Prague Conference on Political Economy

PCPE 2012 - Guido Calabresi's 80th Birthday Conference

 

with Symposium on

"Law and Economics as an Applied Science. The Legacy of Guido Calabresi"

co-organized by Alain Marciano and Giovanni Ramello 

 

 October 26-28, 2012

 

CEVRO Institute [school of legal and social studies]

 Prague, Czech Republic 

 

List of symposium participants:

GUIDO CALABRESI, Yale University
JULES COLEMAN, Yale University
ENRICO COLOMBATTO, Universitŕ di Torino
MARC GEISTFELD, New York University
JAMES HACKNEY JR., Northeastern University
LAURA KALMAN, University of Califronia at Santa Barbara
ALAIN MARCIANO, Université de Montpellier 1
STEVE MEDEMA, University of Colorado
GIOVANNI B. RAMELLO, Universitŕ del Piemonte Orientale
KIP VISCUSI, Vanderbilt University
BRADLEY WENDEL, Cornell University

 

The contributions of the symposium will appear in vol. 76 of Law and Contemporary Problems,  the oldest journal published at Duke Law School.

 

Call for PCPE papers will be opened by January 2012.

If you have any questions, contact  Dr. Josef Šíma, president of PCPE  at josef.sima@vsci.cz 

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Abstract:

There is no doubt that “law and economics” or “economic analysis of law” are now well established scientific approaches, settled in our intellectual landscape. Their importance is not only theoretical but also -- and quite importantly -- practical. This perspective is so relevant to deal with problems arising from everyday life interaction of human beings embedded in a given legal setting, to become a sort of programmatic issue for law practitioners and scholars. Indeed, the use of economics — economic reasoning and economic modeling — as a tool to tackle otherwise difficult and complex legal problems is frequent, to say the least. Moreover, economic courses play currently an important role in the formation of judges and legal scholars. All this is the result of a movement that was initiated before the second world war, became structured in the 1950s and took shape in the 1960s and 1970s essentially under the influence of the economists and legal scholars of the University of Chicago or that can be linked to Chicago. However, without questioning the importance of that tradition, one cannot acknowledge the current intense interplay between law and economics without recognizing the seminal contribution by the “outsider” Guido Calabresi. The latter, as early as in 1961, with the contribution “Some Thoughts on Risk Distribution and the Law of Tort”, provided the means for transforming the Chicagoan approach into a robust and practical methodology for confronting real problems, as he himself argued, “in terms which are intelligible to law teachers, if not to lawyers, and without that suicidal desire of the economist to make his theory so pervasive and detailed that it is rendered utterly useless to the lawyer who lives in the real world of men, and even to the law teacher, wherever he lives” (Calabresi, 1961, p. 500).

Thus, it appears that, by contrast with economists or legal scholars such as Harold Demsetz or Richard Posner, Calabresi did not claim that economics could be used as a criterion of justice. The allocation of resources was an important element to take into account by judges but it was to be completed by other elements. By contrast with Ronald Coase, for instance, Calabresi did not claim that markets were always efficient; more precisely, the conditions for market efficiency were stronger than the conditions put forward by Coase and this led Calabresi to conclude that market efficiency was not empirically valid. By contrast with what most economists argue, Calabresi did not believe in individual rationality and — somehow anticipating the findings of behavioral law and economics — claimed that individuals are less rational than what economists normally believe. These are some of the major elements that Calabresi used to built “niche” (to use Laura Kalman's words) at Yale where he developed his own,
The purpose of this symposium is to focus on Guido's Calabresi “economic analysis of law” starting from his 1961 seminal contribution. Our purpose is to discuss Calabresi's specific way of applying economics to analyze legal problems. We propose to offer a discussion with many dimensions and objectives. A first objective of the symposium will thus be to locate Calabresi's work in an historical perspective – something which has never be really and precisely be done – in order to understand how his work was made possible in the context of the 1960s, how the Yale tradition was maintained in front of the Chicagoan tradition and how Calabresi's work compares to Coase's or Posner's works. Second, of course, we plan to have a discussion of how Calabresi's views, theories were and how useful they were and how different they are from the rules that are used by judges and legal decision makers. Actually, the pioneer attitude of Calabresi in using economics for “analyzing” legal problems and providing normative solution, namely the determination of a liability rule in case of accidents and nuisance, has become a benchmark for subsequent developments. For instance, one may note that Calabresi’s “Some Thoughts on Risk Distribution and the Law of Tort” highlighted the potential role of tort liability in terms of its insurance function as a risk spreading device. Is it the case that liability indeed serve an insurance function?
 

 

 

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PCPE Memorial Lectures 2011

March 25—27, 2011

 

The highlights of the PCPE are named lectures commemorating the heritage of two political economist, towering statures of social sciences, whose lives are bound with the city of Prague: Franz Cuhel and Friedrich Wieser. These lectures are associated with memorial prizes of the same name.

The Cuhel Memorial Lecture 2011 will be delivered by Peter Boettke. Peter Boettke is a professor of economics at George Mason University, the BB&T Professor for the Study of Capitalism, vice president for research, and research director for the Global Prosperity Initiative at the Mercatus Center, and the deputy director of the James M. Buchanan Center for Political Economy. Boettke has authored numerous books and articles (his most recent book Challenging Institutional Analysis and Development: The Bloomington School was published Routledge, 2009). Since 1998 Boettke has served as an editor of the Review of Austrian Economics.

 

The Wieser Memorial Lecture 2011 will be deliverd by Terry Anderson. Terry Anderson is the John and Jean De Nault Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and also the executive director of PERC—the Property and Environment Research Center—a think tank in Bozeman, Montana, that focuses on market solutions to environmental problems. T. Anderson is the author or editor of thirty books including Free Market Environmentalism which is a pioneering attempt to establish a property-based approach to environment protection. Anderson has published widely in both professional journals and the popular press on private property related issues.

The Prague Conference on Political Economy is an international and interdisciplinary gathering of scholars and supporters (not only) of the Austrian School of Economics and political economy of freedom.

During two days of the conference (Friday afternoon and Satuday), participants will have an opportunity to participate in lectures and debates focusing on economics, political science, history, philosophy and other humanities, and to discuss these issues with leading theorists in the field, both from Europe and overseas.

This conference is an attempt to resurrect the tradition of Austrian economics- and liberty-oriented thinking that thrived in central Europe at the beginning of the 20th century, but sadly disappeared thereafter. By establishing an annual forum for scholars and students to meet and exchange ideas we hope to build a solid institutional basis for the advancement of the liberty-oriented research program.

The Conference takes place in the quaint and newly reconstructed building of the CEVRO Institute College in the heart of Prague, the capital of Czech Republic.

As the president of the conference, I believe that the 2011 conference will keep up the good spirit of previous years. We will do our best to succeed in making the 2011 conference at least as stimulating and useful as the past ones. We also believe that your participation will make the conference an even greater success.

We hope you will join us!
prof. Josef Sima, Ph.D., president of the CEVRO Institute College (josef.sima@vsci.cz)