Finance Needs ‘Bilinguals’ Too

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“It is, in fact, arguable that economics has had two rather different origins, both related to politics, but related in rather different ways, concerned respectively with ‘ethics’, on the one hand, and with what may be called ‘engineering’, on the other.”
Sen (1988, p.2),

In celebrating the inauguration of the Schwarzman College of Computing, MIT’s new artificial intelligence hub, Rafael Raif, the president of the prestigious university, claimed the world needs bilinguals: engineers with better education in the liberal arts, able to build ethical products and platforms and who know how to interact with civil leaders and policy makers in order to develop responsible innovations. For this reason, MIT set up an interdisciplinary faculty that researches and teaches disciplines ranging from STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) subjects to social sciences and humanities (Hao, 2019). This is an example of a concrete response to the modern problem of reductionist knowledge which sees the need for specialisation taking the form of solving complex problems through a single, and usually technical, lens.

A similar concern which to date is unresolved characterises the financial innovation process. In the aftermath of the great crisis of 2008 and the subsequent economic recession and suffering that it caused (Better Markets, 2015), there have been at least two positive consequences. 

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