Conferences

Online conference: Is Economics the Tragic Science? Critical Responses to DeMartino

DeMartino Tragic ScienceBy Mark D. White

Apologies for the short notice, but there is a free online conference this Thursday (March 30) to discuss George DeMartino's recent book, The Tragic Science:

In his most recent book, The Tragic Science (2022), Professor George DeMartino (University of Denver) argues for a harm-centric economics. Economic policy analysis recognises that most economic interventions entail harms along with benefits. But the notion of harm that economists standardly accept is, DeMartino argues, highly restricted. This limited conception of harm blinds economists to the real damage that economic policy interventions can inflict and this ought, DeMartino suggests, to encourage us to revisit the notion of harm in economic theory and practice. Join us to appraise this important idea.

See here for the conference Zoom link and conference program.


Call for papers: "Health Law as Private Law," Petrie-Flom Center (Harvard Law School), June 2023

Health_insurance_illustration_2023_400_388_70_sBy Mark D. White

We have another call for papers from a conference in which I've proudly participated in the past (2014), this one on the subject of "Health Law as Private Law" presented by the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School. and to be held in late June 2023. From the conference description:

In the pursuit of public health and universal coverage, health law scholars have long focused on the role of government, and especially the federal government. Yet, whether it is health plan coverage of reproductive services or exclusions of gender affirming care, consumer medical debt or physician practice agreements, hospital mergers or private equity acquisitions, medical negligence waivers or informed consent violations – U.S. healthcare is also substantially governed by private relations, enforced by law. Is private law – the law circumscribing the relations between individuals and institutions – a pathology or a potential fix for the U.S. health care system? In what ways might private law be used as a catalyst for health care reform, separate from federal or state initiatives?

Since at least Kenneth Arrow’s Nobel Prize-winning work in economics, we have understood that there are clear market failures in health care, including agency problems, collective action problems, and information problems. Clarity on these problems can motivate reform. At the very least, understanding the limits of the private law approaches, including those imposed by legislation, regulation, and litigation – sheds light on the potential opportunities for structural reform.

This conference seeks to explore the intersection of private law and health care, especially regarding how private law can be a tool for achieving health care reform or addressing a significant health care or public health problem. Overall, this conference and subsequent book project seek to map out the challenges and opportunities of using private law and the tools it provides to govern and shape our health care system. Contributions that explore the interaction of government initiatives and regulatory reform with private law actions in the health care space are within the scope of this project as long as the contributions focus on the private law aspects.

More details, including suggested topics and submission details (one-page abstracts due October 17, 2022), can be found at the Petrie-Flom website.


Conference announcement: Markets and Society (October 21-24, 2022)

Markets and societyBy Mark D. White

The F. A. Hayek Program for Advanced Study in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics (Mercatus Center, George Mason University) has announced an intriguing conference for next October. From the announcement:

The Markets & Society Conference aims to bring together scholars, students, and practitioners from various disciplines, ideological perspectives, and backgrounds who seek to advance inquiry, contestation, and research of consequence that are grounded in mainline political economy. This tradition posits that through emergent orders, formal and informal institutions, and the ability to learn from errors, humans can and often do find ways to live better together. Research in this tradition examines governance, resilience, and cooperation as well as the burdens, biases, and injustices that result from human interaction and institutions. Multiple disciplines, methods, and strategies are needed to examine the complexities of social life, ranging from analyzing the economic, political, and social consequences of institutions; understanding and reexamining history; assessing policies that attempt to stymie or encourage particular outcomes; and examining issues of morality and justice.

See the announcement for more details—the deadline for abstracts is March 1, 2022.


Virtual Conference on "Teaching Ethics to Economists: Challenges & Benefits"

By Jonathan B. Wight

Conference Dates: October 21-22, 2021

Virtual Conference

LSBU Business School
&
London Centre for Business and Entrepreneurship Research

During the last 30 years, the conversation between economic theory and ethics has been restarted, after a period of interruption, generated by the positivist era in economics. We cannot ignore, in this revival, the role of the financial crisis, gender and racial inequality and now the divisions revealed by the unequal impacts of the pandemic. An important contribution has been the call for a professional economic ethics led by DeMartino (2011) and DeMartino and McCloskey (2016).

More recently, Dolfsma and Negru (2019) challenge the idea that ethics has no place in economics. Building on their ideas we ask: Is ethics important for the study of the economy and, if so, how should it be taught?

This two day conference will be of interest to lecturers and students in economics and business - and anyone with an interest in the future of the economics curriculum.

Link for the event & registration: 
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/teaching-ethics-to-economists-challenges-benefits-tickets-170298187463 


Programme

Day One: Thursday 21 October

9.45am - Virtual housekeeping & Zoom functionality - Neil Hudson-Basing, Corporate Events Manager, LSBU

9.55am - Welcome Craig Duckworth, LSBU Business School, UK

10am - Introduction to the day. Economics and Ethics - what is the agenda?

10.30am - Revisiting the analytical relationship of Ethics and Economics María Isabel Encinar & Félix-Fernando Muñoz, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Spain

11.15am - Theoretical and ethical reductionism and the neglect of subjectivity in economics and economic education - Giancarlo Ianulardo, University of Exeter, UK

12pm - Lunch break

12.30pm - Keeping alive non-individualistic ethics in political economy: a review of concepts from Aquinas to Habermas Stefano Solari, University of Padua, Italy

1.15pm - Racism, the economy and ethics: where does it all begin? - Paolo Ramazzotti, University of Macerata, Italy

2pm - Teaching economic harm to economists - George DeMartino, University of Denver, USA

2.45pm - Comfort break

3pm - The fate of moral philosophy in the age of economic scientism: ethics and welfare economics in mainline economics - Peter Boettke, George Mason University, USA

3.45pm - Plenary: Reflections

4pm - End of Day One

______________________________________________________________________

Day Two: Friday 22 October

9.45am - Virtual housekeeping & Zoom functionality - Neil Hudson-Basing, Corporate Events Manager, LSBU

9.55am - Welcome and intro to Day Two Craig Duckworth, LSBU Business School, UK

10am - Managerial decision making: consequences and Consequentialism - Malcolm Brady & Marta Rocchi, Dublin City University, Ireland

10.45am - Economic curricular, pluralism and the Global South Michelle Groenewald, North- West University, South Africa

11.30am - Accounting as applied ethics: teaching a discipline - Wilfred Dolfsma, Wageningen University, Netherlands

12.15pm - Lunch break

12.45pm - Purusharthas: the human pursuit of wealth and welfare. The Indian approach to ethics and economics - V P Raghavan, Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts, India

1.30pm - Economics, ethics and deliberation

  • Ioana Negru, Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu, Romania
  • Imko Meyenberg, Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge, UK
  • Craig Duckworth, LSBU Business School, UK

2.15pm - The kidney market debate: a retrospective on Becker and Elias - Jonathan Wight, University of Richmond, USA

3pm - Comfort break

3.15pm - Alfred North Whitehead on the education of the commercial class: its influence on Keynes Dennis Badeen, University of Hertfordshire, UK

4pm - Plenary: Reflections

4.15pm - End of Conference

*Times according to GMT

________________________________________________________________________________________________

This conference will be delivered virtually via Zoom. You will receive the joining instructions on the Monday before the event takes place.


Call for proposals and submissions: The first PPE Society Meeting, March 17-19, 2017

Mark D. White

From the Philosophy, Politics, and Economics (PPE) Society, an announcement and call:

We are planning our first stand-alone PPE Society Meeting for March 17-19 2017 in New Orleans.  With that event in mind we are now doing a CALL FOR PROPOSALS and SUBMISSIONS.

On the proposals side, if you have ideas for panels, or speakers, that you would like to organize, please write up the proposal, with a justification articulating its relevance to PPE, and submit it using the form below.

On the submissions side, if you have a paper you would like to present, please write up an abstract, making sure that it is anonymized, and submit it using the form below.

We have not yet set a deadline for submissions, but if you have an idea for a talk now, letting us know what it is ASAP would be tremendously helpful in our planning for this event.

The submission site can be found here.


Call for papers: 3rd International Conference Economic Philosophy (Aix-en-Provence, June 2016)

Mark D. White

Here's a upcoming conference that may be of interest (apologies for the wonky formatting) -- many more details here.

 

The 3rd International Conference Economic Philosophy will be held in Aix-en-Provence on June 15-16, 2016.

It is organized by GREQAMin collaboration with the Philosophy-Economics Network, theInternational Network for Economic Method (INEM) and the Charles Gide Association for study of Economic Thought.

The focus of this international conference is “The economic agent and its representation(s). We support all contributors working on this topic to submit papers relevant to the theme. Other contributions from economic philosophy are welcome.

The program will consist of both contributed papers and keynote lectures given by:

-         Daniel Hausman, University of Wisconsin-Madison

-         Cristina Bicchieri, University of Pennsylvania

-         John B. Davis, Marquette University and Amsterdam University

The full call for papers is available here.

 

Important dates

February 28: Deadline for submissions (thematic sessions only)
March 15: Deadline for submissions (regular sessions)
April 15: Notification to authors

Until May 2: Registration

May 15Full paper submission deadline
June 15-16: Conference

 For more details, submission and registration, please visit the conference website http://ecophilo.greqam.fr

 

We look forward to meeting you in Aix,
 
The Conference organizing and scientific committees

(Apologies for cross-posting)

 

Call for abstracts: Conference, "Economics and Psychology in Historical Perspective"

Mark D. White

Conference call for contributions

Economics and psychology in historical perspective

(from 18th century to the present)

Paris, December 17th - December 19th 2014

Organized by Mikaël Cozic (UPEC, IUF & IHPST, France) and Jean-Sébastien Lenfant (U. Lille 1, France)

 

IMPORTANT DATES:

Notification of interest: June 10th 2014

Deadline for abstract:  July 10th 2014

Notification of acceptance: August 31th 2014

Full paper: December 1st 2014

 

SCIENTIFIC COMMITTEE:

Erik Angner (George Mason university, USA), Richard Arena (Université de Nice Sophia-Antipolis), Laurie Bréban (Université Paris 8, France), Luigino Bruni (Università Lumsa a Roma, Italy), Annie L. Cot (Université Paris 1, France), Agnès Festré (Université de Picardie Jules Verne, France), Till Grüne Yanoff (Royal Institute of Technology, KTH, Sweden), Alessandro Innocenti (Università di Siena, Italy), Ivan Moscati (Insubria University, Italy), Annika Wallin (Lunds Universitet, Sweden).

CONFIRMED INVITED SPEAKERS:

Philippe MONGIN (CNRS & HEC Paris, France), Floris HEUKELOM (U. Nijmegen, Netherdlands), Robert SUGDEN (University of East Anglia, United Kingdom).

CALL FOR CONTRIBUTIONS

“Psychology is evidently at the basis of political economy and, in general, of all the social sciences. A day will come when we will be able to deduce the laws of the social science from the principles of psychology” (Pareto, Manual of Political Economy, 1909, II, §1)

Neoclassical economics was built upon a theory of rational behavior that pretended to be independent from psychological foundations. Actually, Pareto, who has been instrumental in laying the foundations of modern utility and rational choice theory, uphold that economics and psychology needed to develop separately and that the hopes for reconciling psychology, economics and sociology in the social sciences “still remain some way off”.

Over thirty years or so, an important part of economics has been oriented towards realizing Pareto’s prophecy that a day would come when economics and psychology would benefit from reconciling each others, opening the way for a better understanding of individual and collective behaviors. This reconciliation comes after a period of time during which economics has developed its tools and principles away from psychology (or so the standard narrative argues), on the mere assumption that rational behavior could be described satisfactorily with a well-behaved utility function. For many economists, the offspring of this collective effort is called “behavioral economics”, and it is sometimes viewed a new paradigm in economics, providing tools and principles that may be applied to different fields of economic inquiry (finance, development economics, game theory, etc.).

Basics of behavioral economics are now part of any curricula in economics. The advent of behavioral economics has often been associated with a story-telling argument about its early development in the 1970s and its establishment, focusing on three main points: 1) the legitimization of experimental methods in economics; 2) the usefulness of concepts and ideas borrowed from psychology to increase the explanatory or predictive power of the theory of rational behavior; 3) the advent of a renewed view of human behavior and hence of new ideas in normative economics.

Actually, Pareto’s opening quotation reminds us also that psychology (in different guises) has been a fundamental issue for economists even since 18th century, if only because economists have usually grounded their own theory of economics on some ideas about human nature, and especially on human desires and beliefs.

In recent years, historians of economic thought and theoreticians have shown an interest in understanding the ins and outs of the behavioral turn in economics, and more broadly, on the introduction of psychological elements in economic explanations. Some have focused on recent history, enhancing the different trends of behavioral economics. Others have dealt with the nascent of behavioral economics and the early collaboration between economists and psychologists in the 1950s. Still some others have tried to understand how the marginalist school of thought had relied on the experimental psychology of its time—namely psychophysics—and how it had progressively been expelled out of the realm of economics, at least temporarily, with Pareto and Fisher. However, those contributions have not been coordinated and we are far from having a comprehensive overview of the complex history of the relationships between economics and psychology.

The aim of this conference is to gather contributions from historians of economics and historians of psychology (including cognitive sciences), and also from historically-oriented researchers and philosophers of these disciplines. The overall ambition is to understand the way economics has dealt with psychological arguments, methods and concepts throughout history and to highlight the main debates between economists and psychologists that have fostered and are still fostering behavioral economics. It is hoped that these will pave the way for an overall vision of the history of the relationships between economics and psychology and of the methodological transformations of economics as a discipline.

The organizers wish to limit the number of contributions so that most of the conference will take place in plenary sessions. Interested contributors are asked to indicate their interest in participating to the conference to A COMPLETER. The deadline for submitting an abstract is July 10th 2014. It is hoped that the contributions to the conference will in turn lead to the publication of a comprehensive reference book with short versions of papers and to thematic issues in journals.

Below is a non-exhaustive list of topics, authors and schools of thought:

  • Psychology in economics before the marginalist revolution (Hume, Smith, Condillac, Quesnay)
  • Psychophysics, psychology and the (pre)marginalists (Gossen, Jevons, Walras, Marshall, Edgeworth, Pareto and Fisher, psychology in the Austrian tradition)
  • Psychologists, economists, and the birth and development of experimental psychology (1850-1950)
  • Psychology in the institutionalist and Keynesian schools of thought (Veblen, Mitchell, J.M Clark, Keynes, Duesenberry, Post-Keynesian school).
  • How psychologists came to study decision and choice after World War II (Edwards, Davidson, Luce, Suppes, Siegel, etc).
  • The role and importance of ‘mathematical psychology’ and of the ‘representational theory of measurement’
  • Allais’s paradox and other decision paradoxes from the point of view of economics and psychology.
  • National traditions in the development of “economic psychology” (in relation with social psychology) and early behavioral economics in the USA (Katona, Simon), France, Germany, England, Italy, etc.
  • How psychologists have been involved in the development of behavioral economics and alternative paradigms to study economic behavior (e.g. Kahneman, Tversky, Slovic, Gigerenzer)?
  • Did economics borrow concepts and laws from psychology or did they rather borrow methods?
  • What has been the influence of behavioral sciences, marketing and business studies on the development of behavioral economics?
  • What have been the effects of behavioral economics on public policy? Which role played public policy in the development of behavioral economics?
  • What have been the after effects of behavioral economics on the representation of utility and welfare? (Pigou, Boulding, Scitovsky, Easterlin, Happiness economics)
  • How has behavioral economics come into different fields of economics (finance, development economics, health economics, social choice, public economics, normative economics)?
  • The historical development of neuroeconomics and its links with psychology.
  • The role of normative considerations in the development of behavioral economics, and the links between normative and behavioral economics.


If you are interested in participating in this conference, please send a notification of interest mentioning the theme of your contribution by June 10th 2014 and an abstract of approximately 1000 words prepared for blind review by July 10th 2014. Send your abstract by email at [email protected]  with the following information:

Name and surname

Affiliation

Title of your contribution

Abstract


Call for papers: 2nd International Conference in “Economic Philosophy”

Mark D. White

 

2nd International Conference “Economic Philosophy”

Strasbourg, October Thursday 9th – Friday 10th October, 2014

ONESELF AND THE OTHER

 Deadline for abstract submissions: 31 January, 2014

 

The 2nd International Conference “Economic Philosophy” will be held at the University of Strasbourg from 9th to 10th October 2014. This conference is organized by the Bureau d’Economie Théorique et Appliquée (BETA, UMR 7522 of CNRS).

This international conference will host sessions on the theme “Oneself and the Other”, but any paper or session which addresses the Philosophy of Economics is welcome.

The Philosophy of Economics primarily considers the economic agent as a moral subject. Economics, however, has long overlooked the agent’s moral—that is to say, reasonable—dimension, to focus instead on the strictly rational. The economic agent refers to “himself” (herself) in terms of his desire and passions, yet also refers to others besides himself. For the rational economic agent, what is the nature of this relationship with the Other? And should it not be understood as undergoing a transformation once we come to consider the economic agent as a reasonable being? Through what process does the Other pass from being an instrument at the disposal of a rational agent to being an end in itself for a moral subject? In other words, how does another become “an Other”?

In the act of producing, the economic agent has friends, masters and subordinates. The acts of exchanging, sharing and borrowing all involve partners. When an economic agent consumes, through the use of goods and services, he depends on other agents of the same kind. Could we claim, then, that in each of these actions there is an encounter with the Other? And would such an encounter not imply, moreover, an acknowledgment of the Other as “my equal”, irrespective of how different they may be? Deprived of the qualities of a moral subject, is the economic agent defined by Economics in a manner sufficient to be seen as a consciousness capable of discovering something within himself, or as a subjectivity capable of experiencing the pain of envy?

Such questions, with which current research is increasingly concerned, lead us to consider the philosophical dimensions of the science of Economics—they lead us, in other words, towards a re-examination of certain fundamental notions, and to a re-reading of certain great authors. It is precisely the study of these notions and these authors which the Colloquium on the Philosophy of Economics invites you to join. Presentations could address the following themes:

- The “just” and the “good” in the economy
- The passions which constitute the economic agent, from Adam Smith to the present
- The role of emotions in economic behaviour
- Economic rationalities
- The Kantian tradition and the question of “the Other”
- Justice and institutions
- Economics and religion
- Reason and the Other
- The question of social preferences
- Evolution of individual preferences: theory and experiments
- The Other and the utilitarian tradition
- Altruism and reciprocity
- Gift and counter-gift
- …

Keynote speakers

Catherine Audard (London School of Economics)
Philippe Mongin (CNRS et HEC)

Scientific committee

Erik Angner (George Mason University, USA)
Claude d’Aspremont (Université catholique de Louvain, Belgique)
Arnaud Berthoud (CLERSE, Université de Lille 1)
Ragip Ege (BETA, Université de Strasbourg)
Ricardo Crespo (Universidad Austral, Argentine)
Rodolphe Dos Santos Ferreira (BETA, Université de Strasbourg)
Samuel Ferey (BETA, Université de Lorraine)
Claude Gamel (GREQAM, Université d’Aix-Marseille)
Jean-Sébastien Gharbi (GREQAM, Université d’Aix-Marseille)
Muriel Gilardone (CREM, Université de Caen Basse-Normandie)
Harald Hagemann (Université de Hohenheim, Allemagne)
Jimena Hurtado (Université de Los Andes, Colombie)
Herrade Igersheim (CNRS et BETA, Université de Strasbourg)
André Lapidus (Phare, Université de Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne)
Maurice Lagueux (Université de Montréal, Canada)
Pierre Livet (CEPERC, Université d’Aix-Marseille)
Patrick Mardellat (CLERSE, Science Po Lille)
Emmanuel Picavet (NOSOPHI, Université de Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne)
Claire Pignol (PHARE, Université de Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne)
Maurice Salles (CREM, Université de Caen Basse-Normandie)
Don Ross (University of Cape Town, Afrique du Sud)

Organization committee

Jean-Daniel Boyer (Culture et Sociétés en Europe, Université de Strasbourg)
Ragip Ege (BETA, Université de Strasbourg)
Samuel Ferey (BETA, Université de Lorraine)
Philippe Gillig (BETA, Université de Strasbourg)
Herrade Igersheim (CNRS et BETA, Université de Strasbourg)
Charlotte Le Chapelain (CLHDPP, Université Lyon 3)
Sylvie Rivot (BETA, Université de Haute Alsace)


Call for papers: Association for Social Economics sessions at Eastern Economic Association meetings

Mark D. White

Submissions are now open for the Association for Social Economics sessions at the 2014 Eastern Economic Association meetings, being held in Boston from March 14-16, 2014.

Individual papers and organized sessions on any topic related to social economics are welcome. As usual, proposals dealing with economics and philosophy are particularly encouraged. All whose proposals are accepted must register for the conference but do not have to pay the paper submission fee.

Please email me ([email protected]) with your proposal and any questions about the meetings by November 1. (This is slightly earlier than usual to allow any papers not accepted in the ASE sessions to be submitted to the general conference by its deadline of November 15.)