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Inside Institutions

3–5 January, 2016 | ASSA Annual Meetings, San Francisco, CA, USA

The Association for Evolutionary Economics invites proposals for individual papers and complete panels on the theme of “Inside Institutions.” We need to examine and interrogate institutions from within because institutions are not economic actors with a unitary set of interests. They are created and recreated by groups of people whose interests are sometimes harmonious and sometimes in conflict. Organizations, in particular, are critical sites for complex economic activity. Research on other forms of institutions is also welcome.

This conference theme is designed to explore these questions in order to promote the ongoing theoretical and empirical development of institutional economics, and to serve as a theoretical foundation that engages with other traditions in heterodox economics and related disciplines. Sessions are open to papers from economists and non-economists. Papers may be theoretical, empirical, or employ various research methods. Examples of possible topics include (but are not limited to) the following:

  • What can we learn from case studies inside a firm or an industry that explore how decisions are made regarding production, location, pricing, employment, wages and benefits?
  • How can we improve our understanding of the dynamics within households by analyzing the critical role of evolving social institutions (e.g., marriage, family, gender, race, ethnicity, and class)?
  • How are economic policies set, enforced, and/or undermined within governance institutions?
  • How do non-market institutions, including community organizations, volunteer work, and religious institutions, play a role in social provisioning?
  • How do institutions evolve and what forces shape this evolutionary process?
  • Given the way cumulative causation can lead to institutional rigidities, what is the role of human agency in transforming institutions?

All proposals for papers and panels reflecting the traditional and analytical perspectives represented by the Association for Evolutionary Economics will be given serious consideration. However, preference will be given to those proposals that address the theme of “Inside Institutions.”

Joint Sessions

AFEE will participate in joint sessions with the Association for Social Economics (ASE), the Union for Radical Political Economics (URPE), and the International Association for Feminist Economics (IAFFE). If you think your paper is relevant to ASE or IAFFE or URPE, let me know on your submission sheet. I will work with ASE, IAFFE, and URPE to develop these joint sessions. In all cases, a presenter must be a member of one of the associations, and preferably of both.

Full Sessions

I will accept submissions for full sessions (4 – 5 papers and discussants), using the procedure below. If I cannot accept the whole session “as is”, I may be able to place one or two papers on the program. I may also assign a 5 paper to a session with 4 papers. In your submission, please indicate whether the session must be taken “as is”, that is, a Yes or No for the entire session.

Important Dates

  • The submission deadline is April 15, 2015. No late submissions will be considered.
  • Authors will be informed whether their proposals have been accepted by the end of May 2015. Please remember that the constraints imposed by the Allied Social Science Association severely limit the number of sessions allocated to AFEE; AFEE deeply regrets the necessity to turn down many good proposals.
  • At least one of the authors of any paper for an AFEE panel must be a member of AFEE by the submission deadline. For membership information, please, visit www.afee.net or contact [email protected].

Submission Procedures

Proposals for papers, panel discussions, and full sessions of multiple papers must be electronically submitted as a MS Word file to the Program Chair, Deb Figart, at [email protected]

The instructions for submissions are is available here.

Conference Proceedings

Papers presented at the AFEE San Francisco meeting are eligible for publication in the June 2016 issue of the Journal of Economic Issues. To be considered for publication, the text of your paper cannot exceed 2,850 words, with no more than four pages (total) of double-spaced endnotes, references, tables, and figures. The deadline for submission to the JEI is December 15, 2015. JEI submission details will be provided to authors whose proposals are accepted for the conference. All criteria for the submission of papers, including deadlines, will be strictly enforced by the JEI editor, Christopher Brown. At least one of the authors of any paper must be a member of AFEE. Papers should be sent by email attachment to [email protected].

I look forward to hearing from you.

Deb Figart (Program Chair), email: [email protected]

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