ESHET Conference 2025

AFED

Is it the End of the History of Economics (as We Know It)? Bibliometrics analysis, Natural Langage Processing and the History of Law and Economics

Alain Marciano, Angela Ambrosino, Morten Luchtmann, Maxime Méloux, Samuel Ferey

Association Française d'Économie du Droit

The history of economic thought is marked by a strong and deep evolution in the tools used by historians. Text analysis remains at the core of the historian’s work, but the tools are evolving: network and graph analysis, bibliographical analysis, word frequency analysis, and topic modeling are increasingly used. As these new methods spread across the field, it remains unclear whether this evolution is merely a passing trend or the prelude to the end of the history of economics as we know it. This session aims to illustrate how these approaches are reshaping the history of economics by focusing on a specific subfield: analysis economic of law. Law and economics is considered one of the main interdisciplinary disciplines bridging law and the social sciences. The history of law and economics remains complex, as it stands at the crossroads of several fields and influences, including public law, politics, ideology, and economic methodology. How can new methods provide valuable insights into the birth and development of this interdisciplinary field?

The first paper is dedicated to a general bibliographical analysis focusing on the formative period of law and economics (1958–1972). During this period, law and economics lacked a clear identity. Through a bibliometric approach, we aim to shed light on the nature of early law and economics, its evolution as a field, and the pivotal role played by journals in shaping its identity and scholarly focus.

The second paper examines the Posner/Becker Blog to investigate the impact of the 2008 financial crisis on Richard Posner and Gary Becker. Using Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques, this paper explores whether their differing perspectives on the crisis can be discerned in their blog posts. It also analyzes how the crisis influenced their blogging agenda and identifies broader disparities in their opinions. The analysis covers 878 blog posts over nine years and utilizes NLP methods, including topic modeling and semantic network creation, aided by the BERTopic model. This study sheds light on the complex interplay between major events, economics, and the engagement of public intellectuals.

The third paper analyzes all the articles published by Cass Sunstein between the late 1980s and the early 2000s. Sunstein is well known for playing a major role in introducing behavioral insights into the law and economics agenda. Word frequency analysis, along with more complex NLP techniques, suggests that Sunstein's behavioral turn occurred in the mid-1990s (1996–1997). During this period, behavioral topics replaced republican topics, and classical concepts such as domination and poverty lost their republican meaning to take on a behavioral perspective. NLP methods are used to objectively analyze this methodological and political shift.

AISPE

Maffeo Pantaleoni economist, historian and feminist

Nicola Giocoli, Manuela Mosca, Claudia Rotondi

Associazione italiana per la storia del pensiero economico (website)

Even though there has been no systematic analysis of the figure of Maffeo Pantaleoni (1857-1924), studies on his thought have proliferated far and wide. However, with an author like him there is no end to the new aspects one can discover. The aim of this session is to highlight the multiplicity of Maffeo Pantaleoni original thought.

The first paper deals with Pantaleoni’s 1898 essay in the Economic Journal, “An Attempt to Analyse the Concepts of ‘Strong and Weak’ in Their Economic Connection”, focusing on his original reply to the challenge raised by sociologists against the autonomy of economics. It shows how this essay can be taken as a pioneering contribution to an issue that has recently received renewed attention, namely, the diffusion of the so-called zero-sum logic. Moreover, the paper reinterprets Pantaleoni’s analysis in terms of the distinction made by John R. Commons between bargaining, managerial and rationing transactions.

The second paper reconstructs the significant presence of history in Pantaleoni's writings, both in reference to ideas and economic facts. It suggests caution against an interpretation without nuances of his position in the methodological debate about the interaction between economic theory and history. This paper aims to investigate the role that history can play, according to Pantaleoni, for an economic science that aspires to be “pure”.

The third paper addresses Pantaleoni's view of feminism, a cause he supported on many occasions and to which he devoted sporadic but profound reflections. It shows that, when he used the figure of homo oeconomicus – placing it at the centre of economic theory and disseminating it – he conceived it as an exclusively masculine figure, due to women's anti-selectionist, non-economic attitudes.

EAEPE

The political economy of production and distribution

Matteo Deleidi, Riccardo Pariboni, Davide Romaniello, Ricardo Araujo, Alessandro Le Donne, Stefano di Bucchianico

European Association for Evolutionary Political Economy

EAEPE’s Research Area [R] Classical Theory and Policy Analysis aims to give its contribution to the reconstruction of economic theory and policy analysis along the lines of the classical or surplus approach. In particular it aims to overcome the present-day split between economics and other social sciences and to promote:
• research on the determinants of distribution and capital accumulation along the lines of the surplus approach
• research on Keynes and the role of effective demand in determining the trend of social product
• the critique of the modern versions of the theory in terms of demand and supply
• economic policy proposals alternative to those advanced on the basis of the dominant neoclassical theories
• discussions with other critical and heterodox approaches
• studies on the method of analysis adopted by the classical theory and its relationship with Institutionalism
ESHET’s forthcoming Annual Conference will provide an ideal intellectual environment for a fruitful discussion along the lines briefly outlined above.

EoF

"Economy of Francesco: New Horizons in Economics"

Valentina Erasmo, Giulia Gioeli, Giorgia Lucchini

Economy of Francesco

The 28th Annual Conference of the European Society for the History of Economic Thought (ESHET) will be held at the Università di Torino, Italy, May 22-24. The conference is entitled "It's the end of economics (as we know it)". The economics discipline appears increasingly fragmented: this is due mainly, but not exclusively, to the launch of new interdisciplinary research programs – that is, jointly developed with other social sciences – that significantly deviate from the neoclassical core. Fragmentation is however not only a potential threat to the unity of knowledge, but it also creates room for a new plurality of visions, alternative to the one that dominates orthodox economics, and among them, the Economy of Francesco (EoF).

Promoted by Pope Francis, EoF aims to build a more inclusive, ethical, and sustainable economy capable of addressing the challenges of our time, and particularly the persisting socioeconomic inequalities around the world. In this sense, EoF is a call to action for economists and other social scientists (young scholars in particular), entrepreneurs, and changemakers to rethink economic systems through the core principles of solidarity, justice and sustainability inspired by Franciscan values. For more, visit the EoF website.

EoF is therefore launching this call for abstracts for a joint session with ESHET entitled "Economy of Francesco: New Horizons in Economics" to discuss how the EoF perspective can introduce new concepts, practices, and approaches (horizons) in economics. These new horizons also require a rethinking of economists' role. According to the EoF perspective, economists should play an active role in this new renewal of economic principles.

HDCA

“How do human development and the capability approach reshape economics? A multidisciplinary perspective”

Nadeera Rajapakse, Pietro Ghirlanda, Enrica Chiappero Martinetti, Mateo Rodriguez

Human Development & Capability Association

The main topic of the 28th ESHET Conference in Torino, Italy, 22-24 May 2025, Campus Luigi Einaudi, is the changing face of economics, or the “end” of a traditional view of the discipline under the impact of three main forces.
● First, a critical reading of the phenomena of specialization and fragmentation in research promoted by the prevalence of a find-your-niche approach in contemporary economics.
● Second, the ever-increasing prestige of empirical research and the “applied turn” in economics, favored by new techniques and (big) data, but also by economics’ policy orientation.
● Third, the new interdisciplinarity of economics and the transformative impact other disciplines are having upon it, as demonstrated by the variety of research programs in mainstream economics.

The future - and present - of economics is at a crossroads. The abovementioned factors are driving the discipline away from theory – from both standard theory but also, in general, from theory itself. On one side, economics seminars and papers increasingly appear as exercises in applied econometrics using hitherto unexplored databases for purposes of policy evaluations. On the other, the discipline's mainstream seems characterized by unprecedented variety, populated by a series of research programs that deviate from the neoclassical core and have their origins in other disciplines. From the monism of neoclassical theory, during the decades of economics imperialism - when economics was mainly theoretical - to today’s fragmentation: it’s (or may be) the end of economics as we know it. While economics is now threatened by the risk of losing identity, with the fading out of (theoretical) foundations, it can explore an opportunity of pluralism, directing attention toward frontier issues, like innovation, sustainability, and gender, that most profit from the discipline’s applied turn and its new openness to neighboring social sciences. 

Thus, the conference addresses the changing status of economics, but not just from a historical perspective. Other approaches and methodologies are more than welcomed. In this regard, the ESHET 2025 local organizing committee is strongly committed to establishing new connections with different economic and social sciences societies to offer a pluralistic perspective on the conference's central theme. For this reason, the ESHET and
the HDCA are launching this call for a joint session entitled “How do human development and the capability approach reshape economics? A multidisciplinary perspective.
This joint session aims to foster exchanges between the ESHET and the HDCA communities for discussing common research topics - based on our respective methodological approaches - to offer new interdisciplinary analyses on relevant themes in contemporary economic debate.

Session organizers

Valentina Erasmo and Gianni Vaggi

HES

Roundtable on Historiographical Traditions in ESHET and HES

Pedro G. Duarte, Annie Cot, John Davis, Harro Maas, Steve Medema

History of Economics Society

While historiographical discussions have been pressing issues among historians of economics for many years, they have not featured prominently in recent years despite the many changes the history of economics has undergone. At the same time, societies dedicated to the history of economics continue to explore ways to strengthen the field, recognizing that the subject is no longer highly regarded by economics departments in many parts of the world. As a result, questions about how to write histories become intertwined with strategies for expanding the field.

This roundtable, therefore, explores the question “What are the historiographic traditions of ESHET and HES, and how have they changed?” —as a potential lens through which to examine the challenges that these societies face in helping the history of economics grow strong and healthy.

Minerva Lab

Minerva Lab

Women as Producers of Economic Ideas

Angela Ambrosino, Izaskun Zuazu, Giulia Zacchia, Svenja Flechtner

More than twenty years ago, Backhouse, Middleton, and Tribe (1997), providing excellent research on ‘what economists do’, made a plea for analyzing economists’ publications in terms of their main fields of research and methods used. While an extensive body of work on trends in publications and the development of different networks of economists has been produced, a smaller effort has been devoted to identifying the gender dynamics of these processes. The session aims to provide some insights in this direction.

PhD in Global History of Empires (1)

Conceptual History of Economics in Iberconceptos: Interdisciplinary Perspectives for Reviving the Centrality of the History of Economic Thought

Mattia Steardo, Alberto Tena Camporesi, Matias X. Gonzalez Field 

PhD in Global History of Empires

The Iberconceptos Project – a pioneering network in the conceptual history of the Ibero-American world – has been conducting research for over two decades within the theoretical framework of Conceptual History. Its approach integrates innovative methodologies derived from the linguistic turn and intersections with political history to analyse the historical transformation of social, cultural, and epistemological concepts. Over its trajectory, the network has organized its work into specialized thematic groups. In recent years it started addressing dimensions such as visual languages, temporalities, religion, and translations.

In 2024, as part of its interdisciplinary expansion, the group “History of Economic Concepts” was established. This new focus aims to apply the tools of conceptual history – until now predominantly centred on debates within the political sphere – to the study of economic thought. It seeks, on the one hand, to broaden the thematic scope of the project by incorporating notions such as “market”, “property”, “political economy”, or “work” in their historical and transatlantic dimensions; and on the other hand, to renew methodologies within the field of the history of economic thought, combining the semantic analysis of sources with critical-historical reflection on fundamental concepts in economic history.

This agenda also speaks to recent surge in interest in the history of political economy and its relationship with European overseas expansion. For instance, it is now assumed the centrality of this science for European empires well before the publication of Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations. This move is expanding the traditional canon of the history of economic thought (HET), stressing the importance of including new sources and geographies for understanding the early modern and modern history of economic thinking. At the same time, calls for reviving the centrality of the HET in economics faculties multiplicated. Once a building block of every economist’s education, this subdiscipline had risked disappearing from curricula due to the professionalisation and mathematisation of the wider discipline. A growing dissatisfaction toward its progressive alienation from reality had pushed the success of heterodox approaches and interdisciplinarity, fostering interest for the old-fashioned topic of HET.

In this panel, we present our individual research framed in the interdisciplinary purpose of the “History of Economic Concepts” research group. By providing a platform for historians and historians of economic thought to confront their theoretical perspectives, our goal is to present one possible solution to revive the centrality of HET if combined with historic-conceptual tools and informed by an historical perspective. The first paper analyses the polysemic nature of political economy during the Age of Revolutions, by studying meanings attached to this science Spanish colonial administrators and Creole patriots. Against the traditional HET canon, it is showed that during its formation years, political economy might serve the political purposes of a monarchical empire as well as representative republic. The second one turns to France, and the early discussions about the epistemological status of economic science. It analyses debates on industry and the emergence of industrialism between 1818 and 1823 to show the political and social limits imposed on the development of political economy in the subsequent years. The last paper offers an historiographical take, critically examining the longstanding dichotomy between “rational reconstructions” and “historical reconstructions” in the HET. The proposed argument contends that adopting intellectual history as a framework for HET allows for a richer and more analytically precise understanding of economic ideas.

PhD in Global History of Empires (2)

American Political Economy and Protectionism in the Long Nineteenth Century

Matteo Rossi, Sofia Valeonti, Stephen Meardon

PhD in Global History of Empires

The session examines how American political economists have thought about the role of government in economic development, with special attention to protection for import-competing producers. The time span is the long nineteenth century, from the beginning of government under the U.S. Constitution in 1789 to the end of the presidency of W.H. Taft in 1913, on the eve of the First World War. Together the papers cover most of this span.

Matteo Rossi contrasts the protectionism espoused by American political economists of the late eighteenth century with that of the succeeding generation, including Henry C. Carey, Calvin Colton, and others, who were active while industrialization gained momentum in the Northeast. Rossi finds that protectionism changed in conjunction with the role of government: that role had become the promotion of the very character of capitalist development that organized labor had begun to contest.

Sofia Valeonti (with co-author Ariel Ron) examines the vision of economic development beheld by John Sherman, US Senator from Ohio and Treasury Secretary during the postbellum era of Reconstruction. Sherman sought to promote industrialization without neglecting agriculture. Valeonti shows how his unusual combination of policies, protectionism plus the resumption of gold payments, was intended for that purpose.

Stephen Meardon studies the response of the administration of W.H. Taft to the growing restiveness of the American public about the relation between protectionism and market power. President Taft assembled a Tariff Board, directed by Yale economics professor Henry C. Emery, to provide a judicious regulatory remedy to the entanglement of market power with political power. Meardon shows that Emery’s ideas and the Tariff Board’s work were consistent with longstanding Republican doctrine.

PRIN 2022KKWTTK

The Economic Thought of Italian Women (1750-1999)

Giandomenica Becchio, Manuela Mosca, Paolo Di Martino, Teodoro Togati

PRIN 2022 (2022KKWTTK)

The session will present a research project still in progress, focusing on the thought and impact of a large number of overlooked or forgotten Italian female “economists” between 1750 and 1950. The primary aim of the project is to reconstruct the economic thought of as many Italian women as possible, and to highlight and analyze their economic ideas, as well as their influence on economic culture, policy, facts and theory, alongside their international connections. To achieve this goal, the research has conducted the first ever census of these figures and created an online database, which will be linked to the ASEE archive, currently almost entirely devoted to men economists. After a methodological introduction and a presentation of the project’s findings, this session will offer a detailed a reconstruction of the thought and impact of two neglected Italian women: the cultural entrepreneur Maria Adriana Prolo (1908-1991), founder of the Museum of Cinema in Turin, and the economist Costanza Costantino (1913-1992), who made significant contributions to the analysis of economic fluctuations and stabilization policies.

PRIN 2022SNTEFP

Research Evaluation and the Role of Academic Journals in Today’s Economics

Alberto Baccini, Lucio Barabesi, Carlo Debernardi, Mario Cedrini, Nadia Garbellini, Roberto Lampa., Alessandro Le Donne

PRIN 2022, 2022SNTEFP

The 28th European Society for the History of Economic Thought (ESHET) Conference in Torino, Italy, 22-24 May 2025, Campus Luigi Einaudi, will contribute to discussing the changing state of economics. The main idea inspiring the Conference is that economics is undergoing a significant transformation due - among other factors - to radical specialization and a new openness towards other disciplines. It is to be noted that these changes often produce a proliferation of new “niche” journals, which serve as focal points for advancing specific topics of inquiry, as reflected in their stated aims and scope. 

In this context of increasing fragmentation, academic journals will become even more important in structuring the discipline. We here invite submissions for a special session dedicated to exploring the role of scholarly journals in today’s economics and the critical issue of research assessment. While discussions on the current system of academic publishing often focus on criticizing the system itself - whether, in particular, the mechanisms  (e.g., journal-based impact factor metrics) for evaluating academic output or, less frequently, for the multiple biases at stake in peer review processes -, concrete solutions to effectively remedy these shortcomings are rarely explored. 

This session aims to foster a productive and collaborative debate about desirable reform proposals, so to speak, of the current academic publishing system (peer review and research assessment), focusing on structural factors. We therefore invite scholars to propose fresh perspectives and actionable strategies to address the abovementioned challenges.

STOREP

On the teaching of economics. The historical dimension in economics textbooks

Ghislain Deleplace, Giulia Giappichelli, Daniela Tavasci

STOREP - Associazione italiana per la storia dell'economia politica

Behavioral economics in historical perspective: rationality, agency, and psychological narratives

Behavioral economics in historical perspective: rationality, agency, and psychological narratives

Malte Dold, Mario Rizzo, Ivan Moscati

Behavioral economics challenges traditional economic assumptions and raises profound philosophical questions about human decision-making, rationality, and welfare.

This session explores key issues in the history and philosophy of behavioral economics, focusing on the evolving concept of rationality as a normative standard, the status of human agency in policies inspired by behavioral insights, and the epistemic functions of psychological narratives in behavioral decision models.

The three papers in this session critically examine these themes through distinct yet interrelated perspectives, and offer new insights into the conceptual underpinnings of behavioral economics and its policy implications.

Beyond the common places of the history of economics (I)

Beyond the common places of the history of economics (I)

Roni Hirsch, Federico D'Onofrio, Joanna Gautier Morin

The history of economics deals with the work, thought, and instruments of (political) economists. Its prime sites of interest are mostly found in academic settings, within the university discipline of economics, or in institutions of economic expertise. In two successive sessions, we want to probe what historians of economics can contribute to a history of economic knowledge beyond these common figures and sites.

The contributions relate to actors, ideas, and actions outside the academic discipline and the usual institutions of economic expertise. Some of our historical actors are social workers, farmers, industrial workers, bus drivers, or activists. Others come from specific areas of expertise and work as sociologists, demographers, or engineers. The sites we investigate involve the shop floor, the street, UN Commissions, the National Black Feminist Organization, and bus stations. What links our studies is that the relevant actors self-consciously opposed conventional economic doctrines, metrics, and entities. Whether through vernacular categories, experiential knowledge, or alternative research, they raised concerns about global economic inequality, intersectional systems of oppression, or the detrimental effects of automation.

In our sessions, we will investigate the different strategies of how these actors sought to make marginalized and ignored phenomena visible, and how they conceptualized their knowledge as opposed, alternative, or “counter” to economics and political economy. How to better understand the relations between whatever was accepted as proper economic knowledge and what was not? And to which extent do we need to change our own historiographical categories, methodological approaches, and ideas of proper source material to deal with different forms of economic knowledge?

Beyond the common places of the history of economics (II)

 Beyond the common places of the history of economics (II)

Verena Halsmayer, Cléo Chassonery Zaigouche, Gerardo Serra

The history of economics deals with the work, thought, and instruments of (political) economists. Its prime sites of interest are mostly found in academic settings, within the university discipline of economics, or in institutions of economic expertise. In two successive sessions, we want to probe what historians of economics can contribute to a history of economic knowledge beyond these common figures and sites.

The contributions relate to actors, ideas, and actions outside the academic discipline and the usual institutions of economic expertise. Some of our historical actors are social workers, farmers, industrial workers, bus drivers, or activists. Others come from specific areas of expertise and work as sociologists, demographers, or engineers. The sites we investigate involve the shop floor, the street, UN Commissions, the National Black Feminist Organization, and bus stations. What links our studies is that the relevant actors self-consciously opposed conventional economic doctrines, metrics, and entities. Whether through vernacular categories, experiential knowledge, or alternative research, they raised concerns about global economic inequality, intersectional systems of oppression, or the detrimental effects of automation.

In our sessions, we will investigate the different strategies of how these actors sought to make marginalized and ignored phenomena visible, and how they conceptualized their knowledge as opposed, alternative, or “counter” to economics and political economy. How to better understand the relations between whatever was accepted as proper economic knowledge and what was not? And to which extent do we need to change our own historiographical categories, methodological approaches, and ideas of proper source material to deal with different forms of economic knowledge?

Cambridge Companion to Women’s Economic Thought

Cambridge Companion to Women’s Economic Thought

Claudia Sunna, Harro Maas, Giulia Zacchia, Marcella Corsi, Erica Aloè, Robert Dimand

The session aims to present some of the contributions of a work in progress that explores women’s economic thinking in history beyond single biographies to uncover broad systemic themes and groupings and to imagine ways in which their contribution can support the inclusion of more women into contemporary economic teaching at the undergraduate and graduate level. The contributions aim to define why, and to what impact women have worked around the edges of what might be considered mainstream economics in their effort to address social cooperation and organization. This includes activists, home economists, sociologists, political scientists and individuals in fields that tend to have a high interdisciplinary quotient such as development economics.

Elements in History of Economics: a new series of essays in Cambridge’s Elements Series

Elements in History of Economics: a new series of essays in Cambridge’s Elements Series

Chair: Harro Maas. Participants: Cléo Chassonnery-Zaïgouche, Pedro G. Duarte, Johanna Gautier-Morin, Phil Good, Verena Halsmayer, Guilherme Sampaio, Francesco Sergi 

This session will present a new series of essays in history of economics with Cambridge University Press (CUP) in its Elements Series. The editors of this new series, Cléo Chassonnery-Zaïgouche, Pedro Duarte, Catherine Herfeld and Harro Maas will present the outline and purpose of this new series. Phil Good, the Economics Editor with Cambridge will provide more general information on the Elements Series, and authors currently writing the first essays in this series will tell us about their experiences. The CUP–Elements Series in History of Economics aims to provide learned essays on the state of existing scholarship and its limitations, and to reflect on promising new avenues for research. The series targets historians of economics, economists, and the wider and still growing academic readership interested in the history of economics. HE-Elements also aims to redress the balance of scholarship by identifying and addressing ‘zones of silence’ that have remained outside of the history of economics’ purview and aims to highlight new pathways of research for audiences of Master and PhD students that cross over different disciplines and may extend to the interested layperson. The essays will be published open access.

In honour of Daniel Diatkine

Alessandro Le Donne, Ecem Okan, Jason Lesne

Our friend and colleague Professor Daniel Diatkine (University Evry-Val-d’Essonne, France) passed away following an accident on the 19th of October 2024. This special session is organized in his honour, with papers that would have interested him and that he would have enjoyed discussing.

Chair: Nathalie Sigot (PHARE, University Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne). Introductory talk by André Lapidus (PHARE, University Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne).

Karl Mittermaier

Karl Mittermaier: A methodology for a different form of economics

Michael Stettler, Karl-Friedrich Israel, Jochen Runde, Uskali Mäki

Karl Mittermaier’s work was rediscovered after his death, when were published The hand behind the market (2021) and A realist philosophy of economics (2024). These works are very original, and very useful from the perspective of a methodological criticism of mainstream economics and, beyond, in allowing to show why indeed economics is ceasing to be as it used to. In particular, Mittermaier criticized mainstream economics for ignoring the difference between “ex ante” and “ex post” facts, where the former represent enduring structures or systems (e.g., institutions, causal mechanisms) that persist over time and guide human action, while the latter pertain to historical events, specific occurrences that happen in particular contexts and are influenced by unique circumstances, coincidences, or chance.
The session includes three papers that all focus one this distinction to complementarily show, 1) why it allows to criticize mainstream economics; 2) how it relates to the work of another major and heterodox economists, Ludwig von Mises; and 3) how it compares with another criticism of mainstream economics, the Cambridge Social Ontology of Tony Lawson.

Three papers explore this distinction further.

Michael Stettler critiques Paul Samuelson's Revealed Preference Theory (RPT), arguing that RPT misrepresents past events as underlying economic structures. By treating ex post outcomes as if they were ex ante preferences, RPT overlooks the dynamic, context-dependent nature of human choices.

Karl-Friedrich Israel compares Mittermaier’s views with those of Ludwig von Mises, noting that both reject positivist approaches that treat historical data as the basis for universal laws. While Mises focuses on deductive reasoning, Mittermaier emphasizes the role of institutions and theory-ladenness in shaping economic knowledge. Both, however, maintain a shared belief in separating enduring principles from specific historical occurrences.

Jochen Runde contrasts Mittermaier's critique of mainstream economics with the Cambridge Social Ontology (CSO) school, highlighting shared concerns about deterministic models and the importance of enduring structures. Runde also discusses Mittermaier’s critique of microeconomic equilibrium theory and advocates for a retrospective, exploratory framework in economic analysis.

Uskali Mäki concludes by offering a framework of "minimal realism"; to accommodate diverse scientific disciplines, including economics. He evaluates Mittermaier’s realist philosophy within this broader context, exploring its fit with his concept of realism in the philosophy of science.

Model Transfer in the History of Economics

Model Transfer in the History of Economics

Edoardo Peruzzi, Murat Bakeev, Elizaveta Burina 

A notable feature of contemporary science is the transfer of models or modeling techniques across vastly different scientific domains. Modern science is indeed replete with examples in which models or methodologies are adopted across diverse fields or even entire disciplines, including the Lotka-Volterra equations, the Ising model, and network models, among others. Economics, with its long history of model-based analysis, is no exception. This session explores three cases of model transfer in economics from both historical and methodological perspectives. The first paper, by Edoardo Peruzzi, examines the diffusion of game-theoretic models in economics, arguing that it was driven by a process of formal template accumulation—an iterative process of designing and accumulating templates over time. The paper also assesses the implications of this transfer process for progress in economics. The second paper, by Murat Bakeev, reconstructs the early efforts to transfer classifier systems from computer science to economics with the aim of using them in modeling “artificially intelligent” economic agents, which occurred under the auspices of the Santa Fe Institute. The third paper, by Elizaveta Burina, explores the use of formalized tools—such as models and equations—derived from the natural sciences, especially physics and chemistry, in economic modeling and the social engineering of a new socialist order during the early years of the nascent USSR. By studying these three historical case studies, we aim to draw lessons on how economics interacts with other disciplines, particularly in terms of models as tools that can be borrowed and adapted across domains. This session seeks to analyze the shifting boundaries between economics and other fields, reflecting on economics’ historical insularity and its desire for independence, while acknowledging the essential interconnections with other sciences that have shaped the evolution of economic thought.

National sovereignty and European order

National sovereignty and European order

Kseniia Lopukh, Antonio Magliulo, Fabio Masini

The period after the First World War was one of the most complex and dynamic in the history of the 20th century. It was the period of the extinction of empires, and the establishment of a new world order based on the principle of self-determination of nations and the emergence of new sovereign states. At the same time, it was also the period in which national sovereignties were deemed as a hindrance to the designing of a more equitable and peaceful international order. The purpose of this panel is to analyze and compare the thought of some leading economists on the relationship between national sovereignty and the European order.