In 2018 WINIR sponsored two sessions on how to think about transaction costs in the digital age at the 15th Annual Conference of the Associazione Italiana per la Storia dell’Economia Politica (Italian Association for the History of Political Economy) held at University of Genoa in Italy.
In 2017 WINIR sponsored a session on various ongoing issues in institutional economics at the 58th Annual Conference of the Società Italiana degli Economisti (Italian Economic Association) held at University of Calabria in Italy.
In 2017 WINIR was a contributing partner and with the Witten Institute for Institutional Change (WIWa) led a session on how institutionalism can influence tomorrow’s economics at the Festival for New Economic Thinking preceding the INET Conference in Edinburgh.
WINIR YOUNG SCHOLARS PRE-CONFERENCE WORKSHOP ON TECHNOLOGY & INSTITUTIONAL CHANGE (CATANIA, ITALY, SEPTEMBER 2023) — Technological development has become a driving force in shaping and transforming societies, revolutionizing their structures, processes, and governance mechanisms. The complex dynamics between technology and institutional change is today a vital area of interdisciplinary research, involving economics, geography, law, sociology, philosophy, politics, among other disciplines.
WINIR YOUNG SCHOLARS WORKSHOP ON TECHNOLOGY & SOCIETY (ONLINE, MAY 2023) — Rapid technological progress has the power to unlock human potential while simultaneously disrupting social, political, legal, and economic processes. Institutional paradigms urge a reconsideration, to evaluate our understanding of the relationship between humans and technology/machines, and whether technology is itself an institution.
WINIR PANEL ON MEASURING INSTITUTIONS (ONLINE, MAY 2022) — The statement “institutions matter” has become almost a mantra in today’s academic and policy debate. In recent years, many studies have attempted to substantiate this claim empirically. But despite a substantial scholarly literature in economics, law, political science and sociology devoted to this topic, the question of how we can or should measure different kinds of institutions across space and time remains elusive.
WINIR PANEL ON LAW & POLITICAL ECONOMY (ONLINE, JANUARY 2022) — Law & Political Economy (LPE) is hailed as a new analytical project that situates the study of law within a broad political economy tradition, overcoming the perceived shortcomings of the economic analysis of law, in particular its tendency to abstract from power relations and focus on efficiency rather than social justice. The LPE movement began in leading US law schools but has since spread to law schools in Europe, South America and elsewhere.
WINIR PANEL ON THE GREAT ENRICHMENT (ONLINE, DECEMBER 2020) — What was more important for the Great Enrichment? Institutions or ideas? How much did the institutions associated with the financial and commercial revolutions matter? And how much did the grand ideas associated with liberalism matter? These are some of the most important, and indeed some of the most difficult, questions that institutionalists and historians must contend with.
WINIR WORKSHOP ON REGULATION & THE COMMON GOOD (SHEFFIELD, UK, OCTOBER 2023) — For better or for worse, in a range of policy areas, justifications for regulation are framed in the language of market failure or its counterpart government failure. By contrast, the point of departure of much socio-legal scholarship is the recognition that societal issues cannot be reduced to this dichotomy.
WINIR WORKSHOP ON POLYCENTRICITY, MARKETS & FIRMS (ONLINE, DECEMBER 2021) — Markets have been associated with polycentricity since Michael Polanyi formulated the concept, and this connection was at the heart of the Bloomington School’s analysis of competition in public service industries. Despite this long history, markets have received surprisingly limited attention by scholars of polycentricity during its renaissance over the past 20 years. And in the course of this renaissance, very little attention has focused on firms and other kinds of corporate entities.