Join us as we address the "scale-up problem" in evidence-based policy solutions at the Scaling up Social Impact Symposium. 

The promise of evidence-based policy is to identify interventions that, when delivered at scale, improve outcomes in broader society. Yet, many ideas fail to scale: although effective in smaller controlled trials, the benefits of these interventions often dissipate when the policy is rolled out to larger units or over a more extended period. Confronting this “scale-up problem” is a major issue confronting empirical social science and public policy.

The House of Governance and Public Policy (GaPP) is organizing a interdisciplinary symposium of leading public policy scholars engaged in creative solutions in this area. The aim of the symposium is to build a community of scholars and research in Sweden focused on these issues, as well as facilitate direct links with Swedish policy making and Swedish business. The Stockholm School of Economics is the leading business school in the Nordics, with a 115-year-old mission to improve Swedish competitiveness and benefit society at large, featuring deep connections with both academia worldwide and Swedish business and public policy. 

The symposium features the following two world-leading researchers as distinguished keynote speakers we propose for the symposium. 

John List is the Kenneth C. Griffin Distinguished Service Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago, where he was Chairman of the Department of Economics from 2012 to 2018. He is best known for being one of the pioneers of field experiments in economics and has also worked actively to bring these insights to industry, most recently as Chief Economist at Uber and Lyft. He has also written extensively about the science of scaling including his recent book The Voltage Effect, written for a general audience.  

Dana Suskind is Professor of Surgery and Pediatrics at the University of Chicago Medical Center (UChicago Medicine); director of UChicago Medicine's Pediatric Hearing Loss and Cochlear Implant program; and founder and co-director of the TMW Center for Early Learning + Public Health at the University of Chicago. A substantial part of her recent research has been focused on translating research insights into enduring and large-scale interventions to promote early childhood development. 

In addition, we will organize a panel discussion that brings our keynote speakers together with leading Swedish policy makers and business leaders to draw general insights for practitioners.

Program:

08.30-9.00 Welcome, registration & coffee

09.00-09.15 Opening speech by Kia Orback Pettersson, Karl-Adam Bonnier Foundation

09.15-10.00 Keynote by John List: "Scaling Social Impact" 

10.00-10.45 Keynote by Dana Suskind: "The Potential of AI in Early Childhood: Discovering and Unlocking the Key to Optimal Development" 

10.45-11.45 Coffee break

11.15.12.15 Panel discussion with policy experts

12.15-13.45 Lunch & mingle

The public symposium will be followed by an academic conference across Friday and Saturday. The academic conference is invite only. 

Register here for the symposium.