Keynotes

WINIR Keynotes are renowned scholars of institutions from different academic fields who have all contributed to the success of WINIR events. The brief bios were written at the time of the relevant conference, and have not been updated since.

The WINIR Conference on Institutions & Human Behaviour (Boston, USA, 2016) featured Daron Acemoglu, Elizabeth and James Killian Professor of Economics at MIT (USA). His research in microeconomics, macroeconomics and political economy emphasizes the role of institutions in economic development and growth. He is the author of Economic Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy (with James Robinson, Cambridge University Press, 2006) and Why Nations Fail: Origins of Power, Poverty and Prosperity (with James Robinson, Random House, 2012). Professor Acemoglu is the former editor-in-chief of Econometrica, a member of the National Academy of Sciences, a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and was awarded the American Economic Association’s John Bates Clark Medal in 2005. Professor Acemoglu is an Honorary President of WINIR.

The WINIR Symposium on Property Rights (Bristol, UK, 2016) featured Benito Arruñada, Professor of Business Organization at Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona (Spain). His research focuses on the behavioral and institutional foundations for impersonal exchange in markets and organizations. He is the author of Corporate Governance and Regulation (Alianza, 1990, in Spanish) The Economics of Audit Quality: Private Incentives and the Regulation of Audit and Non-Audit Services (Springer, 1999) and and Institutional Foundations of Impersonal Exchange: The Theory and Policy of Contractual Registries (University of Chicago Press, 2012). He is a past editor of the Journal of Institutional Economics, has served as President of the International Society for New Institutional Economics, and on the European School on New Institutional Economics.

The WINIR Conference on Polycentric Governance & the Challenges of the 21st Century (Online, 2022) featured Elizabeth Baldwin, Associate Professor at the School of Government and Public Policy at the University of Arizona (USA). Her research focuses on environmental governance and natural resource policy, with a specific emphasis on understanding how institutions, in particular legal institutions, shape interactions between governmental and non-governmental actors, including private sector and non-profit organizations, in both the US and Sub-Saharan Africa. Her work has been published widely in leading policy studies journals and essential volumes, such as Governing Complexity: Analyzing and Applying Polycentricity (edited by Andreas Thiel, William Blomquist and Dustin Garrick, Cambridge University Press, 2019).

winir-2023-keynote-eric-beinhocker The WINIR Conference on Institutional Innovation & Evolution (Catania, Italy, 2023) featured Eric Beinhocker, Professor of Public Policy Practice at the Blavatnik School of Government and the Executive Director of the Institute for New Economic Thinking at the Oxford Martin School at the University of Oxford (UK). His research uses behavioural and institutional economics, evolutionary theory and the theory of complex systems to analyse financial system stability, innovation and growth, economic inequality and environmental sustainability. He is the author of The Origin of Wealth: Evolution, Complexity and the Radical Remaking of Economics (Harvard Business School Press, 2006) and an editor of Complexity Economics: Dialogues of the Applied Complexity Network (Santa Fe Institute Press, 2019, with W. Brian Arthur. and A. Stranger). Professor Beinhocker is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.

The WINIR Conference on Institutions & Human Behaviour (Boston, USA, 2016) featured John L. Campbell, Class of 1925 Professor of Sociology at Dartmouth College (USA) and Professor of Political Economy at Copenhagen Business School (Denmark). His research spans economic and political sociology, comparative political economy, and institutional theory, and focuses on how institutions affect national political economies. He is the author of Institutional Change and Globalization (Princeton University Press, 2004) and an editor of The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Institutional Analysis (with Glenn Morgan, Colin Crouch, Ove Kaj Pedersen and Richard Whitley, Oxford University Press, 2010). His work has received a number of awards. Professor Campbell has served on the Executive Council of the Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics.

The WINIR Conference on Institutions, Development & Globalization (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 2015) featured Ricardo Crespo, Professor of Philosophy of Economics at the Universidad Austral’s IAE Business School (Argentina), and a researcher Argentina’s National Council of Scientific Research (CONICET). He is the Vice Provost for Research at Austral. Prior to joining Austral he held positions at UCEMA and Cuyo. His research deals with economic methodology, rationality, causality, Aristotle, Keynes, and the Austrian school. He is the author of A Re-Assessment of Aristotle’s Economic Thought (Routledge, 2014), Philosophy of the Economy: An Aristotelian Approach (Springer, 2013), and Theoretical and Practical Reason in Economics: Capacities and Capabilities (Springer, 2012). He is a former member of the executive editorial board of Journal of Markets and Morality, and the current Secretary of the International Network for Economic Method.

The WINIR Symposium on Corporations (Lugano, Switzerland, 2015) featured Simon Deakin, Professor of Law and Director of the Centre for Business Research at the University of Cambridge (UK). He specializes in labor law, company law, law and economics, and empirical legal studies. He is the author of The Law of the Labour Market: Industrialization, Employment and Legal Evolution (with Frank Wilkinson, Oxford University Press, 2005), Hedge Fund Activism in Japan: The Limits of Shareholder Primacy (with John Buchanan and Domininc Chai, Cambridge University Press, 2012) and an editor of Capacitas: Contract Law and the Institutional Preconditions of a Market Economy (with Alain Supiot, Hart Publishing, 2009). He is the editor of the Industrial Law Journal, a Fellow of the British Academy and a recipient of the European Corporate Governance Institute and Allen & Overy prizes.

The WINIR Conference on Polycentric Governance & the Challenges of the 21st Century (Online, 2022) featured Tine de Moor, Professor of Social Enterprise and Institutions for Collective Action at Erasmus University Rotterdam (Netherlands). Her research examines the creation, functioning and evolution of institutions for collective action from the early modern period in Europe until today. She is the author of The Dilemma of the Commoners: Understanding the Use of Common-Pool Resources in Long-Term Perspective (Cambridge University Press, 2015) and a co-editor of The Commons in a Glocal World: Global Connections and Local Responses (Routledge, 2019, with Tobias Haller, Thomas Breu, Christian Rohr and Heinzpeter Znoj). Professor de Moor is a Past President of the International Association for the Study of the Commons and a founder of the International Journal of the Commons.

The WINIR Conference on Institutions & Human Behaviour (Boston, USA, 2016) featured Margaret P. Gilbert, the Abraham I. Melden Chair in Moral Philosophy at the University of California, Irvine (USA). Her research deals with the ontology of social phenomena, in particular what she calls plural subject phenomena, as well as with ethics, and social and political philosophy. She is the author of On Social Facts (Princeton University Press, 1989), A Theory of Political Obligation: Membership, Commitment and the Bonds of Society (Oxford University Press, 2006), and more recently Joint Commitment: How We Make the Social World (Oxford University Press, 2013). Professor Gilbert is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and an Honorary President of WINIR.

The WINIR Symposium on Global Capitalism and Its National Varieties in an Era of Crisis (London, UK, 2019) featured Ian Gough, Emeritus Professor of Social Policy at the University of Bath and Visiting Professor at the London School of Economics (UK). His research focuses on human needs and well-being, social policy and climate change He is the author of A Theory of Human Need (Macmillan, 1991, with Len Doyal), Wellbeing in Developing Countries: From Theory to Research (Cambridge University Press, 2007, with Allister McGregor) and Heat, Greed and Human Need: Climate Change, Capitalism and Sustainable Wellbeing (Edward Elgar, 2017). Professor Gough was awarded the European Association for Evolutionary Political Economy’s Gunnar Myrdal Prize in 1992 and is a elected member of the Academy of Social Sciences.

The WINIR Conference on Institutions & Human Behaviour (Boston, USA, 2016) featured Henry B. Hansmann, the Oscar M. Ruebhausen Professor of Law at Yale Law School (USA). His research focuses on the law and economics of organizational ownership and design, and more specifically on nonprofit organizations, and the relationship between contract law and organizational law. He is the author of The Ownership of Enterprise (Harvard University Press, 1996) and The Anatomy of Corporate Law: A Functional and Comparative Analysis (with Reinier R. Kraakman, John Armour and Paul Davies, Oxford University Press, 2004). He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a past recipient of a John Simon Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, and a past president of the American Law and Economics Association. Professor Hansmann in an Honorary President of WINIR.

The WINIR Symposium on Property Rights (Bristol, UK, 2016) featured Gunnar Heinsohn, Emeritus Professor of Social Sciences at the University of Bremen (Germany). His research focuses among other things on the property foundations of the money, production and the economy, with important applications in economic anthropology, development studies and political economy. He is the author of Property, Interest and Money: Unsolved Enigmas of Economics (with Otto Steiger, Rowohlt, 1996, in German), Property Economics (with Otto Steiger, Metropolis, 2006, in German), and Ownership Economics: On the Foundations of Interest, Money, Markets, Business Cycles and Economic Development (with Otto Steiger, translated and edited by Frank Decker, Routledge, 2013).

The WINIR Conference on Institutions, Entrepreneurship & Shared Prosperity (Prague, Czechia, 2025) featured Magnus Henrekson, Professor of Economics and Senior Research Fellow at the Research Institute of Industrial Economics (IFN) in Stockholm, Sweden. His primary research focus is entrepreneurship economics and the institutional determinants of the business climate. He is the author of The Entrepreneurial Society: A Reform Strategy for the European Union (Springer, 2019, with Niklas Elert and Mark Sanders), the author of Unleashing Society’s Innovative Capacity – An Integrated Policy Framework (Springer, 2023, with Pontus Braunerhjelm), and the editor of Institutional Entrepreneurship (Edward Elgar, 2012, with Tino Sanandaji). He has extensive experience as an advisor, board member and lecturer in many different contexts. In June 2023 he became the government’s investigator tasked with proposing a new grading system for Swedish schools.

The WINIR Conference on Institutional Innovation & Evolution (Catania, Italy, 2023) featured Geoffrey M. Hodgson , Emeritus Professor in Management at Loughborough University London (UK). His research focuses on institutions and evolution of capitalism. He is the author of Economics and Institutions: A Manifesto for a Modern Institutional Economics (Polity, 1988), Economics and Evolution: Bringing Life Back into Economics (University of Michigan Press, 1993), How Economics Forgot History: The Problem of Historical Specificity in Social Science (Routledge, 2001), Conceptualizing Capitalism: Institutions, Evolution, Future (University of Chicago Press, 2005) and Wealth of a Nation: Institutional Foundations of English Capitalism (Princeton University Press, 2023). Professor Hodgson won the Veblen-Commons Award (2012) and the Schumpeter Prize (2014). He is a founder and former Secretary of WINIR.

The Inaugural WINIR Conference on Institutions that Change the World (Greenwich, London, UK, 2014) featured Geoffrey Ingham, Emeritus Reader in Sociology and Political Economy, and a Life Fellow at Christ’s College at the University of Cambridge (UK). His work in economic sociology and political economy focuses on the institutional nature of money and capitalism. He is the author of Capitalism Divided? The City and Industry in British Social Development (Macmillan, 1984), The Nature of Money (Polity, 2004), Concepts of Money: Interdisciplinary Perspectives from Economics, Sociology and Political Science (Edward Elgar, 2005) and Capitalism: With a New Postscript on the Financial Crisis (2nd ed., Polity, 2011). A festschrift was recently published in his honour by Jocelyn Pixley and G. C. Harcourt (eds), Financial Crises and the Nature of Capitalist Money: Mutual Developments from the Work of Geoffrey Ingham (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013).

The WINIR Symposium on Global Capitalism and Its National Varieties in an Era of Crisis (London, UK, 2019) featured Gregory Jackson is Professor of Management, Chair of Human Resource Management and Labor Politics at the Free University of Berlin (Germany) and Visiting Professor at Loughborough University London (UK). His work examines how corporate governance is influenced by diverse organizational and institutional contexts, particularly in the cases of Germany, Japan, the UK and USA. He is the editor of Corporate Governance in Japan: Institutional Change and Organizational Diversity (Oxford University Press, 2007, with Masahiko Aoki and Hideaki Miyajima) and Changing Models of Capitalism in Europe and the United States (Routledge, 2015, with Richard Deeg), He is the Editor-in-Chief of Socio-Economic Review and an Editor of the British Journal of Industrial Relations.

The WINIR Symposium on Property Rights (Bristol, UK, 2016) featured Larissa Katz, Associate Professor and Canada Research Chair in Private Law Theory at the University of Toronto (Canada). Her research focuses on moral, political and social issues relating to private law generally and property law in particular. Her work on the legal theory and philosophy of property has been published in anthologies such as Philosophical Foundations of Property Law (edited by James Penner and Henry Smith, Oxford University Press, 2013). She is Associate Editor of Law and Philosophy, and serves on the International Advisory Panel for the American Law Institute’s project on the Restatement of the Law (Fourth), Property.

The Inaugural WINIR Conference on Institutions that Change the World (Greenwich, London, UK, 2014) featured Timur Kuran, Professor of Economics and Political Science, and the Gorter Family Professor of Islamic Studies at Duke University (USA). His research focuses on social change, the evolution of preferences and institutions, and the economic and legal history of the Middle East. He is the author of Private Truths, Public Lies: The Social Consequences of Preference Falsification (Harvard University Press, 1995), Islam and Mammon: The Economic Predicaments of Islamism (Princeton University Press, 2004) and The Long Divergence: How Islamic Law Held Back the Middle East (Princeton University Press, 2011). He is the President of the Association for Analytic Learning about Islam and Muslim Societies, and sits on the Executive Committee of the International Economic Association. Professor Kuran is an Honorary President of WINIR.

JLackey The WINIR Conference on Institutional Resilience & Recovery (Pittsburgh, USA, 2024) featured Jennifer Lackey, Wayne and Elizabeth Jones Professor of Philosophy at Northwestern University (USA). Her research in social epistemology examines issues such as the duty to object, norms of credibility, the epistemology of groups, expertise, and the distribution of epistemic goods. She is the author of Learning from Words: Testimony as a Source of Knowledge (Oxford University of Press, 2008) and an editor of The Epistemology of Disagreement (Oxford University Press, 2013, with David Christensen), Essays in Collective Epistemology (Oxford University Press, 2015) and Academic Freedom (Oxford University Press, 2018). Professor Lackey is the editor-in-chief of Episteme, an editor of Philosophical Studies, and the recipient of the American Philosophical Association’s Lebowitz Prize for Philosophical Achievement and Contribution (2015).

The WINIR Symposium on the Legacy of Ludwig Lachmann (Johannesburg, South Africa, 2017) featured Richard N. Langlois, Professor of Economics at the University of Connecticut (USA) and Distinguished Professor of Economics at the University of the Witwatersrand (South Africa). His research revolves around the economics of organization, economic and business history, and Austrian economics. He is the author or editor of Economics as a Process: Essays in the New Institutional Economics (Cambridge University Press, 1986), Firms, Markets, and Economic Change: A Dynamic Theory of Business Institutions (with Paul L. Robertson, Routledge, 1995) and The Dynamics of Industrial Capitalism: Schumpeter, Chandler, and the New Economy (Routledge, 2007), which received the International Joseph A. Schumpeter Society’s Schumpeter Prize. He is an editor of the Journal of Institutional Economics and an Honorary President of WINIR.

The WINIR Conference on Institutions & the Future of Capitalism (Hong Kong, China, 2018) featured Justin Yifu Lin, Director of the Institute of New Structural Economics and Honorary Dean of the National School of Development at Peking University (China). His research deals with development economics and economic reforms in China. He is the author of Demystifying the Chinese Economy (Cambridge University Press, 2012), The Quest for Prosperity: How Developing Economies Can Take Off (Princeton University Press, 2012), New Structural Economics: A Framework for Rethinking Development Policy (World Bank, 2012), and Beating the Odds: Jump-Starting Developing Countries (with Célestin Monga, Princeton University Press, 2017). He is a former Chief Economist and Senior Vice President of the World Bank. In 2012 Professor Lin was awarded the Pushan Prize by the International Economic Association.

The WINIR Conference on Institutions & Open Societies (Utrecht, Netherlands, 2017) featured Johanna Mair, Professor for Organization, Strategy and Leadership at Hertie School (Germany). Her research shows how entrepreneurial actors create value through novel organisational and institutional arrangements. She is the author of Innovation and Scaling for Impact: How Effective Social Enterprises Do It (with Christian Seelos, Stanford University Press, 2017) and an editor of Values and Opportunities in Social Entrepreneurship (with Kai Hockerts and Jeffrey Robinson, Palgrave Macmillan, 2010). Professor Mair is Senior Research Fellow at Harvard Kennedy School, Distinguished Fellow at the Stanford Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society, the Academic Editor of the Stanford Social Innovation Review, and Vice-Chair of the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Social Innovation.

The WINIR Symposium on Corporations (Lugano, Switzerland, 2015) featured Colin Mayer, the Peter Moores Professor of Management Studies at the University of Oxford’s Saïd Business School, spe- cializing in corporate finance, corporate governance and the regulation of financial institutions. He is the author of Risk, Regulation and Investor Protection (with Julian Franks, Oxford University Press, 1989), Asset Management and Investor Protection (Oxford University Press, 2003) and Firm Commitment: Why the Corporation Is Failing Us and How to Restore Trust in It (Oxford University Press, 2013). He is a Fellow of the British Academy, the European Corporate Governance Institute, the Royal Society of Arts/ He is a founding editor of the Oxford Review of Economic Policy and a founding co-editor of the Review of Finance.

The WINIR Symposium on the Legacy of Ludwig Lachmann (Johannesburg, South Africa, 2017) featured Deirdre N. McCloskey, Distinguished Professor of Economics, History, English and Communication at the University of Illinois at Chicago (USA). Her work deals with economic theory, economic history, philosophy, rhetoric, ethics, and law. She is the author of The Rhetoric of Economics (University of Michigan Press, 1985), Knowledge and Persuasion in Economics (Cambridge University Pres, 1994), The Bourgeois Virtues: Ethics for an Age of Commerce (University of Chicago Press, 2006), Bourgeois Dignity: Why Economics Can’t Explain the Modern World (University of Chicago Press, 2010) and Bourgeois Equality: How Ideas, Not Capital or Institutions, Enriched the World (University of Chicago Press, 2016). A Fellow of the Cliometric Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, she was awarded the Hayek Lifetime Achievement Award by the Hayek Institute in Vienna.

The WINIR Conference on Institutions, Entrepreneurship & Shared Prosperity (Prague, Czechia, 2025) featured Maria Minniti, the Bantle Chair in Entrepreneurship and Public Policy, Chair, Department of Entrepreneurship and Emerging Enterprises at Syracuse University (USA). Her research interests include entrepreneurial solutions to social problems, economic growth, and the entanglement between regulations and innovation. She has published numerous articles, book chapters and monographs on entrepreneurship, economic growth, and complexity theory. Her articles have appeared in Economics Letters, the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, Journal of Business Venturing, Journal of Economic Psychology, Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, and Comparative Economics Studies. In 2024, she was named in the Top 2% of most impactful researchers in the world across all sciences.

TMylovanov The WINIR Conference on Institutional Resilience & Recovery (Pittsburgh, USA, 2024) featured Tymofiy Mylovanov, President of the Kyiv School of Economics (Ukraine) and Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Pittsburgh (USA). His research focuses on game theory, contracts, and institutional design, including as regards the governance of free speech, diverging opinions, persuasion, and censorship. He is particularly interested in how people can see the same evidence but draw opposite conclusions, becoming polarized over time. A past Associate Editor of Review of Economic Design, Professor Mylovanov was the Deputy Chairman of the Board of the National Bank of Ukraine (2016-2019) and served as the Minister of Economic Development, Trade, and Agriculture of Ukraine (2019-2020).

The WINIR Conference on Polycentric Governance & the Challenges of the 21st Century (Online, 2022) featured Harini Nagendra, Professor of Sustainability at Director of the Center for Climate Change and Sustainability at Azim Premji University in Bangalore (India). Her research examines human-nature interactions in forests and cities from the perspectives of sustainability, ecology and justice. She is the author of Nature in the City: Bengaluru in the Past, Present, and Future (Oxford University Press, 2016) and a co-editor of The Routledge Handbook of Urban Ecology (Routledge, 2021, with Ian Douglas, P M L Anderson, David Goode, Michael C. Houck, David Maddox and Puay Yok Tan). Professor Nagendra was awarded the Cozzarelli Prize by the US National Academy of Sciences in 2009 and the Elinor Ostrom Senior Scholar Award for Collective Governance of the Commons in 2013.

The WINIR Conference on Institutions for Inclusive Societies (Lund, Sweden, 2019) featured Sheilagh Ogilvie, Professor of Economic History at Cambridge University (UK) and a Fellow of the British Academy. Her work focuses on institutions and economic development, the economics of guilds, proto-industry and the growth of the state. She is the author of European Proto-Industrialization: An Introductory Handbook (Cambridge University Press, 1996, with Markus Cerman), State Corporatism and Proto-Industry: The Württemberg Black Forest, 1580-1797 (Cambridge University Press, 2009), Institutions and European Trade: Merchant Guilds, 1000-1800 (Cambridge University Press, 2011) and The European Guilds: An Economic Analysis (Princeton University Press, 2019). Professor Ogilvie is the winner of the Gyorgy Ranki Prize (1999), the Anton Gindeley Prize (2004), the René Kuczynski Prize (2004) and the Stanley Z. Pech Prize (2008).

The WINIR Symposium on Corporations (Lugano, Switzerland, 2015) featured Ugo Pagano, Professor of Economic Policy at the University of Siena (Italy). He specializes in institutional and evolutionary economics, law and economics, and bioeconomics. He is an editor of Democracy and EFficiency in the Economic Enteprise (with Robert Rowthorn, Routledge, 1994), The Evolution of Economic Diversity (with Antonio Nicita, Routledge, 2001) and Legal Orderings and Economic Institutions (with Fabrizio Cafaggi and Antonio Nicita, Routledge, 2007). He is a founder of the Italian Association of Law and Economics, a past President of the Italian Association for the Study of Comparative Economic Systems, and a former editor of Journal of Institutional Economics. In 1997 he was awarded the European Association for Evolutionary Political Economy’s Kapp Prize.

The WINIR Symposium on Corporations (Lugano, Switzerland, 2015) featured Philip Pettit, the L.S. Rockefeller University Professor of Politics and Human Values at Princeton University (US), and Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the Australian National University (Australia), specializing in moral and political philosophy, the philosophy of mind and metaphysics. He is the author of Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom and Government (Oxford University Press, 1999), Made With Words: Hobbes on Language, Mind and Politics (Princeton University Press, 2009) and Group Agency: The Possibility, Design and Status of Corporate Agents (with Christian List, Oxford University Press, 2011). He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, an honorary member of the Royal Irish Academy, a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy, and a fellow of the Australian academies in Humanities and Social Sciences.

The Inaugural WINIR Conference on Institutions that Change the World (Greenwich, London, UK, 2014) featured Katharina Pistor, the Michael I. Sovern Professor of Law at Columbia Law School (USA), Director of the School’s Center on Global Legal Transformation, and a member of the Board of Directors of the European Corporate Governance Institute. An expert on the impact of globalisation on the transformation of legal institutions in the areas of finance, property rights and transnational regulation, she leads the “Global Finance and Law Initiative” funded by the Institute for New Economic Thinking. She is the author of Law and Capitalism: What Corporate Crises Reveal About Legal Systems and Economic Development Around the World (with Curtis J. Milhaupt, University of Chicago Press, 2008). In 2012 she received the Max Planck Research Award and was awarded the Allen & Overy Law Prize for “A Legal Theory of Finance” (J. Comp. Econ.) in 2014. Professor Pistor is President of WINIR.

The WINIR Symposium on Global Capitalism and Its National Varieties in an Era of Crisis (UK, 2019) featured Jonas Pontusson, Professor of Comparative Politics at the University of Geneva (Switzerland). His work focuses on the comparative politics of inequality and redistribution, with an emphasis on labor-market dynamics and the role of trade unions. He is the author of Inequality and Prosperity: Social Europe versus Liberal America (Cornell University Press, 2006), which was awarded the American Political Science Association’s Gladys M. Kammerer Award, and an editor of Coping with Crisis: Government Reactions to the Great Recession (Russell Sage Foundation, 2012, with Nancy Bermeo). He is a member of the Editorial Boards of Socio-Economic Review and Comparative Labor Law and Policy Journal.

The WINIR Conference on Institutions & Open Societies (Utrecht, Netherlands, 2017) featured James A. Robinson, Rev. Dr. Richard L. Pearson Professor of Global Conflict Studies and University Professor at the Harris School of Public Policy at the University of Chicago (USA). His research into comparative economic and political development focuses notably on Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa. He is the author of Economic Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy (with Daron Acemoglu, Cambridge University Press, 2006) and Why Nations Fail: Origins of Power, Poverty and Prosperity (with Daron Acemoglu, Random House, 2012), and editor of Natural Experiments in History (with Jared Diamond, Harvard University Press, 2010). He is the Director of the Pearson Institute for the Study and Resolution of Global Conflicts, has served on the board of the Global Development Network and has advised the World Bank. Professor Robinson is an Honorary President of WINIR.

The WINIR Conference on Institutions, Development & Globalization (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 2015) featured Dani Rodrik, Ford Foundation Professor of International Political Economy at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government (USA). He previously held positions at Columbia and the Institute for Advanced Study. His research focuses on globalization, economic growth and development, and political economy. He is the author of The Globalization Paradox: Democracy and the Future of the World Economy (W. W. Norton, 2011), One Economics, Many Recipes; Globalization, Institutions and Economic Growth (Princeton University Press, 2007), Has Globalization Gone Too Far? (Institute for International Economics, 1997), and more recently (W. W. Norton, 2015). He is the Vice-President of the International Economic Association, and a General Editor of Global Policy. Professor Rodrik is an Honorary President of WINIR.

The WINIR Conference on Institutions for Inclusive Societies (Lund, Sweden, 2019) featured Bo Rothstein, the August Röhss Chair in Political Science at University of Gothenburg (Sweden), where he is co-founder of the Quality of Government (QoG) Institute. His work focuses on institutions, the welfare state and the quality of government. He is the author of Just Institutions Matter: The Moral and Political Logic of the Universal Welfare (Cambridge University Press, 1998), Social Traps and the Problem of Trust (Cambridge University Press, 2005), Making Sense of Corruption (Cambridge University Press, 2017, with Aiysha Varraich), The Quality of Government: Corruption, Inequality and Social Trust in International Perspective (University of Chicago Press, 2011) and a co-editor of Good Government: The Relevance of Political Science (Edward Elgar, 2012, with Sören Holmberg). Since 2012 he is a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

The WINIR Conference on Institutions & Open Societies (Utrecht, Netherlands, 2017) featured Juliet B. Schor, Professor of Sociology at Boston College (USA). Her research deals consumption, time use, and environmental sustainability. She is the author of Plenitude: The New Economics of True Wealth (Penguin, 2010), The Overspent American: Upscaling, Downshifting and the New Consumer (Basic Books, 1998) and an editor of Sustainable Lifestyles and the Quest for Plenitude: Case Studies of the New Economy (with Craig J. Thompson, Yale University Press, 2014) and The Golden Age of Capitalism: Reinterpreting the Postwar Experience (with Stephen A. Marglin, Oxford University Press, 1989). She is member of the MacArthur Foundation Connected Learning Research Network. In 2014 Professor Schor received the American Sociological Association’s award for Public Understanding of Sociology.

The Inaugural WINIR Conference on Institutions that Change the World (Greenwich, London, UK, 2014) featured Barry Smith, SUNY Distinguished Professor and Julian Park Chair of Philosophy at the State University of New York at Buffalo (USA), and Director of the National Center of Ontological Research. With groundbreaking contributions in numerous areas of theoretical and applied ontology, his research currently focuses on the application of ontology in biomedicine and biomedical informatics. He is the author and editor of over 400 works, including John Searle (Cambridge University Press, 2003), The Mystery of Capital and the Construction of Social Reality (co-edited with David Mark and Isaac Ehrlich, Open Court, 2008) and Applied Ontology: An Introduction (co-edited with Katherine Munn, Ontos, 2008). In 2002 he received the Wolfgang Paul Award of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. In 2010 he was awarded the University of Turin’s first Paolo Bozzi Prize in Ontology.

The WINIR Conference on Institutions, Entrepreneurship & Shared Prosperity (Prague, Czechia, 2025) featured Erik Stam, Full Professor of Strategy, Organization and Entrepreneurship, and former Dean of the Utrecht University School of Economics. He is a leading scholar on entrepreneurial ecosystems, and conducts research on the context and consequences of entrepreneurship more broadly. He has (co-)authored more than a hundred books, book chapters, and articles in disciplines that include economics, geography, business/management and public administration. In addition to his scientific work, he often engages with governments, start-ups and corporates on innovation and entrepreneurship. He has served many Ministries in the Netherlands, other countries, the European Commission, OECD, G20, United Nations, and the World Bank. He is on the advisory board of public and private sector entrepreneurship organizations.

The WINIR Symposium on the Legacy of Ludwig Lachmann (Johannesburg, South Africa, 2017) featured Virgil H. Storr, Senior Research Fellow and Senior Director of Academic and Student Programs at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University (USA). His research focuses on markets, community and culture, with a specific emphasis on comparative political economy and community recovery after disaster. He is the author or editor of The Political Economy of Hurricane Katrina and Community Rebound (edited with Emily Chamlee-Wright (Edward Elgar, 2010), Understanding the Culture of Markets (Routledge, 2013) and Interdisciplinary Studies of the Market Order (with Peter J. Boettke and Christopher Coyne, Rowman & Littlefield, 2017). He has served on the board of the Society for the Advancement of Austrian Economics, and is an Associate Editor of the Review of Austrian Economics and a Co-Editor of Advances in Austrian Economics.

The Inaugural WINIR Conference on Institutions that Change the World (Greenwich, London, UK, 2014) featured Kathleen Thelen, Ford Professor of Political Science at MIT (USA). A prominent contributor to the literature on institutional change and labour market institutions, she is the author of How Institutions Evolve: The Political Economy of Skills in Germany, Britain, the United States and Japan (Cambridge University Press, 2004), and co-editor of Beyond Continuity: Institutional Change in Advanced Political Economies (with Wolfgang Streeck, Oxford University Press, 2005) and Explaining Institutional Change: Ambiguity, Agency and Power (with James Mahoney, Cambridge University Press, 2010). How Institutions Evolve was awarded the American Political Science Association’s Woodrow Wilson Foundation Award in 2005 and the International Political Science Association’s Mattei Dogan Award in 2006. Professor Thelen is an Honorary President of WINIR.

The WINIR Conference on Institutions for Inclusive Societies (Lund, Sweden, 2019) featured John J. Wallis, Mancur Olson Professor of Economics at the University of Maryland (USA). His research focuses on institutions and the constitutional development and public finance of government. He is the author of Violence and Social Orders: A Conceptual Framework for Interpreting Recorded Human History(Cambridge University Press, 2009, with Douglass C. North and Barry R. Weingast) and an editor of American Economic Growth and Standards of Living Before the Civil War (University of Chicago Press, 1992, with Robert Gallman), In The Shadow of Violence: Politics Economics and the Problem of Development (Cambridge University Press, 2013, with Douglass C. North, Stephen Webb and Barry R. Weingast) and Organizations, Civil Society and the Roots of Development (University of Chicago Press, 2013, with Naomi Lamoreaux).

The WINIR Conference on Institutional Innovation & Evolution (Catania, Italy, 2023) featured David Sloan Wilson, Distinguished Professor of Biological Sciences and Anthropology at Binghampton University (USA). His research focuses on group selection and multi-selection processes, the nature of intraspecific variation, the evolution of ecological communities and human evolutionary biology. He is the author of Unto Others: The Evolution and Psychology of Unselfish Behavior (with Elliott Sober, Harvard University Press, 1999), Darwin’s Cathedral: Evolution, Religion and the Nature of Society (University of Chicago Press, 2002), Evolution for Everyone: How Darwin’s Theory Can Change the Way We Think about Our Lives (Random House, 2007) and Prosocial: Using Evolutionary Science to Build Productive, Equitable, and Collaborative Groups (Harbinger, 2019, with Paul Atkins and Steven Hayes). Professor Wilson is a co-founder of the Evolution Institute.

The WINIR Conference on Institutions & the Future of Capitalism (Hong Kong, China, 2018) featured Chenggang Xu, Professor of Economics at the Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business (China). His research focuses on institutional and organizational economics, law and finance, financial regulation, economic development and transition, and the Chinese economy. He is the author of A Different Transition Path: Ownership, Performance, and Influence of Chinese Rural Industrial Enteprises (Garland, 1995) and China’s Institution: Its Origin, Evolution and Comparison (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming). He is a board member of the Ronald Coase Institute and a past president of the Asian Law and Economics Association. He has also served as consultant for the World Bank and the IMF. Professor Xuwon the Sun Yefang Economics Prize in 2013 was a co-recipient of the China Economics Prize in 2016.

The WINIR Conference on Institutions, Development & Globalization (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 2015) featured Viviana Zelizer, the Lloyd Cotsen ’50 Professor of Sociology at Princeton University (USA). She formerly held positions at Rutgers and Columbia. Her research in economic sociology focuses on the attribution of cultural and moral meaning to the economy, consumption practices and the circuits of commerce. She is the author of Economic Lives: How Culture Shapes the Economy (Princeton University Press, 2010), The Purchase of Intimacy (Princeton University Press, 2005), The Social Meaning of Money (Basic Books, 1994), Pricing the Priceless Child: The Changing Social Value of Children (Basic Books: 1985), and Morals and Markets: The Development of Life Insurance in the United States (Columbia University Press, 1979). In 2001 she was elected the first chair of the newly created Economic Sociology section of the American Sociological Association.