The Lisbon Meeting on Institutions and Political Economy aims at bringing together scholars who share methodologies and research topics in these two fields. The meeting is organized by Pedro Magalhães and Jaime Reis (Institute of Social Sciences, Lisbon), Susana Peralta and José Tavares (Nova School of Business and Economics).

The first edition of the Lisbon Meeting on Institutions and Political Economy will take place in Lisbon, the 8th and 9th of September 2011. The meeting consists of sessions where contributed papers are presented, and a final keynote public address with an invited speaker. We have the honor to announce that this year´s speaker will be:

• Professor Paul Collier (Oxford University)

Contributed sessions consist on the presentation of the three papers by the participants, followed by discussion. All papers will be distributed in advance. Each paper’s presentation is expected to last around 10 minutes, followed by a 40-minute period of extensive comments by the remaining panel members and the audience. This year’s session chairs are:

• Tilman Brück (Humboldt University and DIW Berlin)
• Micael Castanheira (ECARES – Université Libre de Bruxelles)
• José Tavares (Nova School of Business and Economics)
• Pedro Vicente (Trinity College Dublin and University of Oxford)

We welcome theoretical and empirical submissions in the following topics::

• Micro-level analysis of violent conflict.
• Issue biases in representative democracies. (How do governments choose which issues to address? How well do their choices match popular preferences?
• Political economy of multi-layered governments, including EU institutions, national and local governments; devolution and accountability.
• Political economy of development, including historical roots of development, democracy, corruption, natural resources, ethnic and civil conflict.