In the News

Postdoctoral Researcher (Political Economy, AI, Autocracy) at Tilburg University

By Jens Prüfer

The Tilburg Law and Economics Center at Tilburg University, the Netherlands, is looking for a Postdoctoral Researcher to work, in a team, on “Artificial Intelligence in Autocratic Countries.” The goal of the project is to produce both fundamental research on the political...

The 2025 Ronald H. Coase Dissertation Award

Coase Award winner Virginia Minni with SIOE President-Elect Scott Gehlbach (left) and Board member Jared Rubin (right)

By Emily Sellars (Chair) and Jared Rubin, on behalf of a committee that also included Talia Gillis and Nathan Nunn

We received nine excellent submissions from different institutions, disciplines, and methodological perspectives. It was not an easy job, and there were at least 5 or 6...

Douglass North Best Book Award for "After Authoritarianism" by Monika Nalepa

Award winner Monika Nalepa with SIOE President-Elect Scott Gehlbach (left) and President Guido Friebel (right)

By John Wallis

Every two years, SIOE hands out the Douglass North Best Book Award, for the best published book in institutional and organizational economics published during the previous two years.

This year, the Douglass North Prize committee was composed Sumner LaCroix,...

CfP: Economics of AI Conference (Barcelona, 22 November 2024)

By Ricard Gil

The IESE AI Initiative is organizing a conference on the economics of AI to be held at IESE in Barcelona, Spain, on Friday 22 November.

This program aims to bring together scholars with diverse perspectives to foster a research community interested in studying the...

Post-Doctoral Researcher in Organizational Economics at HEC Lausanne

By Giorgio Zanarone

There is an open postdoctoral position in institutional and organizational economics open at HEC Lausanne (Switzerland), scheduled to begin in October 24 or at a mutually agreed later date, and renewable for up to four years.

Official Application Deadline:...

CfP: Workshop Celebrating 15 Years of Oliver Williamson's Nobel Legacy

By Jens Prüfer

The Paris-Berkeley workshop series has been one of the longer-term academic meetings targeting SIOE's membership and evolving from SIOE members. The 9th edition will take place in Paris on 17/18 October 2024 and focus on the legacy of SIOE Founding Father Oliver...

CfP: Organizational Economics Workshop at Barcelona Summer Forum

By Giorgio Zanarone

The organizational economics workshop at the Barcelona Summer Forum, now in its 7th year of life, has become a key European forum for scholars interested in organizational economics. In the spirit of SIOE, this year there will be an additional and related workshop in...

Ostrom Lifetime Achievement Award for Pablo Spiller

In the name of SIOE's board (award was presented by Bob Gibbons)

The Elinor Ostrom Lifetime Achievement Award is given every other year for sustained significant academic contributions to the field. This year’s winner was Pablo Spiller, the Jeffrey A. Jacobs Distinguished Professor in...

"From Connections to Persistence" - a worthy Williamson Award Best Conference Paper Winner

Pierre-Guillaume Méon after receiving the Williamson Award 2023

By the members of the SIOE 2023 executive program committee and Scott Gehlbach, Bob Gibbons, and Pauline Grosjean

For the Oliver Williamson Award for the Best Conference Paper at SIOE's 2023 annual meeting in Frankfurt, the committee unanimously selected one runner-up and one winner....

Coase Dissertation Award 2023 for Roya Talibova

By the committee: Mariana Mota Prado (Chair, Toronto), Nathan Nunn (British Columbia), Emily Sellars (Yale), and Catherine Thomas (LSE)

The Ronald H. Coase Best Dissertation Award Committee was extremely impressed with the contributions to the literature, the quality of the research and...

2023 SIOE Awards: Announcement and Call for Nominations

By Giorgio Zanarone

The Society for Institutional and Organizational Economics awards prizes in institutional and organizational economics, named after the four Nobel Prize winners closely linked to the society. The awards are as follows.

A Ronald Coase Best Dissertation Award (...

Conference of EU Commission on Institutions

By Jens Prüfer

On November 13-15, 2023, the European Commission will organize a large conference, called Annual Research Conference (ARC 2023), which aims at bringing together academic research(ers), Commission staff members, and policy makers. This year's conference should be...

Ronald Coase Institute’s 2022 Webworkshop on Institutional Analysis

By Jens Prüfer

As pandemic conditions continue in some parts of the world, the Coase institute is again offering its online webworkshop on institutional analysis, where participants can improve their research and presentation skills while deepening their knowledge of institutional...

Oliver E. Williamson Best Conference Paper Award 2022

By Guido Friebel, for the committee (Bob Gibbons and Gillian Hadfield)

The Oliver E. Williamson Best Conference Paper award is given annually in recognition of the excellent work presented at our conference. In past years award winners have gone on to publication in top journals such as...

CfP: Special Issue on Religion and Culture in JHPE

By Jens Prüfer

The Journal of Historical Political Economy has issued a call for papers for a special issue on Religion and Culture. This special issue aims to explore the interplay between political economy, religion, and culture, from the near to distant past – a topic that is...

1 Postdoctoral Fellow in Digital Regulation and 1 Doctoral fellowship in Economics and Management

By Eric Brousseau

The Governance and Regulation Chair at the University Paris-Dauphine|PSL has one post-doctoral opening in political-economy / regulation of the digital industry and one opening for a doctoral candidate in economics and management.

Postdoctoral Fellow in Digital...

2022 Ronald Coase Best Dissertation Award to Ashutosh Thakur

Ashutosh Thakur receiving the Coase Award from Federica Carugati and Catherine Thomas

Ashutosh Thakur (right) receiving the Coase Award from Federica Carugati (left) and Catherine Thomas

By Federica Carugati, Claudine Gartenberg, Catherine Thomas, and Mariana Prado

The 2022 Ronald H. Coase dissertation award committee selected four outstanding finalists from a pool of excellent applicants. The committee members (Federica Carugati, King’s College London, Chair; Claudine...

CfP: "Wars, Economic Sanctions, Economic Behaviors, and Institutions"

By Guido Friebel

The Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization seeks submissions for a special issue on “Wars, economic sanctions, economic behaviors, and institutions”.

The goal of this special issue is to advance our understanding of the causes and consequences of...

Institutional and Organizational Economics Academy in Corsica (France)

By Jens Prüfer

The legendary IOEA summer school goes into its 19th (!) round from 23-27 May 2022 in a beautiful hideaway on the island of Corsica.

Objectives To promote the use of appropriate methods to analyze governance, structures and dynamics of collectives and communities. To...

Ronald Coase Institute's Webworkshop on Institutional Analysis

By Jens Prüfer

During the pandemic, the Coase Institute is offering a new kind of workshop: online, highly focused, and small - 12 participants and 6 core faculty, plus more faculty to lecture and comment. Details are here.

Date: December 1-8, 2021 Application deadline: October 18...

Elinor Ostrom Lifetime Achievement Award 2021 to Avner Greif and Gary Libecap

Avner Greif (left) and Gary Libecap

By Tore Ellingsen

The Elinor Ostrom Lifetime Achievement Award is awarded biannually for sustained significant academic contributions to institutional and organizational economics. It is open to anyone. In 2021, for the first time, there are two recipients: Avner Greif and Gary Libecap...

The Ronald H. Coase Dissertation Award 2021

Coase Award Winner 2021 Dmitrii Kofanov

By Federica Carugati

Committee members: Federica Carugati (King’s College London); Florian Englmaier (University of Munich); Michael Powell (Northwestern University); and Brian Silverman (University of Toronto).

Choosing a winner was, unoriginally but quite truthfully, not an...

Oliver E. Williamson Best Conference Paper to Gabriele Gratton & Barton Lee

Gabriele Gratton and Barton Lee

By Gillian Hadfield

The Oliver E. Williamson Best Conference Paper award is given annually in recognition of the great work we see at the conference. In past years award winners have gone on to publication in top journals such as the JPE and the Review of Financial Studies. The award is...

Job Openings for 3 PhD students and 1 Postdoc in Paris

By Jens Prüfer

The "Governance and Regulation" Chair of University Paris-Dauphine|PSL has four openings in economics and/or management:

Three positions for doctoral candidates , specializing in

the regulation of digital ecosystems; new business models and the challenge they...

CfP: Rules, Organizations, and Governments: Institutions and Economic History

By Jens Prüfer

The annual meeting of the Economic History Association (EHA) will take place in Tucson, Arizona, October 29-31, 2021. Its theme, which should be close to the heart of many SIOE members, is “Rules, Organizations, and Governments: Institutions and Economic History.”...

2021 SIOE Awards: Announcement and Call for Nominations

By Giorgio Zanarone

The Society for Institutional and Organizational Economics awards prizes in institutional and organizational economics, named after the four Nobel Prize winners closely linked to our society. The awards are

A Ronald Coase Best Dissertation Award (annual). An...

Call for Papers: Workshop in Organizational Economics (Barcelona)

By Giorgio Zanarone

As part of the Barcelona Summer Forum, we are inviting submissions for the Workshop in Organizational Economics.

The workshop will run for 2 days and will take place on June 17-18, 2021 in Barcelona. We welcome empirical and theoretical submissions of...

"Political and Economic Consequences of Norms Unravelling: Evidence from Europe’s Darkest Hour" at ASSA

By Bob Gibbons

This year there will again be two joint sessions between ACES (the Association for Comparative Economic Studies) and SIOE. The first, described below, will be Sunday, January 3, 2021, 3:45 PM - 5:45 PM (EST). The second, on “The Real Effects of Public Organization," will...

"The Real Effects of Public Organization" - Joint SIOE/ACES session at ASSA Meetings

By Guido Friebel

There will be a joint session of SIOE and ACES, the Association for Comparative Economic Studies, at the 2021 ASSA meetings. Tuesday, Jan. 5, 2021, 12:15 PM - 2:15 PM (EST).

Noam Yuchtman and I have organized a session on "The Real Effects of Public Organization...

Motivating agents in non-routine analytical team tasks

By Florian Englmaier*

Until the 1970s, a major share of the workforce performed predominantly manual and repetitive routine tasks with little need to coordinate in teams. Since then, we have witnessed a rapidly changing work environment. Nowadays, work is frequently organized in teams...

Three openings in economics and management for doctoral candidates at Dauphine University

The "Governance and Regulation" Chair has three openings in economics and management for doctoral candidates. Candidates must have a solid background in economics (institutional and organizational economics, industrial organization, political economy, law and economics) or management (strategy...

The Oliver E. Williamson Best Conference Paper Award 2020

By Tore Ellingsen

As is customary, the winner of the Williamson Award is chosen by the President (Tore Ellingsen), the President Elect (Robert Gibbons), and the 1.st Vice President (Gillian Hadfield). We are most grateful to the members of the Program Committee for performing the first...

Williamson’s Contributions to Our Understanding of Public Sector Institutions

By Pablo T. Spiller*

One of the less well-known areas of Williamson’s contributions to economics and to the social sciences more generally is in our understanding of public sector institutions. He approached these institutions similarly to how he approached private ones. His view was...

Transaction Cost Economics, International Business, and International Trade

By Joanne Oxley*

The story of Oliver Williamson’s relationship to scholarship in international business and international trade in many ways mirrors the story of his relationship to the field of economics writ large . But, it does so in a way that perhaps even more starkly illustrates...

2020 SIOE Awards: Announcement and Call for Nominations

By Giorgio Zanarone

The Society for Institutional and Organizational Economics awards prizes in institutional and organizational economics, named after four Nobel Prize winners closely linked to our society. The awards are

• A Ronald Coase Best Dissertation Award (annual). • An...

LearnIOE: Educational Videos on Institutional & Organizational Economics

By Eric Brousseau

LearnIOE is a platform of educational videos aiming at promoting the dissemination of knowledge in institutional and organizational economics (IOE). It was developed by the Governance and Regulation Chair of the Paris Dauphine-PSL University and is based on a very...

Oliver Williamson Best Conference Paper Award 2019 to Paper on Sweden’s Radical Right

Torsten Persson (center) accepts the Williamson Award from SIOE President-Elect Tore Ellingsen and President Francine Lafontaine

By Francine Lafontaine

Background: The Oliver Williamson Best Conference Paper Award is open to all papers accepted for presentation and given at SIOE’s annual meeting. A sub-group of members of the Program Committee, chosen by the program chair Tore Ellingsen, shortlisted a small set...

The 2019 Ronald Coase Award Finalists

Sara Lowes receiving the Ronald Coase Award 2019 from SIOE's President-Elect Tore Ellingsen and President Francine Lafontaine

By Pauline Grosjean

I had the pleasure of chairing the 2019 Ronald H. Coase Dissertation Award committee. My deepest thanks to my fellow committee members: Renee Adams (our committee member) (Oxford), Andrea Prat (Columbia), and Stephane Saussier (Sorbonne).

What a great vintage...

JEBO Special Issue on Institutions, Culture and Religion in Economic History

By Jens Prüfer

The Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization invites researchers to submit papers for a special issue on Institutions, Culture and Religion in Economic History for a special issue to be published in Spring 2021.

Submission deadline: April 1 2020

A...

Summer schools in IOE, 2019: IOEA (Corsica) and Coase Institute (Warsaw)

By Jens Prüfer

Here are two invitations for Ph.D. students, Post-docs and other early-career researchers interested in institutions and/or organizations. Both have taken place for many years and have long alumni lists. Highly recommended!

Institutional and Organizational...

Call for Papers: Workshop on "Governance of Big Data and AI"

By Jens Prüfer

Datafication has massively influenced processes within organizations, on markets, and more generally throughout society. Machine learning pushes the loop between data accumulation and innovation even further. The Tilburg Law and Economics Center (TILEC) and the Governance...

CASBS Summer Institute on “Organizations and Their Effectiveness”: Call for Applications

By Bob Gibbons

The fourth annual Summer Institute on Organizations and Their Effectiveness will be held at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University during July 8 through 20, 2019. The institute is aimed at assistant professors with demonstrated...

Why the West got rich and the Middle East did not

By Jared Rubin*

Today’s rulers of the three largest Middle Eastern economies all look to religious authorities as a key source of legitimacy. Drawing on a broad sweep of historical analysis, this column explores what this might mean for the region’s economic future. One notable danger...

"Rethinking the Corporation:" a 20th Century History of the Firm by Naomi Lamoreaux on Video

By Jens Prüfer

In her keynote lecture titled " Rethinking the Corporation: Contestable Control, the Theory of the Firm, and the Importance of Historical Perspective ," Naomi Lamoreaux (Yale University) gave a surprising historical account of the corporation as organizational form. While...

Jean Tirole on video: "Narratives, Imperatives and Moral Reasoning"

By Jens Prüfer

The keynote lecture of Jean Tirole (Toulouse), given at the annual SIOE conference in Montreal in June 2018, titled " Narratives, Imperatives and Moral Reasoning ," and based on joint work with Roland Bénabou and Armin Falk, is now available in our video channe l. After...

Best Poster Award for Work Comparing Nonprofit and For-profit Firms

By Francine Lafontaine

Next to the best paper award, at this year's SIOE conference also a best poster award was handed out for the best poster presentation given. It went to Bertrand V. Quelin (pictured) for his work with Marieke Huysentruyt (both HEC Paris), "Why For-profit Companies...

Best Paper Award at Montreal Conference is on Peruvian Fishmeal Manufacturing Industry

By Francine Lafontaine

At the SIOE 2018 conference in Montreal, the Oliver Williamson Best Conference Paper Award for the best paper delivered at the conference was awarded to "Vertical Integration, Supplier Behavior, and Quality Upgrading Among Exporters," by Christopher Hansman (...

Coase Best Dissertation Award for thesis on Gang Governance in Rio de Janeiro

By Nan Jia

The Ronald H. Coase Best Dissertation Award is handed out annualy for the best doctoral dissertation in institutional and organizational economics. During SIOE's recent conference in Montreal (June 21-23), Nicholas Barnes was awarded the award for his dissertation “Monopolies...

Institutional and Organizational Analysis: Concepts and Applications

By Eric Alston, Lee J. Alston, Bernardo Mueller, and Tomas Nonnenmacher

The notion that “institutions matter” is broadly accepted, and many scholars instead pose the more specific question: under what conditions do a given set of institutions play a role in influencing outcomes of...

Conference on the Economics of Social Sector Organizations

By Jens Prüfer

The Rustandy Center for Social Sector Innovation at The University of Chicago Booth School of Business and the Marshall Institute for Philanthropy and Social Entrepreneurship at the London School of Economics and Political Science will co-host the third annual conference...

Postdoc in Data-driven Research in Social Sciences at Paris-Dauphine

By Bruno Chaves

The newly established multidisciplinary program on “Governance Analytics” funded by PSL Research University and hosted by the University of Paris-Dauphine has one opening for a postdoctoral fellowship in data-driven social sciences. The program aims at establishing a...

Abstracts from "A Research Agenda for New Institutional Economics" II

By Claude Ménard and Mary M. Shirley

In previous posts, we presented a brief summary and abstracts of three chapters of our forthcoming volume.* The table of contents can be found here . Here are three more abstracts of chapters to give a flavor of the book.

What's Next for the...

Abstracts from "A Research Agenda for New Institutional Economics" I

By Claude Ménard and Mary M. Shirley

We posted a brief summary of this forthcoming volume.* The table of contents can be found here . Below are three abstracts of chapters to give you a flavor of the book.

Contracting in Innovative Industries

By Richard Gil (Johns Hopkins...

A Research Agenda for New Institutional Economics

By Claude Ménard and Mary M. Shirley

Younger institutional scholars often ask us: Where should I put my research efforts? What are the most important gaps in our knowledge of institutions? How are emerging technologies and new developments changing the frontier of institutional...

2018 SIOE Awards: Announcement and Call for Nominations

By Bentley MacLeod

This year the Society for Institutional and Organizational Economics calls for nominations for the 2018 Douglass North and 2018 Ronald Coase Awards.

The Douglass North Best Book Award For the best book in institutional and organizational economics published in...

Institutional and Organizational Economics Academy 2018: Call for applications

By Jens Prüfer

Maybe the longest-running and most successful summer school in IOE, the Institutional and Organizational Economics Academy (IOEA, formerly ESNIE), is inviting applications for its 17th session, which will be held on May 21-25, 2018 in Corsica (France). This incubator for...

Job Opening: Postdoc on Economic Governance of Data-driven Markets

By Jens Prüfer

The Tilburg Law and Economics Center (TILEC) advertises a position for a Postdoctoral Researcher on the Economic Governance of Data-driven Markets (starting date: September 2018). This is a three-year position targeted at promising researchers in economics or related...

Public-Private Collaboration, Hybridity and Social Value - a Special Issue

Guest post by Bertrand Quelin

Hybrid forms of collaboration with mixed economic and social interests represent a phenomenon receiving growing attention in organization science and management studies. Now a special issue on "Public-Private Collaboration, Hybrid Organizational Design and...

Hart - Holmström - Gibbons - Lafontaine: the video

By Jens Prüfer

Imagine two scholars of organizational economics had just won the Nobel Prize and SIOE would like to celebrate that event. What to do? Obviously, you would want the laureates to speak about their work and, in particular, to sketch areas of promising future research. But...

Computational Social Science - video of Duncan Watt's keynote talk

By Jens Prüfer

Last week we put up a video of Matthew Jackson's keynote speech at SIOE 2017 at Columbia University. Now, here is the second keynote lecture: Duncan Watts (Cornell University and Microsoft Research) is speaking about "Computational Social Science: Exciting Progress and...

Workshops on Institutional Analysis and Economic Governance

By Jens Prüfer

Here are two workshop announcements that may be of interest for researchers in IOE :

The Ronald Coase Institute Workshop on Institutional Analysis invites young scholars to apply (December 10-16, 2017, Bogota, Colombia) The Workshop on Economic Governance of Data-...

Lifetime Achievement Award for Yoram Barzel

Yoram Barzel (left) during the Award ceremony on 24 June, 2017, with SIOE President-Elect Bentley MacLeod (right).

By Bentley MacLeod

The SIOE Board voted to award the 2017 Elinor Ostrom Lifetime Achievement Award to Professor Yoram Barzel (University of Washington). Professor Barzel got his BA from Hebrew University in 1953, and MA in 1956. He moved to the University of Chicago where he got his PhD...

2017 Ronald Coase Best Dissertation Award goes to Elliott Ash

Elliott Ash receiving the Best Dissertation Award from SIOE President Sergei Guriev.

By Nan Jia (on behalf of the 2017 Dissertation Award Committee)

Three faculty members were selected to be the finalists for the 2017 Ronald Coase Best Dissertation Award. They are Elliott Ash (Assistant professor of economics, the University of Warwick: "Essays in political economy and...

A Good Conference

By Scott Gehlbach

What makes for a good conference? The opportunity to see old friends and make new ones. Quality panels with work that challenges and crosses intellectual boundaries. Outstanding plenary sessions. Pleasantly situated receptions and dinners.

And what sort of...

When Are Weak Property Rights Optimal?

By Carmine Guerriero (University of Bologna)

While economists have long maintained that weak property rights are detrimental for development since they discourage effort and investment (Besley and Ghatak, 2010), legal scholars have argued instead that they can be optimal whenever...

What’s Next for the Study of Nondemocracy?

Scott Gehlbach (Wisconsin-Madison) is a newly elected member of SIOE's board . The following essay introduces him to SIOE.org's readers.

By Scott Gehlbach

I’m back from a stimulating workshop on autocracy at Indiana University. Regina Smyth , Armando Razo , and Michael Alexeev...

Special Issue on "Institutions and wellbeing," part 2

Guest post by Toke Aidt, Daniel L. Bennett, and Boris Nikolaev

(This is the second part of a description of a recent special issue in the European Journal of Political Economy , continuing part 1 )

While economic performance provides an indication of economic well-being, the...

Workshop on “Economic Governance of Data-driven Markets”

By Jens Prüfer

The Tilburg Law and Economics Center (TILEC) and the Governance and Regulation Chair (GovReg) at University Paris-Dauphine, PSL Research University will organize a two-day Workshop on “Economic Governance of Data-driven Markets” at Tilburg University, the Netherlands, on...

Special Issue on "Institutions and wellbeing"

Guest post by Toke Aidt, Daniel L. Bennett, and Boris Nikolaev*

For many years, the received wisdom among economists has been that the drivers of economic growth and development are investment in physical capital (machines, buildings, etc.), human capital (education), public...

Organizations as Relational Contracts: Lessons from a New Workshop Series

By Giorgio Zanarone

As I announced in an earlier post, on September 23-24, 2016, CUNEF hosted the second workshop on relational contracts in Madrid. The first workshop was held in 2015 in Munich, and the third one will take place this year at Kellogg. In this post, I briefly summarize a...

EU Job Opening: The Digital Transformation – The Governance of Human Societies

By Jens Prüfer

Here is an interesting job opening for EU citizens with a relevant PhD and expertise in digital markets. We were contacted by the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission, who mentioned that this may be a very suitable vacancy for a researcher in the field of...

Spring Schools in Institutional and Organizational Economics

By Jens Prüfer

Graduate students and junior faculty members may be interested in two spring schools in institutional and organizational economics, to be held in May 2017, which have upcoming deadlines. One is in Europe, the other one in China. Both have a long history.

IOEA...

If a republic be small, it is destroyed by a foreign force; if it be large, it is ruined by an internal imperfection.

The following is the third in a series of guest posts from job market candidates working in Institutional and Organizational Economics (check out the first and second . Watch for the rest of the series over the next couple weeks, and think about interviewing one of these fine students if you...

Guest Post: Thank you for your patronage? Discretionary appointments and the performance of bureaucrats

The following is the second in a series of guest posts from job market candidates working in Institutional and Organizational Economics (check out the first, here ). Watch for the rest of the series over the next couple weeks, and think about interviewing one of these fine students if you have...

Why you might want to pay for privacy even if you think you have “nothing to hide”

The following is the first in a series of guest posts from job market candidates working in Institutional and Organizational Economics. Watch for the rest of the series over the next couple weeks, and think about interviewing one of these fine students if you have an opening. (-PLW)

...

SIOE @ ASSA: Economic and Political Analysis of Institutions and Organizations

By Jens Prüfer

Together with the American Economic Association (AEA) and other 55 associations in related disciplines, jointly known as the Allied Social Sciences Associations (ASSA), SIOE participates in a three-day meeting each January to present papers on general economics topics....

Opportunity for Job-Market Candidates in Institutions and Organizations

By Patrick L. Warren

SIOE likes to highlight new work by young scholars in institutions and organizational economics. This is why we have the Ronald Coase Best Dissertation Award . This year, I want to start a new tradition, blatently stolen from David McKenzie at the World Bank...

35 Best-evaluated Individual Papers from the SIOE 2016 Conference

By Jens Prüfer

Papers submitted to the annual SIOE conferences undergo a thorough review process. For the 2016 conference in Paris, each individually submitted paper was anonymously evaluated for its academic quality by two members of the program committee, chaired by Sergei Guriev. The...

Second Workshop on Relational Contracts: CUNEF, Madrid, September 23-24, 2016.

By Giorgio Zanarone

Relational contracts--that is, collaborative agreements that are too rooted in the parties' informal relationship to be enforced by courts--have emerged in recent decades as a powerful tool to understand institutions and organizations. Reflecting this fact, a yearly...

Exit, Voice and Political Change: Evidence from Swedish Mass Migration to the United States

By Sergei Guriev

Every year, the Society awards the Oliver E. Williamson Best Conference Paper Award to the best paper presented in the SIOE’s Annual Conference. The paper is chosen by an Award Committee made of several members of the conference’s Program Committee and is chaired by the...

Why Organizations Fail: Models and Cases

Review by Dan Barron and Mike Powell

To understand organizations, we have to understand their dynamics: how they grow, how they change, and importantly, how and why they fail. “Why Organizations Fail: Models and Cases” (recently published in the Journal of Economic Literature ; ungated...

Conference "Contracts, Procurement, and Public-Private Arrangements," Paris, June 14-15, 2016

By Stéphane Saussier

Just before SIOE 2016 - and thereby easily combinable - a conference on "Contracts, Procurement, and Public-Private Arrangements" will take place at the Sorbonne Business School in Paris. This conference focuses on the recent developments in contract theories....

Strategy and Institutional & Organizational Economics

By Jackson A. Nickerson and Brian S. Silverman

The field of strategy draws on several cognate disciplines, with the goal of addressing one overarching question: Why are some firms able to obtain sustainable competitive advantage (i.e., consistently higher profits than competitors)? In...

Finance in Motion

By Marian Moszoro

Contemporary history unveils a sophistication of financial markets and instruments—in an interplay of asymmetry of information, principal-agent disconnect, and externalities—to the extent of making them vague and obscure to common understanding. For many years, I have...

SIOE at ASSA

by Patrick L. Warren

Yesterday afternoon, SIOE sponsered a session at the ASSAs in San Francisco entitled "Institutions, Organization, and Entrepreneurship", organized by my colleague Andy Hanssen. In case you weren't able to make it, I wanted to give a brief summary of the papers, which...

Institutional and Organizational Economics Academy (ex-ESNIE): Call for Applications

By Eric Brousseau

From the 16th to the 20th of May 2016 in Corsica (France), the 15th session of the Institutional and Organizational Economics Academy (ex-ESNIE) will take place.

Using rigorous scientific methods, Institutional and Organizational Economics focuses on the...

First Conference on Empirical Legal Studies in Europe (CELSE)

By Jens Prüfer

Just a few days after the SIOE conference in Paris (15-17 June 2016), the First Conference on Empirical Legal Studies in Europe (CELSE) will take place at the University of Amsterdam, on 21-22 June 2016. This may offer a good opportunity to connect both events.

...

On the Economic Effects of (Christian) Religions

By Jens Prüfer

The economic consequences of Christian doctrines have gained great attention since at least Max Weber's “work ethic” hypothesis, that the Protestant Reformation was instrumental in facilitating industrial capitalism - and economic prosperity with it - in Western Europe (...

Weingast on North

By Peter Klein

Barry Weingast offers this nice tribute to Douglas North at EH.Net:

With the passing of Doug North Monday night, the world lost one of the great economists of the last century. Doug was known for his intense curiosity and his relentless – and even mischievous –...

SIOE Session at ASSA 2016: "Institutional Design and Organizational Performance"

By Jens Prüfer

At the upcoming ASSA meetings in San Francisco (January 3-5, 2016), the prime conference on social sciences (including the annual meeting of the American Economic Association), SIOE will host an academic session on "Institutional Design and Organizational Performance."...

Big Data from an Institutional Perspective: Opportunities for Researchers

By Jens Prüfer*

Throughout the last years, the rate of technological progress has accelerated. To a large extent this development was driven by the increasing availability of data, owing to the fact that more and more economic and social transactions take place aided by information and...

The Case of Case Law

By Marian Moszoro & Henry E Smith

Case law used to require analytical thinking and a huge dose of memory to link a large number of court cases and opinions. This is changing, at least in the later aspect. In the last decades, law publishers have started digitizing and distributing...

What do Avner Greif and Simon Gächter have in common?

By Jens Prüfer

Building bridges between the research communities studying Institutions & Organizations, on the one hand, and Behavioral and Experimental Economics, on the other hand, was the goal of the TILEC ( Tilburg Law and Economics Center ) workshop on Economic Governance and...

Economic Governance today: The Credibility Problem and the Clarity Problem

By Jens Prüfer

About 25 years ago, Avner Greif and his co-authors set out to study how the rise, mechanics, and decline of certain institutions in the European middle ages can be explained by the help of game theory (Greif 1989, 1993; Greif, Milgrom, and Weingast 1994). Soon it became...

Deadline Approaching for FOM Conference (Finance, Organizations and Markets)

By Ricard Gil

Two years ago in December 2013 a great tradition started: the Finance, Organizations and Markets Conference first pushed by Gordon Phillips (USC Marshall) and more recently by others such as Kevin Murphy (USC Marshall) or Amit Seru (Chicago Booth). This year (after very...

The Property Rights Theory of Vertical Integration at ISNIE/SIOE 2015

By Ricard Gil

A recurring topic of research at ISNIE in the past and at SIOE in the future has been empirical work on vertical integration. In that literature, most work has concentrated around transaction cost economics (TCE) but yet empirical evidence on property rights theories (PRT...

Call for Papers: 2nd Berkeley-Paris Organizational Economics Workshop (April 2016, Paris)

By Jens Prüfer

The Haas School of Business at the University of California-Berkeley and the Sorbonne Business School are organizing the second joint workshop on Organizational Economics. The event will take place at Sorbonne Business School (University of Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne) on...

Robert Bork’s Forgotten Role in the Transaction Cost Revolution

By Peter G. Klein

"Robert Bork’s Forgotten Role in the Transaction Cost Revolution"

Alan J. Meese Antitrust Law Journal 79, no. 3 (2014)

This essay, prepared for a conference examining Robert Bork’s antitrust contributions, examines Bork’s hitherto unknown role in the...

Workshop on “Economic Governance and Social Preferences” opens registration

By Jens Prüfer

“Economic Governance and Social Preferences” is the title of a workshop that will be held in Tilburg, The Netherlands, on September 3-4, 2015. The Tilburg Law and Economics Center (TILEC) organizes the event in order to bring together scholars from institutional and...

Graduate Level Notes on Organizational Economics

By Patrick L. Warren

Under the Resources tab, under the "Our Field" heading, you can find links to many recent syllabi for classes on organizational and institutional economics throughout the world. But I wanted draw your particular attention to an especially fine set of notes , at the PhD level, on modern organizational economics. These notes were written by Michael Powell at Northwestern Kellogg (with an assist from Dan Barron ), and they cover the most basic version of some of the workhorse models in our discpline. They are great for brushing up on a model you are already familiar with or for learning the key intuitions of something new. As you might expect, given Mike and Dan's background, the notes on relational contracting are particularly good, but all the topics are excellent. They are clear, acccessible, and I commend them to your attention.

On Giants' Shoulders

By Marian Moszoro

"Birds of a feather flock together," goes the saying. At ISNIE/SIOE, it fits perfectly to its commencement and further development. The Society’s first two presidents were Nobel laureates in economics at the time they served—Ronald Coase won the prize in 1991 and Douglass North in 1993—and the third president, Oliver Williamson, received the award some years later in 2009. Also Elinor Ostrom, a co-recipient with Williamson of the distinction, was an active member of ISNIE.

Where do Institutions Come From?

By Sergei Guriev

The debate on the role of institutions has changed dramatically since ISNIE was established in 1996. Research on institutions has become part of economics mainstream. Qualitative and descriptive studies have been complemented by increasingly rigorous quantitative work applying modern and sophisticated econometric methods. Academics in general and ISNIE members in particular, have learnt a lot, not only about correlations but also about causal relationships. There are still many open questions: we do not have a consensus on measuring institutions, on quantitative importance of different kinds of institutions for growth and development and on the factors that may drive the heterogeneity of the impact of institutions. Yet, there is no longer any doubt that institutions are important for economic performance and social development. This leads to a key challenge for our Society – as we are certain that institutions matter we should also try to understand where the institutions come from. Given the importance of this question for policymaking, it must be addressed using research methods of highest academic quality, whether they are qualitative or quantitative studies.

A Good Reason to Study Corporate Culture

By Peter Klein

Corporate culture is hard to define and measure (Kreps’s game-theoretic version is probably the one most familiar to economists), but may play a role in explaining variation in firm performance ( Kreps's game-rethoric ). Of course, one should not invoke “culture” as an explanation for outcomes without specifying some microfoundations . And culture may be as much the result of firm performance as the cause.

In Memoriam

Ronald Coase
Ronald Coase, 1910-2013

SIOE is sorry to report that Ronald Coase, one of ISNIE's founders, passed away on Monday September 2nd at the age of 102.

Professor Coase, honored with the Nobel Prize in 1991, was not only a scholar important to all economists, but one that changed the rules of...