Call For Papers
26th Annual ESHET Conference
Website
The 26th Annual Conference of the European Society for the History of Economic Thought (ESHET) will take place in Liège on 1–3 June 2023. Proposals for papers or sessions on all aspects of the history of economic thought are welcome.
An abstract of about 400 words for a paper and 600 words for a session should be submitted on the conference website no later than 13 February 2023. Decisions will be notified by 31 March 2023.
Note that:
a) published papers are not eligible for submission; b) only one conference presentation is allowed per person (but more than one submission may be accepted, if involving co-authors who are also presenting); c) session proposals must conform with standard format (3 papers, 90 minutes).
Theme of the Conference
Fifteen years after the Global Financial Crisis:
Recessions and Business Cycles in the History of Economic Thought
The Global Financial Crisis and its aftermath seriously questioned the models put forward by mainstream macroeconomics to deal with business cycles. These models – labelled Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium (DSGE) – were in particular unable to account for the large, and highly persistent, drop in real activity which characterized the Great Recession. The first response to this challenge was to incorporate significant financial frictions into otherwise standard DSGE models. Some macroeconomists, however, called for a more significant departure from the existing paradigm in order to accommodate the kind of amplifying mechanisms notably suggested by Irving Fisher and Hyman Minsky.
Before Keynes’s General Theory (1936), providing an explanation for the business cycle – and especially for its upper turning point, namely the ‘crisis phase’ – was a central concern in economics. A well-known outcome of the publication of Keynes’s book was to shift the attention of authors away from business cycle fluctuations, and toward the determination of the short-run equilibrium level of employment and income. Business cycle analysis had to wait until the seminal contributions of Lucas (1975) and Kydland and Prescott (1982) to come back to the center stage of economic research. In the meantime, the great stability characterizing the postwar period had led both economists and policymakers alike to believe that the business cycle could be eliminated thanks to well-designed monetary and fiscal policies. More recently, the so-called ‘Great Moderation’ area (spanning from 1984 to 2008) seemed to hold out the same promise. At the end of both episodes, however, the business cycle came back with a vengeance.
Special attention will be granted to proposals that aim to explore how economists have explained the business cycle phenomenon in general, and its crisis phase in particular, and the kind of policy proposals they have formulated to stabilize cyclical movements. Purely by way of example, without claiming to be exhaustive, we indicate some of the problematic areas that seem to us most directly involved in the theme of the conference:
– Are modern explanations of business cycle fluctuations radically different from those of the 1930s?
– To which extent the different crises and recessions of the last hundred years have sharpened our understanding of the business cycle phenomenon?
– According to economists, what have been the most important shocks hitting the economy? What have been the main propagation mechanisms of these shocks?
– To which extent a synthetic approach to the business cycle (such as attempted by Haberler in Prosperity and Depression 1937) has been built?
– Is DSGE modeling consistent with old explanations of business cycle fluctuations?
– What have been the main policy measures advocated to stabilize the economy?
– What was the influence of the policies conducted during the Great Depression on the policies conducted during the Great Recession?
Scientific Committee
Lionel Artige, HEC Liège
Vladimir Avtonomov, HSE University Moscow
Mauro Boianovsky, Universidade de Brasilia
Pierrick Clerc, HEC Liège
Muriel Dal Pont Legrand, Université Côte d’Azur
Michel De Vroey, UCLouvain
Pedro Garcia Duarte, INSPER Institute of Education and Research
Ivo Maes, National Bank of Belgium
Francesco Sergi, University of Paris Est Créteil
ESHET YOUNG SCHOLARS’ SEMINAR 2023
ESHET invites young scholars – persons currently enrolled in a PhD, or who have been awarded a PhD no more than two years prior to the date of the relevant ESHET conference (and regardless of age) – to submit their work to the Young Scholars Seminar to be held on the occasion of the ESHET Conference in Liège, 1 – 3 June 2023. Papers co-authored by PhD supervisors or other senior researchers are not eligible. The grants for the scholars selected to the Young Scholars Seminar are sponsored by the European Journal of the History of Economic Thought.
Up to six submissions will be selected: The travel expenses will be covered up to €300, the accommodation costs up to €80/night for three nights, and no registration fee will be charged. Moreover, the grantee scholars will be invited to the conference dinner. The authors of the selected papers will have 20 minutes each to present the paper, and a senior scholar will discuss it. Papers may be on any topic relevant to the history of economics and are not restricted to the conference theme.
ESHET encourages young scholars to participate in the conference. A one-year ESHET membership is offered to all young scholars who submit a paper. Papers that have not been selected for the grant will be considered for presentation at other ESHET 2023 conference sessions.
Candidates should e-mail a paper no longer than 9000 words to Professors CATHERINE HERFELD (catherine.herfeld@uzh.ch), MARIO CEDRINI (mario.cedrini@unito.it), and PIERRICK CLERC (pierrick.clerc@uliege.be) by 13 February 2023.
Please include documentation of your (and your co-authors) position vis-à-vis your PhD and indicate in the subject of your e-mail: For Young Scholar Seminar.
Decisions can be expected by 31 March 2023.
Mario Cedrini