Past Events

2003 - International Seminar on the Theory of Production

---

General objectives

The Seminar is part of an international collective effort to prepare a collection of books on economic dynamics, and namely a textbook to be published by Oxford University Press.

The accepted procedure has been to discuss in depth some themes, to prepare detailed outlines of chapters as a consequence of that discussion, to widely circulate these outlines for comments and then to convene new seminars to discuss the first drafts.

The whole effort will involve a large number of specialists, not only those directly involved in the editorial task, but also some of the known contributors in each field. In that sense, economists, econophysicists, economic sociologists and historians, econometricians and statisticians will join this “invisible college” in order to assure a general and open refereeing process.

A preparatory meeting was held 9 of January, and the seminar itself followed, 10 and 11 January.

Attendance and discussions

The Seminar was attended by 16 professors of economics from 7 countries:

• ISEG (Lisbon): Francisco Louçã, Manuel Mira Godinho
• Universidade de Aveiro: João Gata
• ISCTE (Lisbon): Sandro Mendonça
• Oslo University ( Norway ): Jan Fagerberg
• SPRU ( Sussex, UK ): Stefano Brusoni
• MERIT, University of Maastricht ( Holland ): Gerald Silverberg
• University of Eidhoven ( Holland ): Bart Vespagen, Orietta Marsili
• University of Jena (Deutschland): Uwe Cantner
• University of Pisa ( Italy ): Giovanni Dosi, Giorgio Faggiolo, Giulio Bottazzi
• University of Rome ( Italy ): Luigi Orsenigo
• Wharton College, Pennsylvania (US): Sidney Winter, Daniel Levinthal

The seminar included three main topics:

• the assessment of the current state of the preparation of the book,
• theory of production and market dynamics,
• agent based models and replicator dynamics.

Conclusions and next work

Three main areas of work were defined as priority: (i) theory of production, (ii) market dynamics, and (iii) theory of the firm. Outlines of these chapters will be prepared and circulated in the next months. A web site, based at MERIT, Maastricht, will provide information on this project, include reading lists and function as a open source for comments and organized discussion on these topics.

Next Seminar was convened for Pisa, Italy, for January 2004. At that time, the first drafts of the chapters will be available for discussion.