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Call for Papers: Workshop on “Economic Governance and Social Preferences” in Tilburg, September 3-4, 2015

February 5, 2015 10:29 am

The Tilburg Law and Economics Center (TILEC) organizes a two-day Workshop on “Economic Governance and Social Preferences” at Tilburg University, the Netherlands, on September 3 and 4, 2015. We aim to assemble scholars from several disciplines studying economic governance institutions with particular regard to the impact of the type of preferences held by the involved parties: standard vs. social; reciprocal vs. independent; heterogeneous vs. homogenous; to name just a few dimensions of distinction.

Keynote Speakers:

  • Roland Bénabou (Princeton University)
  • Simon Gächter (University of Nottingham)
  • Avner Greif (Stanford University)
  • Mark Ramseyer (Harvard University)

The submission deadline for papers is April 12th, 2015. More details are available in the PDF document:   pdf

 

ISNIE conference Call for Papers deadline January 30th, 2015

January 15, 2015 9:18 am

On June 18-20, 2015, the next annual meeting of ISNIE (International Society for New Institutional Economics, soon to be renamed in: Society for Institutional and Organizational Economics) will be held at Harvard Law School.  It usually attracts a very interesting, interdisciplinary crowd of people who apply various methodologies to the study of institutions and organizations. Maybe half of the participants are economists, the other half consists of legal scholars, management scholars, political scientists, anthropologists, sociologists, historians, classics scholars, etc.

The call for papers mentions a submission deadline of January 30th, 2015.

 

 

 

 

Professional associations: the good, the bad, …

December 1, 2014 3:03 pm

Trade associations, business associations, professional clubs, trade unions, chambers of commerce, academic societies, industry trade groups, standard setting organizations, and medieval guilds are all shapes of the same generic organizational form, called an association. Given the broad list of exemplary organizations, it may not be surprising that the existence of associations could be documented all over the world throughout the last 1000 years. Researchers from different backgrounds are highly divided, however, whether the existence of such private organizations, which are designed to promote the common interests of their members (and not the interests of non-members), are positive or negative for the economy and overall welfare in net terms.
In “Business Associations, Welfare, and Endogenous Institutions,” Maria Larrain and Jens Prüfer construct a model to study precisely this question. They provide a testable answer, which is supported by existing evidence, and identify characteristics under which (and why and for whom) the net welfare effects of associations may be positive or negative.

New working paper on economic governance in cloud computing

November 28, 2014 9:03 am

Cloud computing technologies have a considerable potential to spur innovation and economic growth. But data put to the cloud may not be safe from being accessed by other, private and public parties. How to overcome these (currently justified) reservations and let cloud computing technologies reap their full benefits?

The EU financed Accountability for Cloud Computing project (A4Cloud), a conglomerate of computer scientists, information scientists, engineers, legal scholars, and social scientists, studies ways how to escape this dilemma. Jens Prüfer was the economist on board, and his main contribution, titled “Trusting Privacy in the Cloud,” attempts to design a mechanism that sets the incentives of everyone involved straight.

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