. And the subversiveness in the satire is so hard to successfully pull off. And that for me pushes this one as my favorite. Yeah, I really enjoyed it as well. I couldn't tell you which one's my favorite because all of those so far of... And they're just from last year. Every single one of them is from last year. Yeah, there's so many things in this that surprised me. It's a 10 out of 10 film. Hats off to everybody involved. Yeah, and thank you for waiting, obviously. I know people have been wanting us to get to this one for a long time. After Jai Jai, hey, this one and a couple others. Yeah, this would be one of those ones where if it had been part of the conversation, it really is, you know, you talk about the things that the Academy for the Oscars looks at when they want to accept a nation's film. And a lot of the times what they do want to see is an artist who's brave and talking about the things that they think need to be changed that are humanitarian or philanthropic and things of that nature, right? Or politic. And they're almost always done within the canopy of the dramatic. But not a lot of our satire. That's my point. What would they be able to understand it? That's why I would pound the pavement for this film if it had been in consideration for something like that and say, not only is this thing doing those kinds of messages, but the difficulty of being able to successfully pull that off in a genre that is satire is so, so rare. The most obvious and the easiest and it's not a slam because it's the most effective and it's, especially because you're telling a lot of real stories is the dramatic. It makes sense to equally pull off messaging that's getting those points across in satire is, and in a way that is really subversive without it just being hilarity. Wes Anderson does it all the time. But he in a very different way. Magnificent. Granted, if this was eligible for last year, still no other film should have been sent other than RRR because of the puppet hat. If you wanted to make an argument for a different reason, but in terms of if you just wanted to shoe in as we still say, and I still would say you should have submitted RRR and it would have been a guaranteed nomination for Indian cinema. But yeah, if that wasn't there, there was a couple from last year that I probably could have made the argument for including this one. Well, the one they submitted last year had the misfortune of being under the shadow of Triple R. And it's not its fault because of, again, that too. I would have said, you know, these two films side by side, I would have said good grief, man. This is the beautiful problem of Indian cinema when you dive deep below any of the commercial things and you find the brilliance of what's taking place with the artists who are focusing on artistry. It's magnificent. Hands off to the Malayalam industry, and everybody involved as this is always. You know, we are big fans of the Malayalam industry. But I hope you enjoyed the watch along. We obviously very much enjoyed it. If you'd like to, if you watch this on YouTube, obviously you saw a very cut up version. If you'd like to see the full uncut version, you can head over to Patreon. I'll put it in the description below in the pinned comment. And let us know what the next Malayalam film should be for review or watch along. Not every film is watch along worthy, but it doesn't mean they're not great. It's just some are just more enjoyable for the audience to watch people react to. This is a great one. Yeah, it is. This is a great one for a watch along. Very different watch along style, but yeah, it is. I agree. So let us know what the next Malayalam film should be for a watch along. And on to the next watch along.


Well good afternoon everyone, I'm Jerry Rice of the IMF. We're delighted to welcome you here today for the launch of our World Economic Outlook update. In just a second I will leave it to our economic councillor, Marie Obstfeld, to my right to introduce the wheel update as we call it. And he will be supported by the Deputy Director of the Research Department, that's Gianmaria Melesi Ferretti. But immediately I would like to introduce the Managing Director of the IMF, Madame Christine Lagarde, who will make some opening remarks on this World Economic Outlook update. Thank you Madame Lagarde. Well thank you very much Jerry, and welcome to all of you and thank you for being here with us today. This is actually the first time that the International Monetary Fund presents its midterm outlook on the occasion of the World Economic Forum. And I want to thank Claude Straub for hosting us on this occasion. It also gives us the pleasure of seeing all of you, which wouldn't be the case if we were currently in Washington. I will be very happy to introduce in a minute Maurice Obstfeld, who actually needs no introduction. And he and his team will walk us through their findings for the update of the World Economic Outlook. But I want to give you just a few words of introduction, just to give you the landscape as we see it at the moment. Global growth has been accelerating since 2016, and all signs point to a continuous strengthening of that growth this year in 2018 and next year in 2019. So this is very welcome news. And being here and having arrived to the media center in the middle of the snow, we might all think of the words by William Blake in the winter and joy. But we believe that this would be a mistake and that complacency is actually one of the risks that we should guard against. We certainly should feel encouraged by the strengthened growth, but we should not feel satisfied. Now, why is that? First of all, there are still too many people who are left out of that recovery and acceleration of growth. In fact, about one-fifth of emerging and developing countries saw their per capita income decline in 2017. Second reason why we should not feel entirely satisfied is that this is clearly a cyclical, mostly a cyclical recovery. And absent continuous reforms, the fundamental forces that had us so much worried about this new mediocre that we feared. In other words, the scars from the crisis, the low productivity, the aging population and on and on, and future potential growth. All of that will continue to weigh on medium-term prospects. Third reason why we should not be entirely satisfied, there are uncertainty in the year ahead. The long period of low interest rates has led to a build-up of potentially serious financial sector vulnerability. And we are seeing a troubling increase in debt across many countries and we need to remain watchful. Now, you will say this is the responsibility of the IMF to constantly see the potential downside risks even down the road if not in the immediate short term. And yes, it is our responsibility. It doesn't change the fact that we are quite upbeat for the immediate future. But what we are seeing in the more medium term gives us ground for worry. Now, I did say at the October annual meeting that quoting John Fitzgerald Kennedy that it's when the sun is shining that you want to repair the roof. I will not venture there today, but it's clearly when the snow stops that here they clear the roads. And the same analogy works. It's a perfect opportunity actually now for the world leaders to repair their roof. And the theme of this year's annual meeting of the World Economic Forum, creating a shared future in a fractured world, clearly demonstrates that. Let me outline three areas where I believe that the sharing has a meaning. First of all, shared growth. We think that policymakers should use these very circumstances to make the difficult structural and fiscal reforms that might not happen otherwise or that were too difficult in times of hardship. And that means taking steps to boost long term growth, paying down debt in places where it's too high and in other places investing back into the economy through infrastructure and effective social spending. Now, why is it shared, you will say, because sharing begins by mending your own turf. Second, shared opportunity. We will hear plenty about that in the course of this week. Growth, in our view, needs to be more inclusive. Not only across country, which has occurred over the course of the last few decades, but within countries. And some areas of focus in our view require training for workers that are displaced or at risk of being displaced by new technologies and globalization. We need those new opportunities for workers at risk. We need new opportunities for young people. And we need new opportunities for women as well, and them being included safely in the workplace. Finally, sharing is about global responsibilities. We need robust international cooperation if we are going to tackle shared problems. And that includes fighting corruption, improving the international trading system, tackling tax evasion, addressing climate change issues, and on and on. So while we should certainly appreciate this season and the good news that we have, we should also certainly focus on the measures that are needed today for long-lasting solutions in order to have that better shared future. With that, I'm very honored to turn the floor over to Mori, who will present to you in details their findings and the update. And I will sit very diligently and listening attentively to what he has to say, and then I'll disappear. Mori, over to you. Thank you very much, managing director. Good afternoon, everyone. The honor is ours to have you introduce this press conference, which is very exceptional. So everyone should know that. This is not how we usually do it. And I'm also going to thank Jerry Rice, who's our director of communications, who will be organizing the questions, and John Maria Melezzi-Feretti, who's deputy director of our research department. And as it won't come as a surprise that my remarks will echo a number of the things the managing director has just said. As the year 2018 begins, the world economy is gathering speed. Our New World Economic Outlook update revises our forecast for the world economy's growth for both 2018 and 2019 to 3.9 percent. This is true for both years, and for both years, this is 0.2 percentage point higher than last October's forecast. And it's also 0.2 percentage point higher than our current estimate of 2017 global growth. This is very good news. But, and the IMF always has a but, political leaders and policymakers must stay mindful that the present economic momentum reflects a confluence of factors that is unlikely to last for long. The global financial crisis may seem firmly behind us, but without prompt action to address structural growth impediments, enhance the inclusiveness of growth, and build policy buffers and resilience, the next downturn will come sooner, and it will be harder to fight. Every government should be asking itself three questions today. First, how can we raise economic efficiency and output levels over the long term? Second, how can we support resilience and inclusiveness while reducing the likelihood that the current upswing ends in an abrupt slowdown or even in a new crisis? And third, how can we be sure to have the policy tools we will need to counter the next downturn? Looking first at where we are now, we at the Fund see the world economy as follows. The primary sources of GDP acceleration so far have been in Europe and Asia, with improved performance also in the U.S., Canada, and some large emerging markets, notably Brazil and Russia, both of which were actually shrinking in 2016, and also in Turkey. Much of the momentum will carry through into the near term. The recent U.S. tax legislation will contribute noticeably to U.S. growth over the next few years, largely because of the temporary, exceptional investment incentives that it offers. These short-term growth booths will have positive, albeit short-lived, output spillovers for U.S. trade partners, but will also likely widen the U.S. current account deficit, strengthen the dollar somewhat, and affect international investment flows. Trade is again growing faster than global output, driven in part by higher global investment, and commodity prices have moved up, benefiting those countries that depend on commodity exports. Even as economies return to full employment, inflation pressures remain contained and nominal wage growth remains subdued. Financial conditions are quite easy, with booming equity markets, low long-term government yields and borrowing costs, compressed corporate borrowing spreads, and attractive borrowing terms for emerging market and developing economies. How do we explain the current upturn? Well, it did not arise by chance. It began to take hold in the middle of 2016, roughly, and owes much to accommodative macroeconomic policies, which supported market sentiment and hastened natural healing processes. Monetary policy has long been and remains accommodative in the largest countries, underpinning the current easy global financial conditions. Even though the U.S. Federal Reserve continues to raise interest rates gradually, it has been cautious, having wisely responded to the turbulence of early 2016 by postponing previously expected rate hikes. The ECB has started to taper its large-scale asset purchases, which have played a critical role in reviving euro area growth, but has also signaled that interest rate increases are a more distant prospect. Moreover, fiscal policy in advanced economies has on balance shifted from contractionary to roughly neutral over the past few years, while China has provided considerable fiscal support since its growth slowed in mid-decade with important positive spillovers to its trade partners. In the U.S., of course, fiscal policy is now poised to take a markedly expansionary turn with complex effects on the world economy. Our view, however, is that the current upturn, while welcome, is unlikely to become a new normal and faces medium-term downside hazards that likely will grow over time. We see several reasons, to some extent reflected in our medium-term growth projections, to doubt the durability of the current momentum. First of all, advanced economies are leading the upswing, but once their output gaps close, they will return to longer-term growth rates that we still expect to be well below pre-crisis rates. While we project advanced economy growth of 2.3 percent in 2018, our assessment of the group's longer-term potential growth is only about two-thirds as high. Demographic change and lower productivity growth pose obvious challenges, and these call for major investments in people and research. Fuel exporters face especially bleak prospects and must find ways to diversify their economies. A second reason we think this is not a new normal is that the two biggest national economies driving current and near-term future growth are predictably headed for slower growth. China contributes the bulk of global growth and it will both cut back the fiscal stimulus of the last couple of years and, in line with the stated intentions of its authorities, reign in credit growth to strengthen its over-extended financial system. And consistent with these plans, the country's ongoing and necessary rebalancing process implies lower future growth. As for the other big driver of global growth, the United States, whatever output impact its tax cut will have on an economy so close to full employment will be paid back partially later in the form of lower growth as temporary spending incentives, notably for investment, expire, and as increasing federal debt takes a toll over time. Thirdly, as important as they have been to the recovery, easy financial conditions and fiscal support have also left the legacy of debt, government and in some cases corporate and household debt, in advanced and emerging economies alike. Inflation and interest rates, it is true, remain low for now, but a sudden rise from current levels, perhaps due to pro-cyclical policy developments, would tighten financial conditions globally and prompt markets to reevaluate debt sustainability in some cases. Elevated equity prices would also be vulnerable, raising the risk of disruptive asset price adjustments. Fourthly, despite rising growth in Europe, Asia, and North America, there is less good news in the Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa, the last area weighed down by the weakness of its larger economies. Low growth, driven in part by adverse weather effects and sometimes combined with civil strife, has sparked significant outward migrations. Improvements in some large Latin American economies are notable, but aggregate growth in the region will be weighed down this year by continuing economic collapse in Venezuela. Finally, and fifthly, even though the recovery has lifted employment and aggregate income from crisis lows, voters in many advanced economies have soured on political establishments, doubting their ability to deliver broadly shared growth in the face of tepid real wage gains, reduced labor shares in national income, and rising job polarization. A turn to more nationalistic or authoritarian governance models, however, could result in stalled economic reforms at home and a withdrawal from cross-border economic integration. Both developments would harm longer-term growth prospects to the detriment of those who have already fallen behind over the past few decades. Levels of inequality are high in emerging markets and low-income economies as well, and there too carry the seeds of eventual future disruptions unless growth can be made more inclusive. This situation creates challenges for policymakers. Perhaps the overarching risk at the moment is complacency. While the current conjuncture might appear to be a sweet spot for the global economy, prudent policymakers must look beyond the near term. No matter how tempting it is to sit back and enjoy the sunshine, policy can and should move to strengthen this recovery. Now is the time to build policy buffers, reinforce defenses against financial instability, and invest in structural reforms, productive infrastructure, and people. And I stress the people. The next recession may be closer than we think, and the ammunition with which to combat it is much more limited than a decade ago, notably because public debts are also much higher. An upswing so broad also furnishes an ideal moment to act on a range of multilateral challenges. These include countering global financial stability threats, including cyber threats, strengthening the multilateral trading system, cooperating on international tax policy including the fight against money laundering, and promoting sustainable development in low-income economies. Of especially urgent importance is to fight irreversible environmental damage, notably from climate change. With that, I'll turn it over to Jerry. Well, thank you very much, Maury. Thank you very much, Madame Lagarde. We'll now turn to your questions in the room. Just to mention, you have the WIO update, the document. We will release Maury's remarks to you, we're doing that now, and we will release Madame Lagarde's remarks to you as well. So we have a large audience here in the room, we have a very large audience online, and we'll turn to your questions if you could keep them as short as possible, and please recognize, identify yourself by name and affiliation. Thank you. Let's start here with Bloomberg. Thank you. Thank you very much. End of current from Bloomberg News. I wonder if you mentioned that the overarching risk is complacency. You mentioned we might be closer to a recession than we think. It's hard to identify one risk as the biggest, because I think all are quite worrisome and they also interact. And so I think policy makers really need to think broadly, comprehensively, and for the long term, not just over the next political cycle, which is sometimes hard for them. You know, as an example, I flag the lower long term growth rates. These are part and parcel of the sort of political dissatisfaction I think we've been seeing in many economies, particularly as the fruits of growth have been quite unequally distributed, and in some countries increasingly so. Financial stability, how we regulate the financial sector is also not disconnected with concerns about inequality. So I think pushing on one priority would probably do a disservice to the challenge that policy makers face. They really need a broad approach, one that is very comprehensive. Okay. Just maybe taking the lady in the second row here. Second row. Thank you. Alicia Contale from Alpais. You mentioned specifically Spain in the report, and you reduced the perspectives for this year because of political uncertainty, but you rise it for next year. So must I assume that you believe the political uncertainty will finish or that we will have any other stimulus of any kind? Thank you. Yeah. Well, we're certainly hopeful that the political situation and the uncertainty that it causes will diminish, and that while this is an internal matter for Spain, that within the laws of the country some way to move forward will be reached. You know, for the coming, for the current year's forecast we did do a downgrade. Now this reflects some uncertainty from the Catalonia situation coupled with some optimism because there is growth in the eurozone and this will benefit Spain, and we expect that momentum to carry over into 2019. You know, Spain is now benefiting. I mean, the growth has been above 3% for several years now. It's benefiting from past reforms. We think that pace is not quite sustainable, but we do see healthy growth for the next couple of years. I don't know if John Maria wants to add to that. No, I would just mention that the external environment is clearly helpful because we are forecasting a strong recovery in the euro area, including for 2019. So that supports Spanish exports. Thank you very much. Okay. Just moving over. Lady in the third row. Yes, ma'am. Sandra from Tencent. Two questions. First of all, China actually has been the growth engine during the 2008 financial crisis. Right now it has been 10 years from there, and you just mentioned China goes through its rebalancing process. So what will China place right now compared to 10 years ago? And the second one is, let's say this year, let's say if fat will raise rates the same pace as last year. Do you worry it's going to have more pressure on the emerging market? Thank you. Yeah. You know, China, of course, carried out a very large fiscal stimulus at the time of the crisis. This was a strong support not only for Chinese growth, but for global growth. And even though China's growth rate has come down, given its size in the world economy, given its relatively high growth rate, it is still a major source of growth. You know, there are certainly challenges which the leadership has recognized in terms of strengthening further financial regulations, strengthening further hard-budget constraints on state-owned enterprises, strengthening the relationship between local and federal budgets. So there are challenges there, but we see China as a strong driver of global growth going forward. As far as the Fed is concerned, we will expect them to look at the situation in the U.S. and make data-dependent decisions to attain their mandate, which is full employment, stable prices. I think the communication over the last couple of years has been particularly good. The adjustment has been gradual. This has not overly stressed the emerging markets, and our baseline would be for that to continue. Thank you. Okay, just swinging around on the front row, gentlemen. Hi. My name is Alec Hogg from businessnews.com. Quite a lot of the last little while to do with geopolitics. We've seen Southern Africa some dramatic changes in the political situation there. Are you reading like Goldman Sachs does, which in the weekend said that South Africa is their top emerging market for 2018. Have you worked any of that into your calculations? Yeah, I mean basically these update numbers predate what has been going on in South Africa, these very recent developments. And so we will have more of that in our spring numbers when we issue the World Economic Outlook, but we have not fully incorporated those very recent developments. I think we have to wait and see how this works out. Okay. Lady in the front row, too. Thank you. Ivana Kotosova, CNN. You mentioned that tax policies in the U.S. will have impact on growth globally, attributing about half of that upgrade to the tax policies. Do you expect the same to happen after 2022? Is the U.S. growth going to become a drug on the global growth because of the tax policies and the slowdown that you expect there? I should preface this by saying that the tax bill and its impact is quite complex and there is a lot of uncertainty around our estimates. Given that some of the features of the tax bill are explicitly temporary, we do expect there to be some payback. For example, temporary expensing of investment should give a surge of investment in the near term, but when that stops, there will be some payback of that. On the other hand, some of the features, the cut in corporate tax, the move to a territorial system, are not temporary. We also incorporate in our forecast the PAYGO provisions which would require cuts in government expenditure going forward as the deficit grows. Hard to say whether those will be adhered to or relaxed. So there's certainly some potential for the payback in U.S. growth to result in slower import growth in the U.S. which would affect trading partners. That's somewhat symmetric with what's happening in the current years, but how big those effects would be, you know, how the overall picture would look is very hard to predict. Thank you, Mark. Probably time for a couple more. Gentlemen, the second row here. Yes, sir. Thank you. It's Stephen Fiddler from the Wall Street Journal. When you talk about repairing the roof, are you also suggesting that the Eurozone nations should enact structural reforms to increase risk sharing such as deposit insurance and a common fiscal policy among them? And a quick second one is, do you see any risk, systemic risk in Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies? You know, in Europe, a number of European countries over the last few years have enacted important structural reforms. I mentioned Spain a few years back. The Jobs Act in Italy. President Macron's plans for France are quite ambitious. But it would be fair to say that a much broader push incorporating even more nations would benefit the Eurozone countries and the EU generally. Now, that's not an architectural issue. That's something every country has to do on its own. As far as the architectural issues are concerned, we certainly promote a completion of the banking union, the structures that have been created, the single supervisory mechanism, the single resolution mechanism. Our great steps forward, but more can be done. For example, in the area of deposit insurance, we also would like to see more in the way of a central fiscal capacity. So part of the project of fixing the roof is certainly to enhance and improve the architecture of the Eurozone. You know, on Bitcoin, we don't like to comment on specific cryptocurrencies. You know, from the sort of blockchain technology in general, we see possible advantages in terms of the efficiency of payment systems and inclusion. It's an interesting development. We also see that cryptocurrencies could offer risks. And it's going to be important for regulators to be watching very carefully to make sure that the risks don't materialize. Thank you very much, Maureen. Yes, lady in the back, bro. Yes, ma'am. Thank you, Helena Humphrey, Deutsche Welle. Berlin is growth in itself, not an outdated concept or measurement when we're seeing the benefits of the last cycle filter through to fewer and fewer people. Yeah. You know, I think there are two aspects of your question. One aspect is, you know, is GDP the right way to look at welfare? And there I would argue, you know, certainly no, but it's probably better than all the other ways that have been suggested. But it clearly, it clearly leaves out a lot. And to the extent we can improve our measurement of what the economy produces, both positively and negatively. The economy also produces climate damage and that is not measured in GDP, although in principle we could do that. So that's sort of one issue. The other issue is GDP is an aggregate. It is the aggregate of what a country produces. But it doesn't measure the distribution of the rewards from producing that. That is something one could do, but it would require a value judgment.  An economist have kind of struggled with this for centuries actually. This is not something that's a new idea. How do you measure overall utility? But it would require a value judgment and therefore different people would disagree about how to do it. So we think you have to keep GDP as an anchor and where it doesn't get at all of the social or welfare issues that you want to discuss, then you supplement it with other data. It's probably never going to be possible to produce one single number that, you know, somehow summarizes the happiness of the totality of people in the world. But I think GDP is a key concept and we'll keep looking at it. Thank you very much. Maybe just take the one last question here, gentlemen. Thank you. Cameron from China's Slight Further Moderation of China's Economic Outlook in 2018. We would like to know, will China continue to play a bigger role? Well, you know, China has indeed come to play a much bigger role in global governance and coordination. You know, obviously as a member of the G20, it's the IMF's third biggest shareholder. It has now entered the SDR. So, you know, there's no question that China is a major, major player. You know, as I mentioned, Chinese growth just quantitatively is incredibly important to world growth. So, it's going to be important for China to, you know, to play its role in supporting the multilateral system, judging from President Xi's comments here in Davos last year. It's very eager to do that. That will require, you know, I think, further steps from China to also open its own economy to imports and work on a range of issues. Everyone is going to have to contribute to make the multilateral system work better. And China's role is critical. Thank you very much, Mori. You know, you'll have a chance to hear more from Mori over the next day or so here in Davos and, of course, Madam Lagarde. I just want to thank you, thank him, thank John Maria, Madam Lagarde and thanks to all of you for coming along today. We'll see you in the course of the next few days.


Aaron, the offense is extremely quiet early. What was Walker doing to keep you hitless through five plus? I thought his command was really good. He was working both sides of the plate, but working that comeback pitch to the outside corner, working the slider off that. I thought we at least made it a little bit tough on him and drove his pitch count up, had some good at bats in the fifth, where we didn't end up scoring. And then obviously the sixth, where we finally broke through a little bit, but I thought command-wise he was pretty good. This team has now lost six of seven.  General Manager Brian Cashman made comments. How spoke the other day? What's it gonna take for this team to find their way? We gotta play complete games both sides of the ball. We got a pitch, catch it, and offense. I mean, that's what it's gonna take, you know? I know it's the question everyone's gotta ask. We gotta go do it, you know? Where we can talk about it till we're blue in the face. We've gotta put together complete games, especially when we're going up against good opponents. Is it confusing to you as to why this team hasn't been able to do that? It's frustrating. It's definitely frustrating, because certainly, you know what these guys are capable of, know what we're capable of, and you know, to this point, hasn't been good enough yet. Montgomery was just in there, and he had said that at this point, it's almost like he'd rather just give up line drives with the amount of soft contact that teams are essentially doing damage with. Just does that add to the frustration? He's essentially doing what he wants to do and not getting the end result. Yeah, I mean, and yeah, and not taking a... I thought the Mets had a really good approach today. You know, did a good job putting the ball in play, but yeah, I thought Manny actually threw the ball well. They made it tough on him, so he had to got in some trouble a little bit, had a little bit of a higher pitch count there for the point of the game where he's at, but he made a lot of really big pitches, and then even to knock him out of the game, think four guys reached base in a row, but it wasn't like he was getting hit too hard around the yard. So I know frustrating for him, but overall I thought he actually threw the ball well. Eric Boland, you have the next question. All right, I know it's kind of a harsh word, but given the team that you left spring training within the expectations and all of that, we've talked about since February, at the midway point of the season, is it embarrassing to be just one game on over 500? It's frustrating. We're all pissed off about it, obviously. We've set a much higher bar in there, and we haven't, to this point, lived up to that, so we've got to turn it around in a big time way if we're going to get to be the team we want to be, but it's certainly been frustrating to this point, and I know guys are upset and not okay with it. I'll never be embarrassed about what those guys put in and what we try to do on a regular basis. Proud to be associated with them, but we all understand it's got to be better. Zach Braziller, you have the next question. Go ahead. What did you see from Justin in that inning? Obviously, it's been a tough year for him. Yeah, I mean, it certainly wasn't close to the results. I mean, it was some soft contact and then a walk, which obviously is not good for all the guys to reach base on him, but so it was actually coming out all right, and it's not like he got hit overly hard. It's just obviously frustrating for him because his first time out, the stuff was definitely different than what we saw prior to him going on the IL, and I thought the same was true today. He's got more life now on the fastball. He's throwing harder, so obviously a very frustrating outing, but he's in a much better place physically than he was a few weeks ago. Go next to Greg Joyce. Aaron, how did you balance going to King Bear in a bullpen to get you through the rest of the way versus keeping him available for tomorrow? Ask it again. How did you balance just going to King Bear to get the rest of the game versus having him for tomorrow? Yeah, I mean, just having obviously his length and not wanting to at that point when we're down big, use up a bunch of guys when you know, in a double header scenario, obviously we got Garrett going, but you want to keep a number of guys available and so fairly easy decision. And just on the line up, did you consider getting an odor in there? He had some success against Walker in the past? I mean, I consider everything, so I guess I considered it, but I wasn't gonna, I was going with our guys today.