The third plenary conference of the Priority Programme 1859 took place from 16 to 19 April 2018 at the German-Italian Centre for European Excellence Villa Vigoni.
This working conference served to synthesize results from individual projects and to prepare the second research period.
Conference Description:
Economic decisions are made in a complex environment under considerable uncertainty, and their actual effects become recognizable only in the future. Although economic expectations are the keystone of economic behaviour, their historical dimension has not been researched in depth so far. The priority programme 1859 studies experience and expectation as interrelated cognitive processes pointing to the past and the future which enable economic actors to realise their decisions in the present.
Three topics are of especial interest:
1) the direct impact of historical events and actors' experience on the formation of expectations;
2) changes in the manner in which expectations are formed through history; and
3) the role of shocks, crises, and structural ruptures for economic expectations.
The projects study a broad sample of cases examined over long time periods. Empirical research objects include sovereign debt markets, enterprises, economic policy and regulation regimes, and economic expertise.
The programme relies on a systematic combination of historical and economic approaches, and integrates sociology and law into its research design. Through its interdisciplinary profile and consistent combination of theoretical models with empirical history, the programme is to produce innovative answers to a central economic problem, and hopefully will incite fresh ideas in its neighbouring disciplines.
Detailed programme:
Monday 16 April 2018
17:00
Welcome and introduction
17:30
Keynote: „Should we talk?“ and other empirical questions about human conversations
Prof. Dr. Georg Weizsäcker - Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
19:00
Aperitif
-----Dinner-----
Tuesday 17 April 2018
09:00 – 10:30
Keynote: „Kenneth Boulding‘s Image. The Economics of cooperation and the rejection of rational choice”
Jenny Anderson
-----Coffee break-----
11:00 – 13:00
Interim Reports from the projects in a common plenum
-----Lunch-----
14:30 – 15:30
Interim Results of the PP 1859
16:00 – 17:30
Keynote: „Cultures of decision making, expectations and the transformation of rural estate management around 1800“
Prof. Dr. Ulrich Pfister - Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster
-----Coffee break-----
18:00 – 19:30
Keynote: „The Financial imagination and the distinction between Econs and Finons“
Prof. Dr. Karin Knorr-Cetina - University of Chicago
-----Dinner-----
Wednesday 18 April 2018
09:00 – 10:30
Outlook to the second funding period
-----Coffee break-----
11:00 – 13:00
Parallel Working Groups I
a) postgraduate workshop
b) project presentation "Macroeconomic Forecasting"
-----Lunch-----
14:30 – 15:30
Parallel Working Groups II
a) cross-project synthesis
b) planning of cooperation for the secon funding period
-----Coffee break-----
16:30 – 18:00
Parallel Working Groups III
a) Q&A: Perspectives of the academic offspring
b) cross-project synthesis
18:00 – 19:30
Keynote: „Unternehmen im Kapitalismus als Manager von Erwartungen“
Prof. Dr. Thomas Welskopp - Universität Bielefeld
-----Dinner-----
Tuesday 19 April 2018
Departure after Breakfast