2014 Nobel Laureate in Economics, Dr. Jean Marcel Tirole, visited Asia University (AU) and gave a speech on campus on Oct. 20. Encouraging the audience of young students, he said that with the advent of the 21th century, young people can be well educated as long as they work hard; through education, they can learn methods of adaptation to the fast-changing environment; and keys to success include not only IQ and education, but also hospitability.

It is the 6th year for AU to hold the “Nobel Laureate Forum.” The teachers and students have gained precious experiences and international perspectives from the 14 Nobel scholars who visited AU in the past. In addition to the faculty members and students of AU itself, 500 students from the senior high school alliances of AU, including Changhua Girls' Senior High School, National Taichung Senior High School, National Taichung Girls’ Senior High School, etc., were also invited this year to participate in the forum and to learn from the master closely. This forum was jointly chaired by Economics Daily News Director Su-Juan Huang and AU President Jing-Pha Tsai.

In a dialogue with AU President Jing-Pha Tsai, President of National Taipei University Chih-Chin Ho, Managing Director of the Bellwether International Group Christina Y. Liu, and a Professor of the Dept. of Finance at National Chung Hsing University Jhih-Yi Ji, Nobel Laureate Dr. Tirole shared his own views of the global trends in economy with the audience.

Giving a speech entitled “The Market Failure and Government Regulations,” Dr. Tirole discussed on the topics of competition and monopoly in economics. He said that competition brings forth three merits: lower costs for consumers, stimulation of innovation, and prevention from deterioration, while monopoly enterprises offer services of poor efficiency and poor quality. In addition, Dr. Tirole montioned that economists have studied many types of control measure on monopoly enterprises, like antitrust regulations, but the greatest difficulty in this aspect is the lack of information: if the authorities have less information than the enterprises, then they cannot conduct reasonable and effective measures to counteract monoply.

Dr. Tirole proposed a question: “What do you think about the development mechanism of Intellectual Property Rights?” He answered it himself by pointing out that many countries grant patents, but to use patents people have to pay royalties which might hinder product development. To solve this difficulty, Dr. Tirole mentioned the concept of patent pool. In patent laws, a patent pool is a consortium of at least two companies agreeing to cross-license patents relating to a particular technology. The creation of a patent pool can save patentees and licensees time and money, and, in case of needing blocking patents, it may also be the only reasonable method for making the invention available to the public. “But such a scheme might create monopoly as well, and economists must provide relevant information to the patent-granting authority to establish corresponding policies,” said Dr. Tirole.

A PhD student Aini coming from Indonesia of the College of Management at AU asked a question, “What do you think about the future economic situation of the world?” Dr. Tirole responded by saying that the answer is related to the reform in the future of the world, including trends of immigration, digitalization, etc., and the tempo of economic development will be faster and faster. He encouraged the audience to be more adaptive in daily life to face this fast-changing world trend.

A manager of BES Engineering Corporation, Hui-Ting Lin, asked another question: “Should the government levy taxes on or offer subsidies to green buildings while the construction industry is planting more trees to cut carbon emissions today?” Dr. Tirole answered that the carbon price should be decided globally; however, the price each individual is willing to pay is different, and so there needs a reasonable estimation of the carbon price in the near future.

A student from Changhua Girls' Senior High School asked a third question: “What would you suggest me to do if I decide to learn economics in the future?” “A success economist should think in an economic way, have a good mathematics background, and learn to apply what is learned in class to real-world problems,” said Dr. Tirole, “learning economics can help us understand and solve many industrial problems.” He emphasized at last that turning the world into a better one is the first mission of an economist.