Deirdre Nansenj McCloskey, the author of two dozen books and four hundred or so articles on subjects ranging from statistical theory to literary criticism, is a retired professor of economics, history, English, and communication at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Educated in economics and economic history at Harvard, she was a tenured member of the famous Chicago School of economics, 1968-1980, when it was inventing among other subjects, modern financial economics and quantitative economic history. Her early writings were on British economic history, opposed to the studies of entrepreneurship emanating from the Harvard School of Business. But after many decades she has come to understand the human creativity that made for modern economic growth, and therefore to criticize the machinery she once thought explained it. Holder of eleven honorary degrees and numerous book prizes, she taught for many years in France and Greece at the EDAMBA summer school on management theory and practice.

Reiko Aoki has been Commissioner of the Japan Fair Trade Commission since 2016. She has conducted research and published on the economics of patents, patent pools, standards, innovation and intergenerational political economy and has held academic positions at the Ohio State University, SUNY Stony Brook, University of Auckland and Hitotsubashi University. She is Professor Emeritus of Hitotsubashi University. She has served as an Executive Member of the Council for Science and Technology Policy, Japanese Cabinet Office 2009-2014, a Member of the Information and Communication Council 2014-2016 and a Member of the Science Council of Japan 2014-2016. Prior to joining the JFTC, she was Executive Vice-President (International, Gender Equality, and Intellectual Property) at Kyushu University. She received her B.S. in mathematics from the University of Tokyo, M.A. in economics from the University of Tsukuba, and PhD in economics and MS in statistics from Stanford University. She is current President of the Japanese Law and Economics Association, and an Executive Board Member of the Japanese Economic Association.