Chicago Booth offers a variety of courses that delve into issues relevant to the Stigler Center’s mission and deepen student understanding of how regulatory capture, crony capitalism, and special interest groups can distort capitalism.
Stigler Center Courses
The only space of its kind in the world, Mindworks is both a working lab and an interactive discovery center for behavioral science. Mindworks showcases the work and ideas of world-renowned scientists who help advance our collective understanding of the inner workings of human behavior.
Free and open to the public, Mindworks welcomes visitors to explore its interactive exhibits and museum atmosphere, take part in engaging, hands-on research studies, earn prizes for participating, and apply insights from behavioral science to help understand and improve their lives and communities.
Mindworks is operated by the Center for Decision Research at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and is home to the CDR’s PIMCO Decision Research Laboratories.
All businesses face multiple stakeholders: shareholders, customers, employees, activists, NGOs, politicians, and regulators. Media has a major role in shaping corporate reputation for several of these. This course will provide students, as future decision-makers, with a set of tools to engage and deal with the media, and to develop communications and nonmarket strategies in a complicated world with multiple stakeholders.
Offered: Spring 2020
Instructor: Guy Rolnik
See the Course Listing: Reputation, Regulation and Communications
This lab course exposes students to live regulatory and media challenges faced by companies and provides them with a set of tools to deal with the media. It is taught in collaboration with Tusk Ventures, a venture capital company that works with growing startups to help them navigate through governmental, political, and media hurdles. Student groups will be paired with one of Tusk Ventures’ portfolio startups to create and present a regulatory or media strategic plan, while consistently engaging with the high level of ambiguity surrounding early stage companies.
Offered: Spring 2020
Instructor: Guy Rolnik
See the Course Listing: Reputation, Regulation and Communications Lab
Accounting, banking, financing, and monetary policy as we know them today are the result of three legal innovations that changed the economic and financial history of the world: fiat money (11th century in China), double entry accounting (14th century in Italy), and limited liability corporations (11th century Italy). Blockchain, virtual currencies, and smart contracts promise to trigger an equally important revolution in the 21st century. This course will walk students through the challenges and opportunities these technologies offer, as well as the regulatory problems they raise.
Offered: Winter 2020
Instructor: Luigi Zingales
See the Course Listing: The Fintech Revolution
The economic system prevailing in most of the world today differs greatly from the idealist version of free markets generally taught in economics classes. This course analyzes the role played by corporate governance, wealth inequality, regulation, the media, and the political process in general in producing these deviations. It will explain why crony capitalism prevails in most of the world and why it is becoming more entrenched in the United States. The course, which requires only basic knowledge of economics, welcomes undergraduates.
Offered: Winter 2020
Instructor: Luigi Zingales
See the Course Listing: Crony Capitalism
This course covers the critical role of stories in driving success in many real-life situations. We will gain an understanding of how our reality is composed of stories; we will establish a critical perspective on stories in the arenas of business, economics, and politics; and we will study the characteristics of successful stories and storytellers. All the while, we will practice and hone the telling of our own powerful, personal stories.
Offered: Summer 2020
Instructor: Guy Rolnik
See the Course Listing: Storytelling and Narratives in Business