The surprise is that after 50 years, we still feel that there are missing elements in our economic and institutional constructions, which should be knowledge-based. Instead of having more and more educated and informed people in society, we see a widening knowledge and information gap. Partially this comes from economic inequalities, another increasing challenge, but partially from ignorance. The Nobel Prize this year was recently awarded to professors William Nordhaus and Paul Romer for achievements in the economics of climate change, but also for the role of technology in economic progress. For both distinctions, the Nobel Committee mentioned that research informed government policies and international cooperation are decisive for sustainable economic growth. What we see in this year’s Nobel Prize award, is the supreme recognition of the fact that knowledge and research are essential inputs for policies. On the other hand, we notice that in many cases, in everyday practice, policies ignore the findings of research and academia, not to mention that sometimes they even ignore the basic laws of economics. At the other end of the transmission mechanism, the citizens grow increasingly dissatisfied with policy-making and become detached from their leaders’ actions. The gap is then filled by extremism and populism, two evolving diseases of societies today. Moreover, despite an immense stock of knowledge that is accessible to an unprecedented number of people, we notice a lack of appetite for this knowledge, most surprisingly among younger generations.
Florin Georgescu: Challenging the status quo in management and economics Opening remarks by Mr Florin Georgescu, First Deputy Governor of the National Bank of Romania, at the Strategica International Academic Conference "Challenging the Status Quo in Management and Economics", Bucharest, 11 October 2018. * * * Distinguished guests, Ladies and Gentlemen, I am glad to welcome you at the National Bank of Romania, as we host today the 6th edition of this prestigious international conference, together with the National University of Political Studies and Public Administration, and the Romanian Academic Society of Management. The debates today will be held under a generous and timely topic: “Challenging the Status Quo in Management and Economics”. We couldn’t have a better moment to discuss challenges to the status quo than today, as we witness a whole range of economic, social and political forces pushing for change all over the world. If this change is in the sense of progress or not, that remains to be seen. I trust that your presentations and insights will shed more light on these trends. I confess that I had a look at the titles of the presentations in both days of the conference, and the word that appears most frequently in these titles is knowledge. And I realize that not less than 50 years ago, Peter Drucker, the philosopher and management guru, launched the concept of knowledge economy. Since then, economists and management specialists of all doctrines, put knowledge at the forefront of their views of the world.