The Ronald Coase Institute is hosting a conference to celebrate the life and work of Ronald Coase. “The Next Generation of Discovery: Research Inspired by Ronald Coase” will be held in Washington, DC, March 27-28. Speakers will include Nobel laureates Kenneth Arrow and Oliver Williamson, other distinguished senior scholars and practitioners, and young alumni of the Ronald Coase Institute.
Category: conferences
IFAMA Call For Papers
The International Food and Agribusiness Management Association (IFAMA) is accepting proposals for paper presentations and teaching cases to be presented at its (June 14-18) 2015 Symposium in Minneapolis-St. Paul, MN.
The IFAMA Symposium is particularly interested in proposals related to the following “hot topics” in 2015:
- The Role of Technology in Food Security
- Agribusiness Education in the 21st Century
- Entrepreneurship n Agricultural Innovation: Financing and Mentoring
- Food Loss and Waste
- Climate Smart Agriculture
- Investing in Agribusiness
Other invited research topics for the 2015 meeting include:
- Agribusiness Firms and Value Chains
- Development of the Food and Agribusiness Sectors
- Talent Development and Sustainability
- Environmental Concerns
- Customer Orientation and Marketing
- Commodity Price Volatility and Availability
- Food, Health, Security and Safety Issues
The complete Call for Papers is available here. The deadline for proposals is November 30.
Legal and Illegal Cartels in Europe
There’s what looks to be an interesting workshop next month (10 September) in Belgium on the organization and behavior of cartels in different legal environments. From the workshop webpage:
Economists and policy analysts know very little about the conditions under which cartels are formed in different legal environments, how they behave against outsiders, how they behave against deviating insiders, and how they react to changes in the economic environment. This event will provide a space to discuss these aspects, based on two projects funded by SEEK.
One of the projects studies cartel organization – a topic on which there is little information to date – through the lens of legal cartels. While such cartels did not have to fear detection and prosecution, they faced the same internal organizational challenges as illegal cartels. The focus is on comparing empirically, in specific sectors, the organizational forms of legal cartels in countries with different legal regimes. The project has collected data on Austrian, Finnish, Norwegian, Swedish and American legal cartels.
The other project has developed new theoretical insight into the anatomy of hard-core cartels and combined it with a rich data set on the recent German cement cartel. The results of this project will be presented to the audience attending the event. The private data set comprises about 340.000 market transactions from 36 customers of German cement producers and encompasses most of the period during which the cartel was functioning, as well as a period after the collapse of the cartel.
The conference is jointly sponsored by Bruegel and SEEK. For more details on speakers or if you’re close enough to be able to attend, check out the website for details.
Regulating The (FTC) Regulators — TOTM Symposium
My colleagues at Truth on the Market are hosting a blog symposium today on the topic of regulatory restraint. From Geoff Manne’s introductory post:
Last month, FTC Commissioner Josh Wright began a much-needed conversation on the FTC’s UMC authority by issuing a proposed policy statement attempting to provide some meaningful guidance and limits to the FTC’s authority. Meanwhile, last week Commissioner Maureen Ohlhausen offered her own take on the issue, echoing many of Josh’s points and further extending the conversation. Considerable commentary—and even congressional attention—has been directed to the absence of UMC authority limits, the proper scope of that authority, and its significance for the businesses regulated by the Commission.
There is a great line-up of participants and the symposium is sure to spark some interesting debates and insight. Definitely worth following for the next couple days.
Conducting Empirical Legal Scholarship
The 12th Annual Conducting Empirical Legal Scholarship Workshop will take place at the USC Gould School of Law May 22-24, 2013. The workshop is for law school faculty, political science faculty, and graduate students interested in learning about empirical research and how to evaluate empirical work. Leading empirical scholars Lee Epstein and Andrew Martin will teach the workshop, which provides the formal training necessary to design, conduct, and assess empirical studies, and to use statistical software (Stata) to analyze and manage data. Participants need no background or knowledge of statistics to enroll in the workshop. For more information, see the conference website.
Most economics grad students get a lot of exposure to econometric and statistical concepts, but not necessarily to an understanding of how to actually apply that knowledge to conduct empirical research. I suspect the organizers may be willing to let even economics grad students participate.