Organization
European Association for Evolutionary Political Economy |
| Founded | 1988 |
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| Location | |
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Key people | Nathalie Lazaric (President)
Pasquale Tridico (General Secretary)
Oliver Kessler (Treasurer)
Manuel Scholz-Wäckerle (Web & IT Officer)
Marco Raberto (Scientific Development Plan Officer
and Research Area Coordinator) |
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| Website | www.eaepe.org |
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The European Association for Evolutionary Political Economy (EAEPE) is a pluralist forum of social scientists that brings together institutional and evolutionary economists broadly defined. EAEPE members are scholars working on realistic approaches to economic theory and economic policy. With a membership of about 500, EAEPE is now the foremost European association for heterodox economists[1] and the second-largest association for economists in Europe.
History
EAEPE was established in London, on 29 June 1988.[2] However, the formal founding meeting was only held in September 1989 at the association's first annual conference in Keswick, Cumbria, UK. At this occasion, the EAEPE Constitution was adopted and a steering committee was elected, changed later into the EAEPE Council.[3] In November 1990, the association formed a charity, the Foundation for European Economic Development (FEED) under the Charities Act (England and Wales), with the objective of providing financial assistance for the EAEPE annual conferences and other EAEPE projects. In 1991, the association adopted a Scientific Development Plan in order to designate a number of priority Research Areas and to appoint Research Area Coordinators to act as network-builders. Since 1991, in collaboration with Edward Elgar Publishing, EAEPE has published a series of conference volumes and other focused volumes. In the mid-1990s, EAEPE organized several summer schools, with the financial support of FEED and the European Commission. EAEPE has resumed organizing annual summer schools since 2010. EAEPE is a founding shareholder of Millennium Economics Ltd.[4]
Theoretical perspectives
According to the EAEPE website, EAEPE members generally agree on the following.[5]
Breaking away from the most standard forms of economic theorising based on a definition of economics in terms of a rigid method which is applied indiscriminately to a wide variety of economic, social or political phenomena, EAEPE embraces an open-ended and interdisciplinary analysis, that draws on relevant material in not only in economics but also in psychology, sociology, anthropology, politics, law and history.
In contrast to standard economic approaches focusing exclusively on equilibrium, EAEPE conceptualizes the economy as a cumulative process unfolding in historical time in which agents are faced with chronic information problems and radical uncertainty about the future. Contrary to standard models where individuals and their tastes are taken as given, where technology is viewed as exogenous, and where production is separated from exchange, EAEPE's concern is to address and encompass the interactive, social process through which tastes are formed and changed, the forces which promote technological transformation, and the interaction of these elements within the economic system as a whole.
In lieu of an orientation that takes the market as an ideal or natural order and as a mere aggregation of individual traders, EAEPE recognises that it is appropriate to regard the market itself as a social institution, necessarily supported by a network of other social institutions such as the state, and having no unqualified nor automatic priority over them. Instead of the widespread tendency to ignore ecological and environmental considerations or consequences in the development of theories and policy recommendation, EAEPE acknowledges that the socio-economic system depends upon, and is embedded in, an often fragile natural environment and a complex ecological system.
Rejecting the utilitarian outlook which separates considerations of means from those of ends, and judgments of fact from those of value, and which ignores social relations, conflicts and inequalities between the agents, EAEPE appreciates the fact that inquiry is value-driven and policy-orientated, and recognises the centrality of participatory democratic processes to the identification and evaluation of real needs.
Reflecting EAEPE's open-ended theoretical perspectives, EAEPE's current honorary presidents include major scholars such as János Kornai, Richard R. Nelson, Douglass C. North, Luigi Pasinetti, while Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen, Edith T. Penrose, Kurt Rothschild, G. L. S. Shackle and Herbert A. Simon were EAEPE's honorary presidents in the past.[6] More generally, EAEPE recognises the relevance of writers as diverse as John Commons, Nicholas Kaldor, Michał Kalecki, William Kapp, John Maynard Keynes, Alfred Marshall, Karl Marx, François Perroux, Karl Polanyi, Joan Robinson, Joseph Schumpeter, Adam Smith, Thorstein Veblen and Max Weber to institutionalist and evolutionary thought.
Research areas
EAEPE's research is organised around Research Areas (RAs) that include: Methodology of economics (A), Economic sociology (B), Institutional change (C), Innovation and technological change (D), Industrial Policy and Development (E1), Entrepreneurship and Theory of the Firm (E2), Environment-economy interactions (F), Macroeconomic regulation and Institutions (G), Effective Demand, Income Distribution and Finance (H), Comparative Political Economy (I), Monetary economics, finance and financial institutions (J), Gender economics and social identity (K), Labour economics (L), Social economics (M), Human development and institutions (N), Territory and migration (O), Economic history (P), Evolutionary economic simulations (S), History of political economy (T), Conceptions of Evolutionary Political Economy (V), Global political economy (W), Networks (X), Co-operative economy and collective ownership (Z).[7]
Awards
The association runs three prizes:[8]
- The EAEPE William Kapp Prize awarded annually for the best published journal article on a theme broadly in accord with the EAEPE theoretical perspectives.
- The EAEPE Joan Robinson Prize (formerly known as the Gunnar Myrdal Prize) awarded biennially for the best monograph on a theme broadly in accord with the EAEPE theoretical perspectives.
- The EAEPE Herbert Simon Young Scholar Prize awarded annually for the best conference paper by a young scholar.
