According to the most recent Flash Eurobarometer a lack of capital and financial resources is the main reason not to engage in entrepreneurship. It has long been known that personal wealth and entrepreneurship are positively correlated (Evans and Jovanovic, 1989; Evans and Leighton, 1989), but this could be driven by differences in ability or preferences, such as lower risk aversion, rather than access to finance (Hurst and Lusardi, 2004). Other studies investigate how entrepreneurship responds to financial sector reforms (Black and Strahan, 2002) or to changes in house prices (Schmalz, Sraer and Thesmar, 2017), but a key issue when exploiting such aggregate shocks is how to separate the effect of financial constraints from that of local demand and other general equilibrium effects (Kerr, Kerr and Nanda, 2019). Additionally, a growing body of research emphasizes the differences between entrepreneurs who have the skills and the desire to extend their businesses, and those who do not (Schoar, 2010; Levine and Rubinstein, 2016). Previous empirical evidence on how financial constraints affect different types of entrepreneurs, however, is limited.
This contribution investigates the effect of financial constraints on entrepreneurship using a Portuguese public programme called Single Amount (“Montante Único”). This programme allows any individual on unemployment insurance (UI) to collect the entire amount of their benefits upfront in order to start a business, instead of receiving it monthly (during a given maximum duration). Programme participants cannot earn labour income from any source other than their business for a period of three years, otherwise they must repay the full amount received.
Our data include the population of subsidized unemployed in Portugal between 2009 and 2012. The entrepreneurs in our sample have higher pre-unemployment wages than the overall workforce, and businesses created through the programme are more likely to be incorporated than the average business. (1) However, the distribution of outcomes among incorporated businesses created through the programme is similar to the overall population of incorporated businesses. (2)
The amount that potential entrepreneurs can access through the programme equals € 11,600 on average in our sample, and it increases discontinuously at age 30, at age 40 and at age 45 due to UI rules. The average increase around the three age cut-offs equals € 2,200, € 2,700, and € 4,400, respectively, and can exceed € 12,000 depending on pre-unemployment wages and experience. These increases in funding can affect a potential entrepreneur's ability to start a business, as the median initial funding (starting capital plus debt) for an incorporated firm in Portugal is € 5,000. However, as shocks to expected wealth the increases in funding around the cut-offs are probably too small to lower risk aversion (Hurst and Lusardi, 2004), as entrepreneurs must pay back the full amount received if they return to dependent employment within three years in the case that their business fails. Thus, any increase in entrepreneurship around the age cut-offs is likely to be driven by financial constraints, rather than preferences.
We find the fraction of unemployed workers who start a business through the Single Amount programme increases discontinuously at each of the three age cut-offs. Using these discontinuities as an instrument, we find that an extra € 1000 of funding significantly increases the rate of entrepreneurship by 0.16 percentage points. The unconditional probability of becoming an entrepreneur through the programme is 1.2% (equivalent to 13%, considering the overall probability of becoming an entrepreneur). The effect is economically significant and approximately linear in the potential amount. We also find the effect to be significant (at the 1% level) in the construction industry, the wholesale and retail trades, and accommodation and food service activities ̶ it is particularly strong in the latter.
In terms of ex-ante entrepreneurial quality, we find the effect of the programme is stronger for entrepreneurs at the top of the distribution of pre-unemployment wages. In this analysis, we also separate incorporated from unincorporated businesses, as Levine and Rubinstein (2016) show that incorporation is a good proxy for growth-oriented entrepreneurship. As in other countries, incorporated businesses in Portugal enjoy limited liability but pay higher taxes and face heavier regulation. (3) Incorporated businesses are therefore more likely to be chosen by entrepreneurs undertaking projects with higher growth potential. The effect on incorporated entrepreneurs in the top decile of the pre-unemployment wage distribution is nearly four times larger than our baseline estimate. In contrast, among unincorporated entrepreneurs, the effect at the top of the distribution is weaker.
Considering the Kaplan-Meier estimates on the survival rates of incorporated businesses that were created with and without the Single Amount, we observe that the former present a higher survival rate, at least until age six, but these are particularly more likely to survive three years after firm creation, which is probably explained by the programme requirement. When we evaluate the effect of financial constraints on the entry rate of entrepreneurs whose incorporated business survives for at least four years, it increases by 0.24 percentage points for each extra thousand euros of funding, which is close to our baseline estimate for the entry probability of incorporated businesses. This indicates that the effect is driven by businesses that survive beyond the end of the programme.
To characterize how financial constraints affect the creation of different types of businesses, we focus primarily on outcomes at age four, when entrepreneurs are no longer obligated to return the amount received if they choose to exit and pursue other job opportunities. Although we find the effect of financial constraints to be stronger for the creation of businesses in the top quintile of the size distribution, we find that the effect of the programme is stronger for the creation of incorporated businesses in the middle of the performance distributions (considering sales, assets, sales growth, EBIT and labour productivity), rather than in the tails.
We contribute to the literature on financial constraints and entrepreneurship.(4) More specifically, we also contribute to the literature on start-up subsidies. (5) Unlike in other countries, the programme we evaluate is available for individuals across all ages, the potential amount is substantially larger (up to 47,791 euros), and its role is to relax financial constraints rather than risk aversion. (6) Finally, we contribute to filling the gap identified by Caliendo (2016) on the lack of literature that evaluates the business component of the programmes as we observe both start-ups initiated by unemployment insurance beneficiaries and start-ups initiated by other workers.
References
Black, Sandra, and Philip Strahan, 2002, Entrepreneurship and bank credit availability, Journal of Finance 57, 2807-2833.
Caliendo, Marco, 2016, Start-up subsidies for the unemployed: Opportunities and limitations, IZA World of Labor 200, 1-11.
Caliendo, Marco and Steffen Künn, 2011, Start-up subsidies for the unemployed: Long-term evidence and effect heterogeneity, Journal of Public Economics 95, 311-331.
Evans, David, and Boyan Jovanovic, 1989, An estimated model of entrepreneurial choice under liquidity constraints, Journal of Political Economy 97, 808-827.
Evans, David, and Linda Leighton, 1989, Some empirical aspects of entrepreneurship, American Economic Review 79, 519-535.
Hombert, Johan, Antoinette Schoar, David Sraer, and David Thesmar, 2019, Does unemployment insurance change the selection into entrepreneurship?, Journal of Finance, forthcoming.
Hurst, Erik, and Annamaria Lusardi, 2004, Liquidity constraints, household wealth, and entrepreneurship, Journal of Political Economy 112, 319-347.
Kerr, Sari, William Kerr, and Ramana Nanda, 2019, House prices, home equity and entrepreneurship: Evidence from U.S. Census micro data, Working Paper, NBER.
Kerr, William, and Ramana Nanda, 2011, Financing constraints and entrepreneurship, in David Audretsch, Oliver Falck, and Stephan Heblich, ed.: Handbook of Research on Innovation and Entrepreneurship (Edward Elgar Publishing: Cheltenham, U.K.).
Levine, Ross, and Yona Rubinstein, 2016, Smart and illicit: Who becomes an entrepreneur
and do they earn more?, Quarterly Journal of Economics 132, 963-1018.
Meager, Nigel, Peter Bates, and Marc Cowling, 2003, An evaluation of business start-up
support for young people, National Institute Economic Review 186, 59-72.
Murphy, Kevin, Andrei Shleifer, and Robert Vishny, 1991, The allocation of talent: Implications for growth, Quarterly Journal of Economics 106, 503-530.
Román, Concepción, Emilio Congregado, and José Mará Millán, 2013, Start-up incentives: Entrepreneurship policy or active labour market programme?, Journal of Business Venturing 28, 151-175.
Schmalz, Martin, David Sraer, and David Thesmar, 2017, Housing collateral and entrepreneurship, Journal of Finance 72, 99-132.
Schoar, Antoinette, 2010, The divide between subsistence and transformational entrepreneurship, Innovation Policy and the Economy 10, 57-81.
(1) Our sample period includes the 2010-2011 European sovereign debt crisis. Portugal was under a Financial Assistance Programme of the European Commission, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the ECB (jointly, the Troika) between 2011 and 2014, and the unemployment rate rose to 16\% during this period. The pool of unemployed workers during our sample period may therefore not be representative of unemployed workers at other moments in time.
(2)
We also have access to data on incorporated firms in Portugal during the same period.
(3)
On top of higher income taxes, incorporated businesses have no VAT exemptions and are obliged to submit annual financial statements certified by a chartered accountant.
(4)
See Kerr and Nanda (2011) for a review.
(5)
See Wilson and Adams (1994), Román, Congregado and Millán (2013) and Caliendo (2016) for a country comparison of similar programmes.
(6) In the United Kingdom, The Prince's Trust support is available only to individuals aged between 18 and 30 (Maeger, Bates and Cowling, 2003). In Germany, the start-up subsidy was restricted to a maximum of 25,000 euros per year (Caliendo and Künn, 2011). In France the unemployed who choose to start a business do not receive any cash upfront, but are instead allowed to retain the right to their unemployment benefit in case their business fails within three years, lowering the risk of entrepreneurship (Hombert, Schoar, Sraer and Thesmar, 2019).
The Eurozone’s monetary policy has become more contested and politically salient than ever before. In the wake of Mario Draghi’s departure from the presidency of the European Central Bank (ECB), barely a day went by without media reports of internal disagreements among current ECB decision makers, fierce critiques from businesses, interest groups and former central bankers, and strong rebuttals from the same. In this fraught context, Christine Lagarde, former chairwoman and managing director of the IMF, has now taken over from Draghi, whose decisive policy actions were widely credited with having rescued the single currency from the brink of collapse at the height of the Eurozone crisis.
A consensus seems to have emerged that Lagarde will likely favour the expansive monetary policies of her predecessor and be willing to act as decisively and pragmatically in the case of another shock, brokering the necessary support coalitions within and beyond the central bank. The question, however, will not so much be about the new president’s willingness to act, but about whether the technical and political circumstances will allow her to. On the technical side, observers are increasingly wondering whether the ECB’s policies are running out of steam and whether the scope for future innovation is exhausted, in the face of stubbornly subdued inflation far from the central banks’ self-defined target of ‘below, but close to, 2%’. During the last weeks of his presidency, Draghi’s most poignant farewell message has been that the activation of other policies, most notably fiscal policy, is needed to help the ECB reach its aims as well as revive growth ‘faster and with fewer side effects’ (thereby relieving the central bank from being ‘the only game in town’).
Recent research we have conducted suggests that such nudging of Eurozone governments already played an important part in the ECB’s signalling at the height of the crisis – despite the central bank’s widely assumed preference for fiscal austerity. But these calls have further intensified now that the problem is no longer one of near-imminent financial collapse, but of low growth and inflation, with signs of recession on the horizon. The crux for the technocratic ECB, however, is that fiscal and other government policies are firmly in the realm of national electoral and executive politics – churning out advice on these could thus easily be perceived as undue meddling by the central bank in political affairs (which, in turn, may invite political interference). On top of this, it remains uncertain whether governments will actually feel compelled to listen to the central bank’s pleas.
Perhaps the biggest issue for the future ECB, then, is neither the central banks’ preference for monetary nor for fiscal policy alone, but its views on the extent to which monetary-fiscal coordination – predicted to be necessary for future policy innovation – can be achieved in light of the ECB’s far-reaching independence.
The central bank is likely to contemplate these challenges in the strategic review of its policy framework, set to take place during Lagarde’s term. With ever more stakeholders coming to the fore and voicing preferences for the conduct of monetary policy, the review will likely have to entail a careful balancing act of not merely engaging monetary policy experts, but also the wider (and in certain parts of the Eurozone increasingly sceptical) general public.
To this end, Lagarde can be expected to rely upon German economist Isabel Schnabel on the ECB’s Executive Board, who has not shied away from public debate in the past and has put forward both a measured defence and critique of the central bank’s actions. However, whether the national central banks and their governors on the ECB Governing Council will act as translators and defenders of the ECB’s policy stance or as amplifiers of national disagreements will need to be watched closely.
One supranational political counterpart of the ECB (or perhaps even ally, not least since the crisis), has been the European Parliament and its Economic and Monetary Affairs (ECON) Committee. While exchanges between successive ECB presidents and MEPs in the ECON Committee during the so-called ‘Monetary Dialogues’ have been seen as a cornerstone of the ECB’s accountability, these arrangements leave ample room for improvement and should also come to be reviewed and overhauled during Lagarde’s tenure.
Despite the relatively large size of the ECON committee, past research indicates that the success of the Monetary Dialogue for the ECB’s political accountability has tended to hinge on the engagement of only a few committed MEPs. Who, then, are the parliamentarians whom Christine Lagarde is facing throughout the first half of her presidency (i.e., the roughly 4 years until the next EP elections)?
While a number of former ECON members went on to become central bankers themselves (such as Sylvie Goulard at the Banque de France, Burkhard Balz at the Bundesbank, and Elisa Ferreira at the Banco de Portugal), the reverse seems true these days, with former president of the Bank of Poland (and former prime minister) Marek Belka, as well as former Czech National Bank deputy governor Luděk Niedermayer (now vice-chair of ECON), among the MEPs facing Lagarde.
Another expert member to be reckoned with is economics professor Luis Garicano, who also coordinates the committee’s liberal Renew group. On the far-right end of the spectrum, law professor Gunnar Beck is taking over from ex-MEP and AfD-founder Bernd Lucke as chief europhobe of the committee. While they and their colleagues are formally in charge of scrutinising the ECB, citizens and civil society will need to do likewise with MEPs. There remains hope that, in addition to a review of the ECB’s policy framework, the ways in which the central bank is held to account will evolve in the process as well, in light of the mounting political challenges ahead.
Foreign direct investment (FDI) has been identified as one of the main engines of economic growth, a potential source of employment, as well as a channel through which advanced technologies can be transferred to host countries. In recent years, the flow of FDI has become even more important than international trade as the rate of growth of manufacturing investments has outpaced that of international trade flow of merchandise. However, one important and frequently raised issue about FDI is its potentially deleterious consequences for the environment. It is possible that the economic gains associated with an increase in FDI could be negated by potential environmental costs as FDI may occur simultaneously with increased environmental emissions.
The FDI-environmental emissions linkage continues to be a controversial topic in the globalization-environmental debate. This controversy is centred around whether increased globalization through the movement of international capital from one country to another is good or bad for the environment. This debate has generated opposing hypotheses that support each line of argument. The pollution haven hypothesis posits that increases in FDI would be detrimental to the environment, especially in developing countries. Researchers supporting this side of the argument contend that increased FDI may promote increased production and consumption through the exploitation of the environment and the depletion of natural resources. Conversely, the pollution halo hypothesis argues that FDI could have beneficial environmental effects through the transfer of green or environmentally friendly or energy efficient technologies that would curb environmental emissions. These opposing hypotheses have also culminated in a myriad number of empirical studies; however, the empirical evidence has produced only conflicting and contrasting results, thereby further confounding the theoretical ambiguity. Figure 1 confirms diversity in the FDI-environmental literature. 54% of the studies report a negative effect of FDI on the environment compared to 46% of the studies reporting a positive effect.
Figure 1: Diversity in the empirical literature
This paper forthcoming in Energy Policy conducts a systematic and rigorous review of the existing literature on the effect of FDI on the environment using the empirical tool of meta-analysis. Meta-analysis helps in achieving two important objectives with regard to the FDI-environment nexus. First, to derive a combined effect size from the conflicting results of the previous studies. We use the bivariate funnel asymmetric test - precision effect test (FAT-PET) model in line with the Meta-Analysis for Economic Research Network (MAER-Net) guidelines to determine whether there is a publication bias and also to obtain the genuine effect of FDI on emissions after correcting for publication bias. Second, we use multivariate meta-regression analysis to explain the heterogeneity in the previous studies. This is necessary in order to determine how differences in the study characteristics are sensitive to reported estimates of FDI's impact on the environment. The heterogeneity in studies ranges from different data characteristics, econometric techniques, choice of measurement of the FDI variable, environmental pollutants or indicators, and the set of macroeconomic control variables. Altogether, our meta-analysis uses 65 studies that produced 1,006 estimated elasticities of FDI on the environment.
Inferences from our results based on both weighted and unweighted meta-averages show that the underlying effect of FDI on the environment is close to zero. This was also confirmed by the FAT-PET regression as it finds no significant effect of FDI on emissions. In addition, it discounts the presence of any publication bias, in that, the empirical studies have not been influenced by some sort of publication selection pressure in terms of preference for positive or negative statistically significance evidence from journal editors, reviewers or authors.
However, after controlling for publication bias and individual heterogeneity using the multivariate analysis, we find a significant inverse relationship between FDI and emissions as indicated in Figure 2. More specifically, an increase in FDI reduces emissions. This result is in favour of the pollution halo hypothesis. Thus, our results indicate that FDI does not only improve economic growth but could also potentially reduce environmental pollution or emissions. Additionally, disaggregating the results for different country categories, we find that the effect of FDI on emissions differs qualitatively and quantitatively for these country groupings. Under our FAT-PET model, we find that FDI has an inverse and significant effect on emissions for developed countries.
The inverse and significant effect is robust when we account for study heterogeneity using the multivariate meta-regression approach. From our results, we found that the emission-reducing impact of FDI was minimal for CO2 compared to SO2. These differences in the results for these pollutants could possibly be due to the fact that SO2 is a local pollutant in which the adverse effects and health implications are geographically localized so countries are more proactive in curbing the emissions of local pollutants. CO2, instead, is an international pollutant. Controlling for individual study characteristics, we find a pronounced effect for developed countries compared to developing countries. Similarly, for studies that mixed the developing and developed countries in their samples, we still find an inverse and significant result.
Figure 2: Explaining the heterogeneity: coefficients and 95%-confidence interval
On 28 January 2020 Trump and Netanyahu presented the long awaited ‘Peace to Prosperity’ plan at the White House, subtitled ‘a vision to improve the lives of Palestinian and Israeli people’. No Palestinians were present. And the timing was impeccable: while Trump is facing impeachment, Netanyahu has been indicted for corruption while leading a minority government.
The plan marks a monumental shift away from the already compromised international consensus that the 1967 borders should be the basis of any peace discussion. The deal makes clear that all the concessions demanded of Palestinians, including the right of refugee return, the status of Jerusalem, the shut-down of UNRWA, the annexation of the Jordan valley and the fact that settlements will no longer be referred to as contraventions of international law are imminent. Any potential Palestinian benefits from the deal, on the other hand, including a proposed $50 billion of investment into a so-called Palestinian ‘state’ are all contingent on future negotiations. It is also telling that the peace plan has yet to be released in translation in either Arabic or Hebrew.
Amidst the international outcry of ‘apartheid’ in response to the plan, Palestinians remain unshocked. The reality of a slow, creeping annexation of their land is one that they have been living with for decades, and this plan serves to consolidate all of Israel’s settler colonial expansion over the Palestinian territories in recent decades. Indeed, the Trump Administration has been laying the groundwork for this over the last four years, notably by moving the US Embassy to Jerusalem and declaring it the capital of Israel; by closing the Palestinian Liberation Office in Washington DC; and by withdrawing all humanitarian and development aid to Palestine, as well as to the Palestinian refugee agency UNRWA. As Dr Yara Hawari, senior policy analyst of the Palestinian thinktank Al Shabaka wrote, ‘This is a plan for total Palestinian capitulation. Those that are shocked shouldn’t be. The foundations for this were laid long ago. Edward Said saw it in Oslo when he called it a Palestinian Versailles’.
Perhaps the most alarming , and unpredicted read in the plan is in relation to the proposed populated land swaps in the Triangle communities of Kafr Qara, Ar’ara, Baha al-Gharbiyye, Umm al Fahm, Qalansaw, Tayibe, Kafr Qasim, Rira, Kafr Bara, and Jalhulia in the north of historic Palestine. The plan states that its ‘vision’ is ‘that the borders of Israel will be redrawn such that the Triangle communities become part of the State of Palestine. In this agreement, the civil rights of the residents of the triangle communities would be subject to the applicable laws and judicial rulings of the relevant authorities’ (Peace to Prosperity: p.13). Additionally, two ‘conceptual maps’ presented in the first appendix of the plan, indicate the ‘non-inclusive’ list of Israeli settlements to become ‘Israeli enclave communities’ and the Palestinian towns and cities that comprise ‘the Triangle’ in the north of historic Palestine which are to be included in populated land transfers; while the second map draws Palestinian cities on to the map, and highlights the areas of nuclear waste land in the south of Israel to be turned into industrial, residential and agricultural zones accessible to Palestinians in the Gaza strip.
Most imminent of the proposals in the plan is a greenlight for immediate annexation of the Jordan Valley in the West Bank. Amidst mixed messages from the US, the Prime Minister’s office stated in Hebrew media reports that Netanyahu plans on beginning the process of annexing all settlements in the Jordan Valley area of the West Bank at Sunday’s cabinet meeting. The so-called vision for peace gives an immediate greenlight for the annexation of the Jordan valley in the West Bank, offering Palestinians only limited control over Bantustans in an Israeli state. Professor Noura Erakat described this process today as ‘ an ethno-national outcome, that seeks to separate peoples in order to come to an agreement, rather than establish some sort of solution that allows people to exist in dignity and equality’.
The hashtag ‘تسقط_صفقة_القرن’ (down with the deal of the century) has been widely used across social media in response to the plan. While President Mahmoud Abbas has called for mass protests against the Trump deal, he himself will travel to Egypt tomorrow, as reported by AFP. In Jordan, Turkey, East Jerusalem, Nablus and Gaza there were demonstrations against the deal, although organised protests have so far not been across the West Bank and Gaza. As Palestinian writer Mariam Barghouti argued, Palestinians have instead long been engaged in surviving settler colonialism on a daily basis. The grotesque irony is that the PA have increased crackdowns on civil protest and demonstrations in recent years, only now to call for mass protests in the streets on their demand.
The response across the region has been predictably non-committal to the Palestinian struggle. Saudi Arabia released a statement in appreciation of Trump’s efforts, offering its support for the re-emergence of ‘peace negotiations’, but did not explicitly endorse the plan. The UAE response was more congratulatory, referring to the plan as ‘an important starting point for a return to negotiations within a US-led international framework’. Egypt gave a statement in support of Trump’s efforts, but not of the plan itself; while Jordan reiterated its support for Palestinian demands of any future negotiations, including the status of Jerusalem and the borders of any future Palestinian state. As expected, the strongest condemnation of the plan came from Iran, calling the plan ‘a nightmare for the region and the world’ and ‘the treason of the century’; Turkey, referring to the plan directly as ‘an annexation plan’; and the Lebanese party Hezbollah calling the Trump plan ‘a deal of shame’. Meanwhile, the EU released an alarmingly non-committal statement to the plan, merely stating that they would ‘study and assess the proposals put forward’.
Map: Appendix 1 of the plan, titled ‘Conceptual maps’
For the Fellowships of 2020-2021, the Max Weber Programme had received 1,071 applications from 94 different countries. This number is a bit higher than the previous year (1,058).
As in other years the appeal of the Programme reached out globally and applications came in from around the world (Figure 1).
Applications by world region in 2018 and 2019 (Figure 1):
The European region remains by a long shot the strongest contributor of applications (637), followed by Asia (637) and North America (150).
Italy takes the lion’s share of applications (154) (Figure 2), followed by the US (121), the United Kingdom (71), France and Germany (each 48).
Applications 2019 by country of origin (top 20 countries) (Figure 2):
The gender ratio among applicants is slightly in favour of males (57%).
The gender distribution by department instead reveals a degree of disparity by discipline (Figure 3). Applications by women to the department of Economics are one third (31%). History and Political and Social Sciences also show a gender gap in favour of men, whilst the Robert Schuman Centre instead seems to appeal more to women (65%) than men (35%).
Gender ratio of applicants by department (Figure 3):
The department of Political and Social Sciences received the largest share of applications (402), followed by History and Civilization with 366 (44 more applications than in 2018), LAW (142), ECO (92) and The Robert Schuman Centre (69) (Figure 4).
A new year and a new cohort of MW Fellows will be off on a teaching mission abroad in Spring 2020. Masaryk University is offering a teaching-training week to seven Fellows from 20 to 24 April, followed by seven other Fellows to UPF in May, from 4 to 8, and by another eight Fellows to Humboldt, from 25 to 29 May. In total, twenty-two MW Fellows are going abroad for teaching practice week this year.
The year 2018-2019 was yet again a time of growth and success for the Max Weber Programme, thanks to the positive synergy between a fantastic cohort of Fellows and the MWP Team.
‘May you live in interesting times’ admonishes an apocryphal Chinese saying, sometimes used in English as a curse, which was selected as the title for last year's Venice Biennale. It may indeed be wiser to desire to live in uninteresting times, when peace, stability, and prosperity abound. Interesting times are, instead, moments of rapid change, rich in opportunity but also characterized by the displacement of traditions, institutions, and forms of living, which often result in growing inequality and conflict. These moments are, in the minds of many, times for anxiety. To grapple with the transitional nature of our own contemporary world, the 14th Max Weber Conference would like to encourage a responsible scholarly reflection on the turbulent political, economic, legal, and historical processes that characterize ̶ today as in the past ̶ both real and perceived times for anxiety.
We welcome theoretical, empirical, and methodological contributions that focus on, but are not limited to, the following themes: economic and social inequality; environmental degradation; political and institutional change; migration, mobility, and displacement; conflict and violence; the transformation of cultures, ideas, and concepts.
We invite applications from current and former Max Weber Fellows, as well as from current Jean Monnet and Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellows at the EUI or at other institutions. The deadline is 15March 2020.
Three types of submission are possible:
Individual papers (10-15 minute presentations)
Panel Proposals (3-4 connected presentations from different disciplines)
Posters
Organising Committee: Doina Anca Cretu (HEC), Julie Deschepper (HEC), Sebastian Diessner (RSCAS), Nils Grevenbrock (ECO), Mateusz Grochowski (LAW), Ian Hathaway (HEC), Viola Müller (HEC), Tamara Popic (SPS), Alessandro Spiganti (ECO), Giacomo Tagiuri (LAW), Eva Zschirnt (SPS).
The MWP Alumni Society will join the EUI Alumni Association at two events in Brussels this year: one in April and one in the Autumn. More details will be sent closer to the dates.
Organizers from University of Southern Denmark:
Christian M. Dahl, N. Meltem Daysal, Peter Sandholt Jensen, Seetha Menon
Place:
University of Southern Denmark Campus Kollegiet, Campusvej 1, 5230 Odense M, Denmark
Room:
SKY (14th floor)
Date:
April 22, 2020
This annual workshop aims to bring together researchers investigating issues of relevance to current public policy. We invite submissions from all fields of applied microeconomics, including (but not restricted to): labor, health and development economics, economics of education, and demography.
This year, one session will be devoted to topics related to “Demography and Economics” and one session will be devoted to topics concerning “Health and Labor Market Outcomes.” Examples of suitable topics include:
Aging, retirement and health
Early-life health and later-life socio-economic outcomes
Medical innovations and productivity
The papers should pay particular attention to the identification of causal relationships using rigorous econometric techniques. Preference will be given to papers that are well developed yet can still benefit from group discussion. The keynote speaker is Claus Thustrup Kreiner (Professor of Economics and Director of the Center for Economic Behavior and Inequality at the University of Copenhagen).
The workshop will last for one day. The number of participants is limited to 25, with a maximum of 8-10 invited and contributed papers. The workshop program, travel and accommodation assistance will be provided on the workshop webpage. Participation is free of charge and includes registration, breakfast, lunch, and refreshments. Participants are expected to cover their own transportation and accommodation costs (if needed).
Researchers interested in presenting their work should send an extended abstract or preferably a full paper to sdu.applied.micro@gmail.com no later than March 8, 2020. Notifications of acceptance will be sent by March 22, 2020. Presenters and other participants should register no later than March 29, 2020 by sending an email to sdu.applied.micro@gmail.com. Please include contact information and whether you have any special dietary restrictions.
Just a reminder of the impressive line-up of future Max Weber Lecturers this year.
4 March 2020 Ruud Koopmans – WZB Berlin; Humboldt University Berlin
About the speaker: Ruud Koopmans is director of the research department ’Migration, Integration, Transnationalization’ at the WZB Berlin Social Science Center and Professor of Sociology and Migration Research at Humboldt University Berlin. He is also a member of the Academic Advisory Board of the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF), Nuremberg and of the Board of Trustees of the German Center for Integration and Migration Research (DeZIM). His current research focuses are migration and integration, religious fundamentalism and extremism, and majority and minority rights.
15 April 2020 Waltraud Schelkle – London School of Economics and Political Science
About the speaker: Waltraud Schelkle is Professor in Political Economy at the European Institute and has been at the LSE since autumn 2001, teaching courses on the political economy of European integration at MSc and PhD level. She is an Adjunct Professor (Privatdozentin) of economics at the Economics Department of the Free University of Berlin where she did a PhD (Habilitation) in 1999 with a thesis on ‘The new theory of monetary integration’ (published in German in 2001). Professor Schelkle is also a (non-resident) Senior Fellow at the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies (AICGS), Johns Hopkins University, Washington D.C. and member of the Advisory Board of the Research Centre for Inequality and Social Policy (SOCIUM) in Bremen.
She has previously worked as a development economist, from 1989-2002 as a staff member of the German Institute of Development in Berlin, with a research focus on the financial system in development and doing her first PhD on India's development as a monetary economy since Independence (London 1994). Other earlier appointments include two Research Fellowships at Johns Hopkins University, Washington, DC, and Visiting Professor of International Economic Relations at the Free University of Berlin before going to London. Her research interests are the evolving economic governance of EMU and social policy reforms directed at financial markets.
20 May 2020 Mariana Mazzucato – University College London
About the speaker: Mariana Mazzucato (PhD) is Professor in the Economics of Innovation & Public Value at University College London (UCL), she is the Founding Director of the UCL Institute for Innovation & Public Purpose
She is winner of the 2014 New Statesman SPERI Prize in Political Economy, the 2015 Hans-Matthöfer-Preis, the 2018 Leontief Prize for Advancing the Frontiers of Economic Thought and the 2019 All European Academies Madame de Staël Prize for Cultural Values. She was named as one of the '3 most important thinkers about innovation' by the New Republic, and is on The Bloomberg 50 list of ‘Ones to Watch’ in 2019.
Her highly-acclaimed book The Entrepreneurial State: debunking public vs. private sector myths (2013) investigates the role of public organizations in playing the ‘investor of first resort’ role in the history of technological change. Her 2018 book The Value of Everything: making and taking in the global economy (2018) brings value theory back to the center of economics in order to reward value creation over value extraction. It was a 2018 Strategy & Business Book of the Year and was shortlisted for the 2018 Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year prize.
She advises policy makers around the world on innovation-led inclusive growth and is currently a member of the Scottish Government’s Council of Economic Advisors; the UN’s Committee for Development Policy (CDP), the Leadership Council of the Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN), SITRA’s Advisory Panel in Finland, and Norway’s Research Council. She is currently a Special Advisor for the EC Commissioner for Research, Science and Innovation, Carlos Moedas, and is author of the high impact EC report on Mission-Oriented Research & Innovation in the European Union.
27 May 2020 Axel Honneth – Columbia University; Goethe University Frankfurt am Main
About the speaker: Professor Honneth is Jack C. Weinstein Professor for the Humanities in the Department of Philosophy at Columbia University; Director of the Institute for Social Research, Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main (since 2001); and C4-Professor of Social Philosophy, Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main (since 1996).
From 1992 to 1996, Professor Honneth was C4-Professor of Political Philosophy at Freie Universität Berlin; from 1991 to 1992 he was C3-Professor of Philosophy, University of Konstanz. From 1983 to 1989 he was Hochschulassistent (scientific assistant) to Prof. Dr. Jürgen Habermas, Dept. of Philosophy, Goethe-Universität Frankfurt/M.; from 1982 to 1983 he had a Research Grant with Prof. Dr. Jürgen Habermas, Max-Planck-Institute for Social Sciences, Starnberg. From 1977 to 1982 he was Wissenschaftlicher Assistent (scientific assistant), Institute of Sociology, Freie Universität Berlin.
Professor Honneth studied Philosophy, Sociology, and German Literature at Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn and Ruhr-Universität Bochum from 1969-1974, earning his M.A. in Philosophy in 1974. His postgraduate studes were at Freie Universität Berlin from 1974-1976. His Dissertation (thesis), at Freie Universität Berlin in 1982 was titled ‘Kritik der Macht. Foucault und die Kritische Theorie’. Professor Honneth’s Habilitation (postdoctoral thesis and postdoctoral lecturing qualification) was in 1990 at the Department of Philosophy, Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main, titled ‘Kampf um Anerkennung’.
In November 2015, Professor Honneth received the Ernst Bloch-Preis from the City of Ludwigshafen (Germany). In April 2016, he received the Bruno-Kreisky Prize from the Karl-Renner Stiftung in Vienna, and in June 2016 he was awarded the Ulysses Medal, University College Dublin’s highest honour, for his lifetime contribution to social philosophy and critical theory.
For more details closer to the date of the event go to the MWP website
Gender Equality in Academia
Organizers: Lola Avril (LAW), Elizabeth Banks (HEC), Victoria Paniagua (SPS), Judith Spirig (SPS), Arianna Tassinari (SPS), Annabelle Wittels (SPS), Eleanor Woodhouse (ECO), Eva Zschirnt (SPS)
Date: 9 March 2020, Emeroteca (Badia)
She is made of Stone
Organizers: Julie Deschepper (HEC), Milica Prokic (HEC)
Date: 2-3 April 2020, Emeroteca (Badia)
Lifecycle of Intergroup Conflict
Organizers: Viola Müller (HEC), Ester Sigilló (RSCAS), Judith Spirig (SPS), Annabelle Wittels (SPS), Eva Zschirnt (SPS)
Date: 17 April 2020, Emeroteca (Badia)
Consumption Consumerism Consumer Cultures
Organizers: Elizabeth Banks (HEC), Mateusz Grochowski (LAW), Gasper Jakovac (HEC), Viola Müller (HEC), Giacomo Tagiuri (LAW), Xiaoren Wang (LAW)
Date: 30 April 2020, Emeroteca (Badia)
Labour Market Dynamics Institutions and their Mutual Linkages
Organizers: Cristina Lafuente (ECO), Marta Lopes (ECO), Arianna Tassinari (SPS)
Date: 5 May 2020, Emeroteca (Badia)
Inequality and Discrimination
Organizers: Balaraju Battu (SPS), Mauricio Bucca (SPS), Nils Grevenbrock (ECO), Fabian Mushövel (SPS), Alessandro Spiganti (ECO), Stylianos Tsiaras (RSCAS), Giulia Tura (ECO), Eva Zschirnt (SPS)
Date: 11-12 May 2020, Emeroteca (Badia)
Executive-legislative Dynamics in the Member States of the European Union
Organizers: David Moloney (RSCAS), Karl Murphy (LAW), Pauline Trouillard (LAW)
Date: 15 May 2020, Emeroteca (Badia)
Natural and Field Experiments for the Social Sciences I
Organizers: Alexis Alvarez-Nakagawa (LAW), Xiaoren Wang (LAW), Annabelle Wittels (SPS), Eleanor Woodhouse (ECO)
Date: 19 May 2020, Emeroteca (Badia)
Natural and Field Experiments for the Social Sciences II
Organizers: Alexis Alvarez-Nakagawa (LAW), Xiaoren Wang (LAW), Annabelle Wittels (SPS), Eleanor Woodhouse (ECO)
Date: 2 June 2020, Emeroteca (Badia)
Migration in Contemporary and Historical Perspectives
Organizers: Anca Cretu (HEC), Alina Vranceanu (SPS)
Date: 3 June 2020, Emeroteca (Badia)
Professor Whatmore visited the EUI on 20 November 2019 and stayed (mostly) on the Florentine hills for merely 24 hours, so we were grateful that during his sojourn he also took time to record an interview with us. We began our discussion quizzing him about his new monograph Terrorists, Anarchists, and Republicans: The Genevans and the Irish in Time of Revolution which had just been released by Princeton University Press. Professor Whatmore, who prefers to write intellectual history embedded in its social, political, even material contexts – his interest in the circulation of Rousseau’s letters in Geneva, for example, can be considered as an important example of how ideas can directly impact social reality – chose the episode of the exiled Genevan community in Waterford, Ireland, to tell a wider story about political dilemmas and controversies of the final decades of the eighteenth century.
Afterwards, our conversation moved on to consider the methodology and practice of intellectual history and its relevance for today. The more immediate context in which Professor Whatmore interrogated these issues was, of course, eighteenth-century intellectual and political culture and, more specifically, the topic of his Max Weber Lecture, the end of Enlightenment. Professor Whatmore is an intellectual historian of radical discontinuities, of the ends of stories, rather than their seamless evolutions and continuations. Aetiological readings of eighteenth-century intellectual life, which have been favoured by the bulk of political philosophers and historians in order to find the origins of modern political concepts and values, are simply bad history. Enlightenment, at least in Britain and France, claims Professor Whatmore, was done for by the last decade of the eighteenth century. When faced with the savagery of the French revolution, a number of prominent political philosophers, including Edmund Burke, died unhappily with a sense of the failure and imminent collapse of traditional, ordered, and rational society. Ever since the Seven Years’ War, European politics have become poisoned by the new wave of fanaticism, a shadow of religious wars of the previous century, which crept back into the political discourse of the present. Superstition, enthusiasm, and fanaticism – manifestations of the ignorance and backwardness which the Enlightenment sought to banish from Europe forever – have made their comeback. Enlightenment has failed. Knowledge, reason, and progress have not brought about the perpetual peace which circles of enlightened intellectuals had dreamed about.
In spite of the breaks in history, we thought that the uncertainties and crisis facing Europe today were not unlike the dilemmas at the end of the eighteenth century. Following the financial crisis and the waves of popular protests, the past decade also witnessed Britain’s painful struggle to leave the European Union. A country which in the eighteenth century allegedly solved the burning issue of small state/big state – through the integration and economic success of Scotland – has now turned its back on the world’s largest democratic union of small and big states. In What is Intellectual History?, Professor Whatmore wrote that ‘The history of ideas or intellectual history tends to flourish in times of uncertainty about the future, and where people are seeking alternatives to scepticism, cynicism and utopian schemes for the end of history or the construction of near-perfect societies’. We reckon that the 2010s, a time of ends rather than beginnings, will prove a rich quarry for the future intellectual historians.
By Jorge Díaz Ceballos (HEC 2019-2020) and Gasper Jakovac (HEC 2019-2020)
The first Max Weber Lecture in 2020 was delivered by Nadia Urbinati, Kyriakos Tsakopoulos Professor of Political Theory at the Columbia University in New York. Previous to her lecture titled ‘The Populist Ambition’, she gave an interview on her work on populism, which is also the core topic of her recent monographs (Democracy Disfigured: Opinion, Truth and the People, Harvard University Press, 2014 and Me the People: How Populism Transforms Democracy, Harvard University Press, 2019).
Professor Urbinati started off by explaining why we should bother with populism and why it is preferable to focus on what populism does rather than on what populism is. She linked this differentiation to her analysis in Democracy Disfigured in which she focused on populism as a movement of opinion and contestation, while in Me the people she scrutinized populism as a system of decision making. Notably, she posited that populism is not a new phenomenon. It emerged along with the process of democratization in the nineteenth century, and since then its characters and forms have mirrored the modes of democracy it challenged. What is novel today is the intensity and simultaneity of populist manifestations in almost all constitutional democracies. In this respect, Prof. Urbinati also elaborated on the main drivers of the current wave of populism, which she finds in the ‘unfulfilled promises’ of constitutional democracies including increased social and economic inequality.
Contextual variations among countries and within countries, along with the polemical uses of the term in everyday politics, have hindered academic attempts to come up with conceptual definitions. Thus, she proposes to abandon the ambition to define populism and to treat populism as a project of government, in order to understand its transformative impact on constitutional democracy.
While populism is often opposed to representative democracy and connected to direct democracy, Prof. Urbinati treats populism as a form of (more direct) representative democracy. She highlighted the symbiotic relationship between populism and democracy drawing on Derrida’s metaphor of populism as a parasite of representative government, stating ‘populism is not a regime of its own, it depends on democracy, it springs from within representative democracy and it dies with democracy, populism is inside a democratic story’.
Prof. Urbinati posited that populism builds its foundations on the principle of representation, as the populist leader claims to be the true representative of the people. Notably, she argues that populism should be regarded as a new form of representative government, one based on a direct relationship between the leader and those the leader defines as the ‘good’ or ‘right’ people. Populist leaders claim to speak to and for the people without the need for intermediaries, such as parties and media, whom they blame for betraying the interests of the ordinary many. Thus, populism is an essentially factional government, the government by a part of society that rules for its own good, needs and interests. From this perspective, populism is a political elite’s formation and substitution. In this regard, Prof. Urbinati examined the role of new social media such as Twitter and Facebook, which allow for even more direct and personal engagement and thus an important tool to construct the relationship between the ruler and the ruled.
Last but not least, she analyzed the difference between right-wing populism and left-wing populism and explained why populism cannot be equated with fascism. She argued that fascism was also born as populism, ‘but it did not have the courage to accept the risk of free elections’. Populism ‘accepts the risk’, and it does so to the point of using the elections as a plebiscite, to exalt the leader and the majority. However, she explained, although populist governments remain importantly distinct from dictatorial or fascist regimes, their dependence on the will of the leader, along with their willingness to exclude the interests of those deemed outside the bounds of the ‘good’ or ‘right’ people, stretches constitutional democracy to its limits and opens a pathway to authoritarianism. Prof. Urbinati concluded by outlining ideas on what could be done to contain the current wave of populism.
By Ester Sigillò (RSCAS 2019-2020) and Johann Justus Vasel (LAW 2019-2020)
The MWP-ACO conference on research funding opportunities is open to Post-doctoral Fellows and PhD Researchers at the Institute.
It will gather together representatives of European and national funding agencies as well as young academics to discuss on research schemes and grants available to international researchers in the Social Sciences and Humanities.
The speakers will provide the audience with information about opportunities which are directly aimed at early-career scholars.
A central session of the conference will focus on top tips for grant-writing. The presenter, Henriette Bruun, will share with the audience the details about application procedures and some practical tips to successfully apply for research funding.
After the presentations, there will be time for individual consultations with the speakers.
Programme (pdf)
Research Funding Agencies present at the event and some of the presentations:
The annual conference organized by the
Academic Careers Observatory of the Max Weber Programme
12 December 2018
Badia Fiesolana, Theatre
The MWP-ACO conference on research funding opportunities is open to young researchers in the Social Sciences and Humanities at the Institute.
It brings together representatives of European and national agencies and research funding charities as well as young academics, who provide Max Weber Fellows and EUI researchers with up-to-date information on research funding schemes in countries such as the Netherlands, Germany, Sweden, Switzerland, Belgium, Poland, Luxembourg and Finland. Delegates explain their programmes and offer advice and insight on the application process.
The second morning session of the conference focuses on top tips for grant-writing. The presenters, Jacob Leveridge and Henrietta Bruun, share with the audience details about application procedures and some practical tips to successfully apply for research funding.After the presentations, there is time for individual consultations with the speakers.
In line with the EUI Open Access Policy, we invite you to send us any academic publication that you have published during or after your time at the MWP of the EUI. If the publication is based on research that you carried out here at the EUI, it is eligible for inclusion in Cadmus, EUI Research Repository. Having your work in Cadmus increases the visibility of your research because Cadmus is indexed in Google Scholar, harvestable by other international portals (including Worldcat and EBSCO) and interoperable with ORCID.
Stephane Beaulac (LAW 2006-2007): "The Lotus Case in Context – Sovereignty, Westphalia, Vattel, and Positivism" in S. Allen, D. Costelloe, M. Fitzmaurice, P. Gragl, E. Guntrip (eds.), Oxford Handbook of Jurisdiction in International Law (Oxford University Press, 2019): 40-58
Stephane Beaulac (LAW 2006-2007): "Sovereignty Referendums: A Question of Majority? – or How ‘Majority’ Actually Begs Numerous Questions" in C. Closa, C. Margiotta, G. Martinico (eds.), Between Democracy and Law – The Amorality of Secession (Routledge, 2020) 105-132
Tobias Lenz (RSCAS 2015-2016), with Hooghe Liesbet, Gary Marks: A Theory of International Organization (Oxford University Press, 2019)
Tobias Lenz (RSCAS 2015-2016), with Alexandr Burilkov, Lora Viola: Legitimacy and the Cognitive Sources of International Institutional Change: The Case of Regional Parliamentarization International Studies Quarterly (2019, online first)
Tobias Lenz (RSCAS 2015-2016), with Kalypso Nicolaidis. EU-topia? A Critique of the European Union as a Model Culture, Practice and Europeanization 4(2) (2019): 78-101
Violet Soen (HEC 2008-2009), with A. Soetaert, J. Verberckmoes, W. François (eds.): Transregional Reformations: Crossing Borders in Early Modern Europe, Vandenhoeck&Ruprecht (Refo500 Academic Series 61), Göttingen, Vandenhoeck&Ruprecht, 2019
Zoe Lefkofridi (SPS 2013-2015): Party Behavior and Competition in the European Arena: How the Rules of the Game Help Nationalists Gain Politics & Governance 8(1) (2020, open access in February)
Zoe Lefkofridi (SPS 2013-2015), with Nathalie Giger: Democracy or Oligarchy? Unequal Representation of Income Groups in European Institutions Politics & Governance 8(1) (2020, open access in February)
Ayça Çubukçu (SPS 2009-2010): Senior Fellow with the Fung Global Fellows program at Princeton University until July 1, 2020. Ayça will return to her duties as Associate Professor in Human Rights and Co-Director of LSE Human Rights after that date.
Daniel Herschenzon (HEC 2011-2012): Daniel has received the Sir John Elliott Fellowship at the Institute for Advanced Studies, Princeton (2019/20).
David Lebow (LAW 2016-2017): David is now Lecturer in Social Studies at Harvard University.
Emmanuel Comte (HEC 2014-2016): As of January 2020, Emmanuel is Senior Research Fellow in the areas of Migration and European Integration at CIDOB, Barcelona Centre for International Affairs.
Fran Meissner (SPS 2013-2015): As of September 2019, Fran is Assistant Professor in Urban Studies at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands.
Guido Van Meersbergen (HEC 2015-2016). As of September 2019, Guido is Assistant Professor in Early Modern Global History at the University of Warwick, after completing a three-year Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellowship at the same institution.
Guy Aitchison (HEC 2015-2016): Guy is permanent Lecturer in Politics and International Studies at Loughborough University.
Migle Laukyte (LAW 2012-2014): As of January 2020, Migle is a tenure track professor in law at the Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona, after being Connex-Marie Curie Research Fellow and visiting professor at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid.
Phillip Ayoub (SPS 2013-2014): Phillip is now an associate professor at Occidental College.
Sophie Lemiere (RSCAS 2015-2017): In February 2020, Sophie will hold an International Visiting Fellowship at Stanford Humanities Center, under the Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies and the Center for Democracy, Development and the rule of Law.
Stefano Recchia (SPS 2011-2012): Stefano moved from the University of Cambridge to Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, where he now holds the John G. Tower Distinguished Chair in International Politics.
Tobias Lenz (RSCAS 2015-2016): As of March 2020, Tobias will take up a professorship in International Relations at Leuphana University Lueneburg, Germany.
Zoe Lefkofridi (SPS 2013-2015): From March 1, 2020 Zoe will be a Full Professor in Politics & Gender, Diversity & Equality, University of Salzburg.
Alexis Alvarez-Nakagawa (LAW 2019-2020): Alexis, together with Hannah Franzki and Rafael Vieira, was awarded the Walter Benjamin award for young researchers 2020 from the International Walter Benjamin Society in Berlin. They will work on a big event that will take place in the winter of 2020/21, an online platform, and a book, all around the topic 'Working with Benjamin on Law'.
Athina Sachoulidou (LAW 2018-2019): In November 2019, Athina’s PhD dissertation on ‘Corporate liability and punishment in criminal and interdisciplinary discourse’ was awarded the Ruprecht Karls Prize by the Heidelberg University Foundation.
Daniel Herschenzon (HEC 2011-2012): Daniel’s book, The Captive Sea: Slavery, Communication, and Commerce in Early Modern Spain and the Mediterranean (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018) received:
Best First Book published in the field of Iberian history awarded by the Association For Spanish and Portuguese Historical Studies. Sharon Harris Book Award awarded by the University of Connecticut Humanities Institute.
Elsa Massoc (HEC 2018-2019): Elsa’s dissertation "Banking on states" was awarded Honorable Mention for the 2019 Ernst B. Haas best dissertation award.
Giulia Bonazza (HEC 2016-2017): Giulia has been awarded the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship at Ca’ Foscari University. She will work on her project in Venice and later at the Columbia University.
Giulia Tura (ECO 2017-2019): Giulia has been awarded the 2019 Guido Cazzavillan Research Scholarship at Ca’ Foscari University.
Pablo Garcia (SPS 2015-2017)
Pablo has been granted two projects:
1.
Project DIGYMATEX - H2020 - EC / 2020/2024
* DIGYMATEX: Establishing A Comprehensive Understanding and Taxonomy of Children's Digital Maturity - Period: 2020-2024 - PI: Marco Hubert. - Role: Project partner (leading project partner at Trinity College Dublin) - Funder: Horizon 2020 / -SC6- TRANSFORMATIONS-07-2019-RIA - Total Grant: € 3.4 million.
2.
Project with Cadhla McDonnel in collaboration with NGO One Family. I am academic coordinator of PI (Cadhla McDonnel) - MSCA- Caroline Project 2019/22
Researching and Promoting Positive Adult and Child Mental Health and Wellbeing in Lone-Parent Families - Period: 2019-2021. - PI: Cadhla McDonnell (post-doctoral researcher awardee). - Co-PI & TCD Scientific Coordinator: Pablo Gracia. - Non-Academic NGO Partner: Valerie Maher ('One Family'). - Funder: Irish Research Council, European Commission; Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions, IRC COFUND (CAROLINE) - Grant: €172.000.
Phillip Ayoub (SPS 2013-2014): In 2018, Phillip received Drexel University's Provost Award for Outstanding Early-Career Scholarly Achievement, recognising a faculty member’s demonstrated unusual excellence and for being an emerging leader in their scholarly field.
Stephanie Reher (HEC 2015-2017): Stephanie has been awarded a New Investigator Grant by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) for her project "How do voters perceive disabled candidates?" (2019-2022) at the University of Strathclyde.
Sylvanus Afesorgbor (RSCAS 2015-2016): Sylvanus’s paper, “Regional integration, bilateral diplomacy and African trade: Evidence from Gravity model”. African Development Review 31(4) (2019), was judged the second best paper at the African Economic Conference, 2018.
Victoria Paniagua (SPS 2019-2020): Victoria’s PhD thesis on "Protecting Capital: Economic Elites, Asset Portfolio Diversification, and the Politics of Distribution" received from the American Political Science Association the 2019 Mancur Olson Award for the best dissertation in political economy.
Ana Hosne (HEC 2010-2011): Élise Charlotte Rivetti Hosne, born on 8 July 2019 in Montreuil, France.
Violet Soen (HEC 2008-2009): Violet’s second son Ruben De Blauwe Soen joined the family on 16 July 2019.
The MWP Newsletter is a platform for current and former Fellows to share their news and short articles about their academic experience. Please send them to mwp@eui.eu
The year 2018-2019 was yet again a time of growth and success for the Max Weber Programme, thanks to the positive synergy between a fantastic cohort of Fellows and the MWP Team.
4 March 2020
15 April 2020 
20 May 2020 
27 May 2020 
The annual conference organized by the 
Athina Sachoulidou (LAW 2018-2019): Since November 2019, Athina is affiliated with the 
Ayça Çubukçu (SPS 2009-2010): Senior Fellow with the Fung Global Fellows program at Princeton University until July 1, 2020. Ayça will return to her duties as Associate Professor in Human Rights and Co-Director of LSE Human Rights after that date. 
Daniel Herschenzon (HEC 2011-2012): Daniel has received the Sir John Elliott Fellowship at the Institute for Advanced Studies, Princeton (2019/20). 
David Lebow (LAW 2016-2017): David is now Lecturer in Social Studies at Harvard University. 
Emmanuel Comte (HEC 2014-2016): As of January 2020, Emmanuel is Senior Research Fellow in the areas of Migration and European Integration at CIDOB, Barcelona Centre for International Affairs. 
Fran Meissner (SPS 2013-2015): As of September 2019, Fran is Assistant Professor in Urban Studies at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands. 
Guido Van Meersbergen (HEC 2015-2016). As of September 2019, Guido is Assistant Professor in Early Modern Global History at the University of Warwick, after completing a three-year Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellowship at the same institution. 
Guy Aitchison (HEC 2015-2016): Guy is permanent Lecturer in Politics and International Studies at Loughborough University. 
Migle Laukyte (LAW 2012-2014): As of January 2020, Migle is a tenure track professor in law at the Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona, after being Connex-Marie Curie Research Fellow and visiting professor at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. 
Phillip Ayoub (SPS 2013-2014): Phillip is now an associate professor at Occidental College. 
Sophie Lemiere (RSCAS 2015-2017): In February 2020, Sophie will hold an International Visiting Fellowship at Stanford Humanities Center, under the Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies and the Center for Democracy, Development and the rule of Law. 
Stefano Recchia (SPS 2011-2012): Stefano moved from the University of Cambridge to Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, where he now holds the John G. Tower Distinguished Chair in International Politics. 
Tobias Lenz (RSCAS 2015-2016): As of March 2020, Tobias will take up a professorship in International Relations at Leuphana University Lueneburg, Germany.
Zoe Lefkofridi (SPS 2013-2015): From March 1, 2020 Zoe will be a Full Professor in Politics & Gender, Diversity & Equality, University of Salzburg. 
Alexis Alvarez-Nakagawa (LAW 2019-2020): Alexis, together with Hannah Franzki and Rafael Vieira, was awarded the Walter Benjamin award for young researchers 2020 from the International Walter Benjamin Society in Berlin. They will work on a big event that will take place in the winter of 2020/21, an online platform, and a book, all around the topic 'Working with Benjamin on Law'. 
Athina Sachoulidou (LAW 2018-2019): In November 2019, Athina’s PhD dissertation on ‘Corporate liability and punishment in criminal and interdisciplinary discourse’ was awarded the 
Daniel Herschenzon (HEC 2011-2012): Daniel’s book, The Captive Sea: Slavery, Communication, and Commerce in Early Modern Spain and the Mediterranean (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018) received:
Elsa Massoc (HEC 2018-2019): Elsa’s dissertation "Banking on states" was awarded Honorable Mention for the 2019 Ernst B. Haas best dissertation award.
Giulia Bonazza (HEC 2016-2017): Giulia has been awarded the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship at Ca’ Foscari University. She will work on her project in Venice and later at the Columbia University. 
Giulia Tura (ECO 2017-2019): Giulia has been awarded the 2019 Guido Cazzavillan Research Scholarship at Ca’ Foscari University.
Stephanie Reher (HEC 2015-2017): Stephanie has been awarded a New Investigator Grant by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) for her project "How do voters perceive disabled candidates?" (2019-2022) at the University of Strathclyde.
Sylvanus Afesorgbor (RSCAS 2015-2016): Sylvanus’s paper, “Regional integration, bilateral diplomacy and African trade: Evidence from Gravity model”. African Development Review 31(4) (2019), was judged the 
Victoria Paniagua (SPS 2019-2020): Victoria’s PhD thesis on "Protecting Capital: Economic Elites, Asset Portfolio Diversification, and the Politics of Distribution" received from the American Political Science Association the 2019 Mancur Olson Award for the best dissertation in political economy. 
Violet Soen (HEC 2008-2009): Violet has been awarded 
Ana Hosne (HEC 2010-2011): Élise Charlotte Rivetti Hosne, born on 8 July 2019 in Montreuil, France. 
Violet Soen (HEC 2008-2009): Violet’s second son Ruben De Blauwe Soen joined the family on 16 July 2019.
