This prize is directed to the enhancement of diversity in quality research by economists working on a variety of fields. The first recipient of the prize was Alan Kirman in 2010. Nominations can be made on behalf of any researcher who now or in the past has worked in some of the institutions affiliated with ASSET. Nominations should include the list of publications of the candidate, with a clear indication of the date and journal when and where they appeared indicating, in the case of Economics, the JEL field or fields each publication belongs to. They may (but need not) include a nomination statement referring to the variety and the quality of the candidate’s work in Economics and other fields. Nominations can be made by any researcher or group of researchers working in an institution belonging to ASSET, and by the candidates themselves, if they wish. Last year nominees will be taken into account unless they express their will not to be considered and provided they update their C.V. to include the abovementioned JEL fields.
Submissions have to reach the Foundation (FUE, Fortuny 37, sotabanco dcha. 28010, Madrid, Spain or juelejalde [at] gmail.com) before June 15, 2011.
The method to classify candidates according to the diversity will take into account both the h index and the number of areas in which the candidate has published as indicated by the web of science. In both cases proper weights will be assigned to the number of papers of quality as reflected by the h index and to the number of areas in which the researcher has made significant contributions.
The FUE will appoint an ad-hoc Committee of four members chaired by the President of the Board of Directors of the Foundation and three other members. Aurelia Modrego, from Universidad Carlos III, will act as Secretary of the Committee. This Committee will choose a unique prize winner among those candidates pre-selected by the President and the Secretary. The decision, not subject to appeal, will be announced by the end of september 2011.
The prize will consist of a sculpture and a substantial direct financial aid for the organization, in connection with the 2012 ASSET meeting, of a special workshop conducted by the winner of the 2011 prize, on subjects reflecting the variety and scope of his of her research interests. The winner, by accepting the prize, will also commit to help organize the meeting. He will be presented the prize during the 2011 ASSET meetings, where the general subject of the special workshop will be announced.
The FUE-Diversity Prize Committee is happy to announce its decision to award the 1rst Diversity Prize to Professor Alan Kirman.
This is to acknowledge the wide range of interests, the broad views and the quality of Professor Kirman’s research, as well as the variety of his pioneering contributions. His work covers many fields, from mathematical economics and microeconomics to macroeconomics and international trade. He has written at the highest theoretical level, while also pioneering in the detailed empirical analysis of specific markets. He has been a contributor to the hottest lines of research, while at the same time also opening new and yet largely unexplored avenues.
To elaborate on the richness and variety of Professor Kirman’s work, let us mention that: -
- He has cultivated normative economics, contributing to the theories of fairness and social choice;
- His work on the representative consumer and on the core place him among the most sophisticated contributors to the Golden Age of General equilibrium theory;
- His early work on trade and his recent one on volatility and bubbles mark his continued concern to address the world’s most pressing issues and to shed light on them from a creative angle;
- He has been active in the discussion of scientific policies in Europe and their impact on economic research;
- Finally, he has been pioneer in the incorporation to economic research of new ideas, at early times in their development: this includes his early work on learning, on networks and on the study of markets.
For all of this, we are proud to announce the concession of this diversity prize to Alan Kirman. As an addendum to the decision, we also want to say that there were other highly qualified candidates. We thank them, and the colleagues who presented their applications. Their participation made our task more difficult, but it holds the promise that this prize can continue to be awarded to high level economists for years to come. The jury recommends that all researchers who were already presented as candidates be retained as such for the next edition, in addition, of course, to any others who might be proposed. Since the decision was backed by an in-depth bibliometric study, we had a rich discussion about the objectives of the prize, the different possible meanings of diversity, the variety of methods to quantify it in terms that also give weight to quality. The Foundation intends to keep improving the methodology used to build a diversity index and hope to get inputs from the ASSET community regarding this issue. (Suggestions and comments can be emailed here)
Salvador Barberà, Claude D’Aspremont & Juan Urrutia
Aims and scope
The 13th edition of the Urrutia Elejalde Summer School focuses on the debate about the main failures behind the current big recession, as well as on the lessons that could be drawn to design potential solutions which improve the working of market economies in the future. In particular, the school aims to discuss failures and new directions related to the working of financial markets, coordination, regulation, mechanism design, pay incentives, public policies, response of policy makers to the crisis, and the state of macroeconomics (with specific reference to equilibrium/disequilibrium, flexible/ rigid adjustment and individualistic/ holistic behaviour). The regular course is structured around central topics each one presented in one or two general talks, followed by specific research papers on subjects related to the topic and by a lively debate.
Preliminary program [PDF]
Preliminary list of speakers
- Michele Boldrin (University Washington in Saint Louis)
- Jesús Fernández-Villaverde (U. Pennsylvania)
- Alan Kirman (GREQAM, U. Marseille)
- Joseph M. Ostroy (UCLA)
- John Roemer (Yale University)
- Juan F. Rubio-Ramirez (Duke University)
- Gilles Saint-Paul (Toulouse)
- Rafael Repullo (CEMFI)
Registration and grants
The organization offers a number of grants to cover registration fees and/or accommodation expenses. Applications should include a short C.V. and, in the case of graduate students, a letter of recommendation by at least one professor.
Download and fill the registration form [Word] and the application form [Word] and send them before June 15 to alumnos@sc.ehu.es
Aims and scope
The aim of the 12th edition of the school includes the debate of current trends in Welfare Economics. In particular, the school aims to discuss novel critiques and new proposals regarding individual and collective choice. The regular course is structured around central topics each one presented in one or two general talks, followed by specific research papers on subjects related to the topic and by a debate.
The schedule [PDF]
Speakers
General talks
- Walter Bossert
- Luis Corchón
- François Maniquet
- Paola Manzini
- Prasanta Pattanaik
- Ariel Rubinstein
- Ran Spiegler
- Jean Tirole
Contributed papers
- Miguel A. Ballester
- Jon X Egia, Michael Mandler
- Marco Mariotti
- Yusufcan Masatlioglu
- Andrea Mattozzi
- Kareen Rozen
- Yuval Salant
- Yves Sprumont
Aims and scope
Since 1998 the Urrutia Elejalde has annually organized a Summer School on frontier topics between philosophy, economics and other social sciences, bringing together scholars from all these fields to explore them. The aim of this year Summer School is to introduce participants to the vast research that is taking place in the area of social norms. From philosophy and psychology to evolutionary game theory and experimental economics, recent work on social norms is shedding light on why and under what circumstances people engage in pro-social behavior, and how norms may emerge, stabilize or decay.
Program [PDF] | Contributed papers + Posters [PDF]
Speakers
- Jason Alexander (LSE)
- Daniel Andler (Paris IV-ENS)
- Cristina Bicchieri (UPenn)
- Jordi Brandts (UAB)
- Pablo Brañas (Ugr)
- Cristiano Castelfranchi (ISTC- CNR)
- Jason Dana (UPenn)
- Jon Elster (Columbia+College de France)
- Herbert Gintis (Santa Fe Institute)
- Francesco Guala (Exeter)
- Dan Sperber (CNRS)
- Edna Ullmann-Margalit (The Hebrew Univ. of Jerusalem)
Contributed papers
- Ilaria Castelli
- Julia Cordero Coma
- Brice Corgnet
- Giussepe Danese
- Benoît Dubreuil
- Marco Faillo
- Brian Gunia
- Donna Harris
- Rebekka A. Klein
- Erin Krupka
- Azi Lev-On
- Angela Milano
- Ryan Muldoon
- Stefania Ottone
- Giacomo Sillari
- Alessandra Smerili
- Christian Traxler
- Erte Xiao
Lectures
Aims and scope
In a general way, the problem of macroeconomics —really, of all applied economics— is to go from non-experimental observations of the past behavior of the economy to inferences about the future behavior of the economy under alternative assumptions about the way policy is conducted. In terms of models, then, we want a model that fits historical data and that can be simulated to give reliable estimates of the effects of various policies on future behavior. But what data? And what do we mean by fit? And when can we expect that particular simulations will be reliable?” Robert E. Lucas, Models of Business Cycles (1987).
The Urrutia Elejalde Foundation wants to celebrate its tenth anniversary taking up a methodological issue that has been dormant for way too long. A part of the profession has embraced the methodology described in the quotation above and routinely uses explicit economic models to make quantitative statements about the economy and to evaluate the welfare consequences of economic policies. Yet the hard methodological questions that Robert E. Lucas asks in the last lines of the quotation have remained conspicuously unanswered in the twenty odd years that have elapsed since they were formulated.
The purpose of the X Summer School is to take up this methodological challenge and to provide some answers to these and to other related questions. We would like to continue the conversation started ten years ago in the Winter 1996 issue of the Journal of Economic Perspectives where Kydland and Prescott (1996), Sims (1996) and Hansen and Heckman (1996) discussed the design and uses of macroeconomic models. A large body of literature has been published since then and we would like to take a look at it from some distance. Which articles come closest to the best standards? How have those standards evolved? The contributions need not take the form of completed papers. More informal material such as the one required to give a forty minute lecture that will stimulate an ensuing discussion is also acceptable.
Final Program [PDF]
Speakers
- F. Kydland (U. of California at Santa Barbara)
- P. Jung (U. of Amsterdam) and K. Kuester (European Central Bank)
- C. Winter (European U. Institute)
- S. Schmitt- Grohe (Duke U.) and M. Uribe (Duke U.)
- M. Darracq-Paries (European Central Bank) and S. Moyen (U. d’Evry Val d’Essonne)
- T. Cooley (New York U.)
- C. Meghir (U. College of London)
- L. Christiano (Northwestern U.)
- R. Motto (European Central Bank) and M. Rostagno (European Central Bank)
- P. Rabanal (La Caixa)
- J.C. Conesa (U. Autonoma de Barcelona)
- S. Kitao (New York U.) and D. Krueger (Goethe U.)
- J. Díaz-Giménez (U. Carlos III de Madrid) and J. Díaz- Saavedra (U. de Granada)
- J.V. Ríos-Rull (U. of Pennsylvania)
- C. Sims (Princeton University)
- M. del Negro (Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta) and F. Schorfheide (U. of Pennsylvania)
- J. Fernández-Villaverde (U. of Pennsylvania) and J.F. Rubio-Ramírez (Duke U.)
Papers
- Stéphane Adjemian, Matthieu Darracq Pariès & Stéphane Moyen, Optimal Monetary Policy in an Estimated DSGE for the Euro Area [PDF]
- Juan Carlos Conesa, Sagiri Kitao, Dirk Krueger, Taxing Capital? Not a Bad Idea After All! [PDF]
- Marco Del Negro & Frank Schorfheide, Monetary Policy Analysis with Potentially Misspecified Models [PDF]
- Javier Díaz-Giménez & Julián Díaz-Saavedra, Delaying Retirement in Spain [PDF]
- Jesús Fernández-Villaverde & Juan F. Rubio-Ramírez, Estimating Macroeconomic Models: A Likelihood Approach [PDF]
- Philip Jung & Keith Kuester, The Cost of Unemployment Fluctuations Revisited [PDF]
- Stephanie Schmitt-Grohé Martín Uribe, Optimal Inflation Stabilization in a Medium-Scale Macroeconomic Model [PDF]
- Pau Rabanal, Inflation Differentials in a Currency Union: A DSGE Perspective [PDF]
- Christoph Winter, Explaining Earnings Persistence: Does College Education Matter? (Available upon request)
Registration
The organization offers a number of grants to cover registration fees and/or accommodation expenses. Applications should include a short C.V. and, in the case of graduate students, a letter of recommendation by at least one professor. Notice that it is not necessary to present a paper in order to apply for a grant.
Aims and scope
The goal of this Summer School is to present and discuss recent issues and approaches currently under discussion in the vast field of the philosophy of all social sciences -though, according to the tradition of this event, special attention will be paid to economics.
Programme [PDF] | Abstracts: Contributed papers [PDF]
Speakers
- J. Francisco Alvarez (UNED, Madrid)
- Patrick Baert (Cambridge)
- Christina Bicchieri (UPenn)
- Alain Bouvier (Univ. de Provence, Marseille – Institute Jean Nicod, Paris)
- Nancy Cartwright (LSE & UCSD)
- Jeroen van Bouwel (Gent)
- Ian Jarvie (York Univ., Toronto)
- Francesco Guala (Exeter)
- A. Moreno Bergareche (UPV/EHU)
- Julian Reiss (Univ. Complutense de Madrid+LSE)
- Ignacio Sánchez-Cuenca (Univ. Complutense de Madrid + F. Juan March)
- David Teira (UNED, Madrid)
- Petri Ylikoski (Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies)
Contributed papers
- Sabine A. Doering
- Till Grüne-Yanoff
- Tilman Hertz
- Floris Heukelom
- Frank Hindriks
- Caterina Marchionni
- Alessio Moneta
- Juan V. Mayoral
- Armando Menéndez Viso
- Michiru Nagatsu
- Menno Rol
- Hauke Riesch
- Ana Santos
- Paul Sheehy
- Obdulia Torres
Aims and scope
The purpose of the course will be to analyze the role and assess the performance of (and ideally suggest reform proposals for international economic institutions in addressing four central issues: poverty, trade, debt and transition. Four institutions will be the subject of scrutiny the International Monetary Fund (IMF); the Word Trade Organization (WTO); the World Bank (WB); the Inter American Development Bank (IADB); and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD).
Key Issues and Methodology
Departing from a cursory background about the history and (evolving) objectives of each of these institutions, the speakers will analyze: the effectiveness of each in achieving its objectives; the merits of the key criticisms against them; and the main reforms to address these criticisms. The methodology will comprise: (i) defining the benchmarks to assess success for each institution; (ii) appraising the institution’s performance against those benchmarks; and (iii) identifying the redefined role and objectives and/or the institutional reforms necessary to improve performance.
The issues of moral hazard, lender of last resort, “redundant” lending, and “crowding out” of private financing should feature prominent attention. Current programs of the institutions to combat poverty should be analyzed and the suitability of grants versus debt will be assessed. The role of foreign trade reform in the poverty relief agenda will be studied. Also, speakers will address the issue as to whether the existence of these institutions is justified as they are or else significant reforms are needed.
Speakers
- Paulina Beato (InterAmerican Development Bank)
- Mario I. Blejer (Bank of England)
- Willem Buiter (EBRD & LSE)
- Michel Camdessus, Guillermo de la Dehesa (CEPR)
- Edgardo Favaro (World Bank)
- Kurt Geiger (EBRD)
- Ernesto Hernandez-Cata (Johns Hopkins U.)
- Joaquín de la Herrán (CESCE)
- Enrique Iglesias (InterAmerican Development Bank)
- Javier Iguiñiz (PUC)
- Piroska Nagy (EBRD & World Bank)
- Demetrios Papageorgiou (Rubicon capital)
- Cristian Popa (National Bank of Romania)
- Anne Sibert (Birbeck College)
- Boris Vujcic (Croatian National Bank & U. Zagreb)
Contributed papers
Students attending the Summer course are encouraged to submit short papers. However , given time constraints only a limited number of papers, on topics related to the theme of the course, will be admitted for short presentations during the afternoon sessions . If you are interested in submitting a paper , please forward an extended abstract, preferably as an e-mail attachment (.doc or .pdf file) before May 31st to David Teira (dteira {at} fsof.uned.es)
Schedule
July 26th, 2005
8:30: Registration
9:00: The Internacional Economic Organizations: Issues , Challenges, and Plan for the Course
Ricardo Lago ~ Florida International University, former official of the EBRD, IADB, and World Bank
10:00: Multilateral development banks: What the do and what should they do? [PDF]
Willem Buiter ~ Chief Economist, European Bank for Reconstruction and Development & London School of Economics
Their name suggests that the multilateral development banks (MDBs) should provide finance for investments in human and physical capital that promote development. The interpretation of this broad mandate, however, has changed significantly over time. One reassessment occurred when the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development was established following the fall of the Berlin Wall and given a mandate to foster the transition to a market economy by investing primarily in private sector projects. Another is ongoing with the strong focus on achieving the international development goals to reduce extreme poverty to one-half its 1990 level by 2015. This paper assesses the role of MDBs in fostering development or transition through the institutional mechanisms that the MDBs possess for the selection, monitoring and enforcement of loans and other financing agreements and through the use of subsidies that they receive from their shareholders and other sources. We conclude that a useful direction for MDB reform is to exploit more effectively the potential complementarities between the public and private sector financing operations. We disagree with the view that the MDBs should become at least in part fiscal agencies for the allocation of grants either for the purpose of international redistribution or for the financing of international public goods.
11:00: Coffee Break
11:15: New Financial architecture: proposals for reform [Power Point]
Anne Sibert ~ Head of the School of Economics, Mathematics and Statistics, Birkbeck College, London
Willem H Buiter and Anne C Sibert, UDROP: A Small Contribution to the New International Financial Architecture [PDF]
The purpose of the UDROP proposal is to prevent debt rollover crises for foreign-currency-denominated debt instruments. For such liabilities, there is no international analogue to the domestic lender of last resort or to domestic deposit insurance. UDROP stands for Universal Debt Rollover Option with a Penalty. Our proposal is that all foreign currency loans should have a rollover option attached to them. The ‘pure’ version of the option would entitle the borrower to extend or rollover his performing debt at maturity for a specified period. The pricing of the option would be left to the contracting parties. A number of variants on the basic version are also considered. These make the individual borrower’s ability to exercise his option contingent on the prior declaration of a state of ‘disorderly markets’, by the national central bank, the International Monetary Fund or an indicator of ‘disorderly markets’. All versions of the scheme have the property that no commitment of public money is required, either by national governments or by international agencies such as the IMF or the World Bank. The UDROP proposal is rule-based and general: it is mandatory for all foreign-currency debt and automatic. That is, it is exercised at the discretion of the borrower. This stands in sharp contrast to the current practice of discretionary and politicised refinancing arrangements cobbled together in an ad-hoc manner on a case-by-case basis by the IMF. UDROP is marketoriented: the terms and conditions on any foreign-currency loan and associated rollover option would be negotiated by the lenders and borrowers.
12:15: Defining fiscal and debt sustainability: analytics and IMF practice
Willem Buiter
Willem H. Buiter, Fiscal Sustainability [PDF]
This lecture reviews some of the key fiscal sustainability issues faced by developing countries and early emerging market economies. The key conclusions and recommendations include the following.
- Fiscal sustainability should focus on the fiscal- financial-monetary programme of the sovereign (the state), that is, the consolidated general government and central bank.
- It should include all present and future contingent claims owed and owned by the state. In addition to these contractual obligations, non-contractual current and future outlays and revenues must be accounted for exhaustively and comprehensively: nothing is offbudget or off-balance sheet. The special purpose vehicle veil must be torn away.
- For countries with weak economic and political institutions, the safe level of the net public debt to GDP ratio is likely to be low.
- If the re is a history of sovereign default, the safe level of public debt is likely to be even lower. Weak borrowers will have to generate larger and earlier primary surpluses than more credit-worthy borrowers.
- The attractions of hard currency borrowing during normal times are apt to turn into major disadvantages during periods of financial turmoil.
- Privatisations should be undertaken primarily for efficiency reasons rather than for deficit financing or debt reduction reasons.
- The permanent balance rule for government deficits, where the state raises its net debt to GDP ratio when spending (of any kind) is temporarily high and lowers it when spending is temporarily low, has much to recommend it.
Willem H. Buiter, To Purgatory and Beyond When and how should the accession countries from Central and Eastern Europe become full members of the EMU? [PDF]
13:30: Lunch
15:00: Economic Policy in Cuba: Approaching the Crossroads
Ernesto Hernandez-Cata ~ John Hopkins University and former IMF head negotiator with Russia.
E. Hdez-Cata, Output and Productivity in Cuba: Collapse, Recovery, and Muddling Through to the Crossroads [PDF]
More than a decade after the collapse of central planning in most former communist countries and the disintegration of the USSR, Cuba remains an “island of socialism” in the Caribbean sea, 90 miles from the United States. All along, and in spite of massive economic difficulties, the survival, of “socialism” has been the authorities’ explicit objective. So far they have achieved their goal through a combination of political determination, some good and some very bad economic policies, and a steep deterioration in the living standards of the Cuban population. This paper tries to explain the behavior of output and productivity in Cuba in the period since 1989, with particular emphasis on the role of macroeconomic and structural policies, and attempts to provide some basis for evaluating the outlook for the Cuban economy under alternative policy scenarios.
E. Hdez-Cata, Growth and Liberalization During the Transition from Plan to Market: An Empirical Analysis [PDF]
E. Hdez-Cata, Economic Policy in Cuba [Power Point]
E. Hdez-Cata, On Transition: Theory and Empirical Evidence for the former Soviet Union [Power Point]
15:45 Contributed paper
The Determinants of Ownership Costs after privatization: the case of Russia [PDF]
Carsten Sprenger ~ Universitat Pompeu Fabra
In a new data set of 530 Russian manufacturing firms we observe high and gradually decreasing ownership stakes of firm insiders, i.e. managers and workers. Using a tobit model with sample selection due to the privatisation decision, we estimate determinants of the ownership structure after privatisation. The paper provides empirical tests of the main predictions of the Aghion-Blanchard model of ownership choice after insider privatisation. For example, evidence is found that insider ownership serves as insurance against unemployment. The ability to collude among workers matters for the decision to sell shares to outsiders and affects positively the ownership stake of workers. Insiders are found to hold smaller stakes in the largest firms. Cash constraints matter in a negative sense: outsiders who are assumed to be less cash-constrained hold bigger stakes in capital-intensive firms.
July 27th, 2005
9:00 The WTO , the Doha Round and beyond lessons from The World Bank’s multi-country empirical study on Trade Liberalization [Power Point]
Demetrios Papageorgiou ~Managing Director Rubicon Capital and former World Bank Senior Official
Demetris Papageorgiou, Armeane M. Choksi, Michael Michaely, Liberalizing Foreign Trade in Developing Countries: The Lessons of Experience [PDF]
10:00 Volatility to external shocks in small open developing economies: how can the IFIs help?
Edgardo Favaro ~ Head of Growth Department, The World Bank
Edgardo M. Favaro, Managing Volatility in Small States [PDF]
11:00 Coffee Break
11:15 Economic Policy, Transition and the Role of the IFIs. An Eyewitness View
Ernesto Hernandez-Cata
John Hopkins University ~ former IMF head negotiator with Russia, and President of ASCE
12:15 Croatia’s Transition: Stabilization, Privatization, Debt Restructuring, EU Accession. What Role have the Multilaterals Played?
Boris Vujcic ~Deputy Governor of Central Bank of Croatia and Professor University of Zagreb
Velimir Sonje & Boris Vujcic, Croatia In the Second Stage of Transition 1994-1999 [PDF]
The paper attempts to summarize the important aspects of the transition experience in Croatia, focusing upon the second stage of transition, 1994-1999. The presentation is not historical, but rather links similar problems using international data comparisons and occasionally cross-section econometrics. Many topics are briefly surveyed: 1) relation between money growth, inflation, exchange rate regime and currency substitution; 2) determinants and costs of banking crisis; 3) relation between banking supervision, central bank credibility and exchange rate regime; 4) underlying reasons for the emergence of arrears in economy; 5) relationship between monetary and fiscal policy; 6) reasons for poor export performance and high external imbalance in Croatia; and 7) some basic labor market developments. The paper also draws some policy conclusions.
V. Sosic & E. Kraft, Floating with a large life-jacket: Monetary and exchange rate policies in Croatia [PDF]
Even after a decade of macroeconomic stability, Croatia remains one of the most highly dollarized economies in the world and domestic currency gained only a limited additional role since the introduction of the euro cash. Evidence shows that economic agents still remain cautious about exchange rate fluctuations, even of a small magnitude, and react upon depreciation by shifting rapidly from domestic to foreign currency. Commercial banks protect themselves from liability dollarization by indexing loans to foreign exchange, but in an environment of imperfect pass-through from exchange rate to prices any serious depreciation is likely to induce many defaults by borrowers. Substantial reserve requirements making assets denominated in foreign currency more expensive do not seem to deter banks from taking on such obligations, but reserve requirements play a protective role, reinforced by massive international reserves held by the central bank. Monetary and exchange rate policies in such a setting are not primarily engaged in taming cyclical fluctuations, but rather with smoothing exchange rate movements and safeguarding financial stability.
13:30 Lunch
14:45 Poverty trends, policies, and programs -drawing on Peru’s experience and international financial institution practice. Architecture: proposals for reform
Javier Iguiñiz ~ Chairman of the Economics Department, Pontificia Universidad Catolica del Peru , Lima
J. Iguiñiz, La pobreza es multidimensional. Un ensayo de clasificación [PDF]
In this classificatory essay I present five main types of multidimensionality in the recent literature on poverty and human development. The first is intra-economic multidimensionality. Income, aggregate or individual, is accompanied with distribution, assets, employment, or other dimensions. By the second, non-economic elements are added, usually to income. Two versions of this type are very common and influential. In the first multidimensional factors explaining incomepoverty are introduced. Some of these factors are defined as “capital,” human, physical, social, cultural, symbolic, etc. In the second of them economic and non-economic elements define poverty. In both cases income, alone or accompanied, is still seen as an end. The third type eliminates income from the definition of poverty. The qualitative and quantitative transformation of income in order to define the Human Development Index is one of the ways that it is done, but it is even more explicit in the calculation of the Human Poverty Index by the UNDP where income is not included. The last two types arise out of wider approaches in the fields of political philosophy or moral philosophy. The fourth type consists in the introduction of the modern way of classifying the spheres of life. The “economic,” “political,” “social,” “cultural,” etc. spheres are considered dimensions of development, and also of poverty. The fifth type is more openly philosophical and is based in the explicit analysis of values and their relation to development.
J. Iguiñiz, Lucha ¿contra qué pobreza? [PDF]
In this paper I present one of the origins of what is being called today, the “struggle against poverty”. We extract some of the main aspects of the proposal entitled The Concept of Poverty presented by the Chamber of Commerce of the U.S.A in 1965. Our main point is that the nature of the poverty they try to confront corresponds to that existing in that country, and it is quite different from the one most massively present in underdeveloped countries.
15:45 Contributed paper
New patters of trade, off-shoring, and migration in the enlarged European Union
Helena Marques ~ Lecturer, University of Loughborough (UK)
Presentation based on a set of four papers [ZIP]
July 28th, 2005
9:00 Economic Reform, Poverty and the Multilateral Development Institutions
Paulina Beato ~ Senior Advisor, Inter-American Development Bank
10:00 Managing the Argentine Financial Crisis – 2002 [Power Point] [Power Point]
Mario I. Blejer ~ Director Central Banking Studies Department, Bank of England, former Governor of Central Bank of Argentina and IMF official and Professor of the Hebrew University
11:00 Coffee Break
11:15 The Heavily Indebted Poor Country (HIPC) Initiative of the IMF and the World Bank, ups, downs, past and future
Piroska Nagy ~ Senior Official of European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, London, and the IMF, Washington DC
12:15 Promoting Transition from Plan to Market in Central and Eastern Europe: the Role of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD)
Kurt Geiger ~ Head of the Financial Institutions Group of the EBRD
13:30 Lunch
14:45 The Export Credit Agencies, Bilateral Debt Defaults and Paris Club Debt Restructurings
Joaquin de la Herran ~ Chief Executive Officer of Spain Export Insurance Agency (CESCE) and former IMF Official
15:45 Contributed paper
Who’s afraid of Globalization? Academic and Political discourses on the Internationalization of the Economy and Redistribution
Maria Jimenez Buedo ~ European University Institute
The paper analyzes and classifies the theoretical arguments found in the political economy literature on how the internationalization of markets (both financial and of goods) affects the room for redistributive policies. It then compares these arguments with a stylized mapping of those found in the discourse of the main families of European political parties (conservative, social-democratic, and regionalist and nationalist groups). Finally, it analyses these with the discourse of specific social movement organizations of a self-declared anti-globalization stand. In particular, we will analyze the role that these discourses attribute to international economic organizations. In view of the contrasting of these three types of discourse, we build a map that can clarify the different public perceptions that these audiences have of the globalization phenomena.
16:15 Contributed paper
A two step approach to assess the costs of sovereign defaults [PDF]
Gisella Chiang and Francisco Coronado ~ Universitat Pompeu Fabra
The theoretical and empirical literature of international finance has emphasized many aspects of debt crisis and the sovereign decision regarding defaults and debt restructuring. Many authors have shown how international institutions (IFIs) and private creditors have performed in terms of their returns on outstanding loans to emerging market and developing economies. However these numerous works have said little about the performance of sovereign borrowers in terms of the losses that can be associated with debt crisis. This is precisely the contribution of our paper to the literature. We present a two-step evaluation of debt-related crisis in terms of forgone output growth. Our approach allows us to integrated to the analysis not only the e.ects of the default decision as such, but also the e.ects associated with the expectations that operates during the transition to the default equilibrium.
July 29th, 2005
9:00 Romania’s Transition and Accession to the European Union: How much have the Multilateral Institutions Helped?
Cristian Popa ~ Deputy Governor of the National Bank of Romania
10:00 Round Table on Redefining the Role of the International Economic Organizations and on Resolution of Sovereign Defaults
Beato, Blejer, de la Dehesa, Favaro, Geiger, Iguiniz, Hernandez-Cata, Lago, Papageorgiou, Popa and Vujcic
11:00 Coffee Break
11:15 Questions and Answers and General Debate Session: Active Participation of Students
12:15 Reform of the International Institutions wrap-up: tentative conclusions
Ricardo Lago and Mario I. Blejer
13:30 Lunch
15:00 Keynote closing address
Development challenges and reform agenda of the International Economic Institutions?
Enrique Iglesias ~ President of the Inter-American Development Bank, Washington
Michel Camdessus ~ Former Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund
Guillermo de la Dehesa (moderator) ~ Chairman of the Center for Economic Policy Research (London)
Registration and grants
The organization offers a number of grants to cover registration fees and/or accommodation expenses. Applications should include a short C.V. and, in the case of graduate students, a letter of recommendation by at least one professor. Notice that it is not necessary to present a paper in order to apply for a grant. Download and fill the two following forms (forms) and send them via e-mail before May 31st to: cursosverano {at} sc.ehu.es
How to get to the Summer School?
San Sebastian: The more complete information on San Sebastian available on http://www.sansebastianturismo.com/
Getting to Colegio Mayor Olarain: If you come by train or bus to San Sebastian, you may take a bus in the station (line 24) which will bring you to Zumalakarregui avenue (the yellow street in the map below).
The Summer School: The route you will probably take everyday during your stay in San Sebastian will start in Residencia Olarain ending up in Miramar Palace -where the Summer School takes place. We will probably meet during the first day during breakfast, but here is a map that may be of help in case you get up late.
Residencia Olarain (Paseo de Ondarreta 24) is located on your left (signalled by a star), while Palacio de Miramar (Paseo de Miraconcha) is on the upper right side of the map (signalled by a second star).
More information
Any question concerning the V Summer School may be addressed to David Teira (dteira {at} fsof.uned.es)
The constitution of a State (or a group of States, like the European Union) has a direct effect in the functioning of the political institutions it creates. In fact, constitutions affect the rules of the game, the government’s duration, the tendency to form coalition governments, etc. In addition, constitutions have an influence in the behaviour of consumers, producers and other agents in the economy and the society. This is why the consequences of different constitutional designs are not restricted to the political arena, but also reach the economic sphere. As a consequence, the study of constitutions is a very interesting topic for both economists and political scientists. Therefore, this course has an interdisciplinary character, and will deal with topics related to the design of constitutions, from both its normative and positive perspectives as they appear in the most relevant literature which investigates the observable consequences of alternative constitutional designs. From both points of view, normative and positive, we will examine how different constitutional designs affect different aspects of the political and economic reality such as bicameralism, political and economic decentralisation or the voting system of different branches of government, from the executive to the legislative.
Lecturers
- Carles BOIX (University of Chicago)
- Antonio MERLO (University of Pennsylvania)
- Annick LARUELLE (Universidad de Alicante)
- Federico VALENCIANO (UPV/EHU)
- Jacques CREMER (IDEI, Toulouse)
- Viktor Vanberg (Universitaet Freiburg)
- Geoffrey Brennan (Australian National University)
Contributed papers
- Jean-François Caulier
- José Fernandez-Albertos
- Ruxandra Haradau
Many interactions involve network relationships. For this reason, social and economic networks often determine the economic success of individuals and, thereby, play a prominent role in explaining a wide range of economic phenomena. A classical example is the exchange and diffusion of information, critical to the functioning of most labor markets. Other examples include the trade and exchange of goods in non centralized markets, the provision of mutual insurance in developing countries, the spread of technological innovations that breed economic growth, the interlocking of firms to share R&D efforts, etc. During the last decade, a flowering literature has undertaken a systematic theoretical and empirical scrutiny of the role played by networks in economics. In an attempt to understand how the shape of the network frames agents decisions, an important part of the literature relates the specifics of the network structure to predicted behavior in a variety of contexts. The endogenous creation of social networks is also a recurrent theme of analysis, and different concepts and models to describe endogenously emerging structures have been proposed and discussed. On the empirical side, efforts have concentrated on the detection and measurement of network effects in the data, and the identification of the network relationships underlying observed patterns of behavior. The summer school brings together scholars with different but complementary sensibilities with have been actively contributing to this field in the recent years. For this reason, the meeting should provide a unique opportunity both to get a complete an accurate view of the state-of-the-art of the research in this area, and to get a sense of the open questions and future perspectives of this promising new field in economics research.
Lecturers
- Francis Bloch (GREQAM)
- Antoni Calvó-Armengol (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona)
- Baskhar Dutta (University of Warwick)
- Matthew O. Jackson (California Institute of Technology)
- Rachel Kranton (University of Maryland)
- Joel Sobel (University of California San Diego)
- Giorgio Topa (New York University)
- Fernando Vega-Redondo (Universidad de Alicante)
