Deadline to apply: 28th Annual ESHET Conference
Call for papers
The main topic of the 28th ESHET Conference in Torino, 2025, is the changing face of economics, or the “end” of a traditional view of the discipline under the impact of three main forces.
- First, specialization in research and the fragmentation promoted by the prevalence of a find-your-niche approach, as a pragmatic solution for the otherwise unmanageable burden of previously accumulated knowledge.
- 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 mainstream of the discipline seems characterized by unprecedented variety, being 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.
The conference addresses the changing status of economics from a historical perspective. We welcome submissions on the conference theme and any topic in the history of economics and economic thought. The conference wants to examine, in particular, how economists have perceived their own research work and what, historically, societies expect from them or how societies react to their prescriptions. It aims at exploring the evolving connection between research technologies and how knowledge develops in economics, also in the light of the more general, philosophical issue of the persuasive power of technique in the present world. It seeks to analyze the shifting boundaries between economics and other disciplines, while generally reflecting upon economics’ insularity and desire for independence and the necessary interconnections with other sciences that the development of economics itself seems historically to require.
“Last generalists” at an epoch of fragmentation, or specialists themselves among many others, historians of economic thought will be thus concerned with the importance of theory in structuring economics – the space occupied by theory in economics – and the importance of economics’ structure on theory – that is, how the core-periphery organization which traditionally separates the orthodoxy of neoclassical economics from heterodox approaches has impacted upon economic theory and how it is changing.
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The deadline for submitting abstract or session proposals is February 6, 2025.
The abstract should not exceed 400 words for a paper and 600 words for a session.
Authors must select a “submission area” identifying the paper’s main topic.
In the case of session proposals, submissions must be done individually: the title of the session should be mentioned either in the title of the paper or in the abstract.
Authors are notified of acceptance by February 20, 2025.
Please note that:
- a) published papers are not eligible for submission;
- b) only one conference presentation is allowed per person (but more than one submission may be accepted if involving co-authors who are also presenting);
- c) session proposals must conform to standard format (3 papers, 90 minutes).
