First Distinguished Academic Leadership Series Program, involving academic and research talks

First Distinguished Academic Leadership Series Program, involving academic and research talks, addressing students and faculty, by three distinguished academic leaders Prof. Krishna Ladha, Prof. Rani Ladha, and Prof. Subhashis Gangopadhyay, was organized on Oct 25-26, 2018, at IIHMR University, Jaipur.

Speakers at the Inaugural Session:

First Speaker was Prof. Krishna K. Ladha, who has been working as Senior Professor, Goa Institute of Management, Ph. D. in Economics from Carnegie-Mellon University, apart from PGDM from IIM Calcutta. His research interests are Economics, Politics, Law, Business, and Public Policy.

The second speaker was Dr. Rani S Ladha, who has worked as Professor in Finance at Indian Institute of Management Kozhikode, apart from two decades of experience at senior strategic positions in Financial Services at Wells Fargo, Philadelphia; JP Morgan Chase, New York; and Citicorp, St. Louis.

The third distinguished speaker was Prof. Subhashis Gangopadhyay, who is Managing Trustee and Research Director, India Development Foundation and Professor of Emerging Market Finance, University of Groningen, The Netherlands.

                                                                    

On Day 1, October 25, 2018, first talk was on Introduction to Game Theory by Prof. Krishna K Ladha. The focus of the session was on three ideas - Prisoner’s Dilemma game, Credible commitment, and Games of incomplete information. He said that the Prisoner's Dilemma (PD) is a common situation analyzed in game theory that can employ the Nash Equilibrium, in which both players to betray each other, leading to the worse outcome. He said that PD is an example that punishment is Individually rational but collectively irrational. He also took games King v Merchants with King having two strategies Short-term focus (Confiscate), and Long-term focus (Do not confiscate) and Merchants having the strategy of Low volume trade and high-volume trade. He said that strategies adopted by merchants are Low volume trade and Short-term focus, instead of High-volume trade and Long-term focus. He also took a game on Government vs. Institutes in which the outcome of the game is greater monitoring and short-term focus, instead of greater freedom and long-term focus. He also took the Game of Credible Commitment i.e. teaching through Bollywood song “Dil Lagaane Ki Sazaa To Na Doge Tum” of the movie Ek Rishtaa: The Bond of Love, featuring Akshay Kumar & Karishma Kapoor. He said that it is an example of Signaling game with incomplete information.

Dr. Rani S. Ladha took the next session on “Heuristics and Biases”. She said that in healthcare decision making is at various points and by various individuals - physicians, patients, clinicians. She said that Heuristics and biases lead to judgment errors and could be mitigated by greater awareness to such possibilities and by reaffirming these concepts through continued monitoring, managing workload, and education. While explaining decision making she said that Experiments have shown that individuals do not update information in a systematic manner and Information overload may lead to incorrect decisions. She said that individuals are rational in that they are adaptive and update beliefs and information, but because of cognitive and emotional reasons they may fail to do so on several occasions, in several situations’ individuals are ‘predictably irrational’. She took some experiments on Predictability of ‘irrationality’ indicating that Everything is relative, avoid information overload, Experiment on the Framing Effect, Experiment on Anchoring bias, Card Experiment and Prospect Theory in healthcare. She also explained the concept of Nudge as right information at the appropriate time. She concluded her session by the points that Medical errors are of concern and need to be addressed, Nudge could be a way to influence individuals in their decision making and always needs to be used with caution, checklists help as a way to standardize processes, but needs to be monitored and revised, as needed, depending on the context, culture, and environment and Healthcare management would benefit from understanding how people behave and operate.

Next session was taken by Prof. Shubhashis Gangopadhyay on Game Theory demonstrating how to manage effectively a game of complete information. He said that almost everything we do is an example of game theory and individuals interact with each other and because people are rational and therefore in all these interactions they depend on each other’s action. This happens in economics, polities and almost all the social sciences. He said that each player has a set of actions and the player chooses an action which maximizes its payoffs or gain. He explained the payoff matrix with two players and strategies that are used and the concept of Nash equilibrium in game theory. He also explained the prisoner’s dilemma and moral hazard in healthcare project and explained the concept through decision tree analysis using probabilistic decision-making approach. He also took the concept of Incentive compatibility.

This was followed by Faculty – Distinguished Speakers interaction and Lunch at MDP Centre. After the lunch, there was Distinguished Speakers and faculty interface depending on research interests.

On day 2, October 26, 2018, the first research talk was on “Limits to Gains from Accreditation” by Dr. Rani S. Ladha. She started her session by introducing about Healthcare scenario in India. She said that in India, healthcare accounts for only 4% of government expenditure and 1.02% of the GDP, and India ranks 130 out 189 in the 2017 Human Development Index. She said that there is severe excess demand and ‘unmet need’ of patients and given the acute shortage of health services several private institutions have emerged. She said that quality and equity have become critical issues in healthcare. She took a case of Aravind Eye Care System (AECS) and evaluated the trade-off between cost and quality. She explained the Accreditation Game and said that the If NABH adopts western standards W for all, the elite hospitals would seek accreditation whereas non-elites would not resulting in loss of opportunity to improve the quality at non-elites. She said that For non-elites, NABH can influence the quality of care by choosing a quality level such that a sizeable number of hospitals comply. She concluded that accreditation can be considered a choice of standard with a focus on the trade-off between cost and quality, keeping in mind the people. A high but costly standard may preclude many patients from availing the treatment. For eye care, the AECS model seems better suited for providing quality care along with greater equity, and accreditation standards may need to be country, economy, and context specific.

Next session was off on “Healthcare Economics” by Prof. Shubhashis Gangopadhyay. He explained a Family planning Policy Advocacy and explained that numbers make an action. He took data of unwanted children per women for four states and benchmarked for Kerala and demonstrated that the amount saved in rearing unwanted children could be justified as amount budgeted in family planning.

Next Research Talk was on “Quality, credible commitment and the liability law” by Krishna K Ladha. He took the example of implementing credible commitment on how people should cast their votes freely.  He also explained the game of Government v University. He said that commitment requires an irreversible action diminishing one’s own choice such that non-fulfillment either worsens one’s own payoff or is not permitted by a third party that has an interest in the fulfillment of the commitment and the power to enforce it. He referenced that commitment is a strategic move, a move that induces the other player to choose in one’s favor.  It constrains the other player’s choice by affecting his expectations.

Next Research Talk was on “Quality, credible commitment and the liability law” by Krishna K Ladha. He took example of implementing credible commitment on how people should cast their votes freely.  He also explained the game of Government v University. He said that commitment requires an irreversible action diminishing one’s own choice such that non-fulfillment either worsens one’s own payoff or is not permitted by a third party that has an interest in the fulfillment of the commitment and the power to enforce it. He referenced that commitment is a strategic move, a move that induces the other player to choose in one’s favor.  It constrains the other player’s choice by affecting his expectations

This was followed by Faculty – Distinguished Speakers interaction and Lunch at MDP Centre, followed by the meeting of distinguished Speakers with the Chairman and the President.