GO5 – Trust: Why it Matters and What Experiments Can Teach Us About Restoring it

Ben Ho is a behavioral economist who has been studying the economics of trust for 25 years. In addition to working for the White House under Democratic and Republican administrations, he has primarily been an academic who has taught at Cornell and Columbia, and currently serves as chair of the department of economics at Vassar College. He has published research in top journals pioneering the economics of apologies and the restoration of trust, and the book *Why Trust Matters*, which *The New Yorker* says “writes lucidly and compellingly about the foundational concept in all social science.” In this class we will talk about the history of trust from hunter-gatherers to blockchain, play experiments from the game theory of trust, and discuss practical takeaways from my research on the science of apologies and the restoration of trust.