Seminars and Workshops

CNISS Sponsored Seminars and Workshops

CNISS sponsors a workshops and seminars offered to students and faculty throughout the year. Established and well-respected speakers are brought to Washington University to share their innovative ideas on various topics related to interdisciplinary research in the social sciences.

Topics discussed in this series include examining cross-cultural experimental data from 16 small-scale societies around the world, to checking the ability or incentive for opportunism in multiple ownership firms. Below are samples of papers which have previously been discussed in this series.

2009 Speaker Series

March 26, 2009
Lester Spence, Assistant Professor of Political Science at Johns Hopkins University
The Neoliberal Turn in Black Politics

March 19, 2009
Gyanesh Lama, CNISS Fellow
Institutional Determinants of Community Change
Paper not available at the time of this writing

March 5, 2009
Marshall Thompson, Assistant Professor of Political Science at Northeastern Illinois University
Parties, Presidents, and State Consolidation: Cross-National Evidence with Illustrations from Kenya
and Accompanying Charts

February 19, 2009
Donna-Mae Knights, CNISS Fellow
Kalamazoo Promise Potential Impacts
Paper not available at the time of this writing

February 3, 2009
Dolly Daftary, Former CNISS Fellow
Technology, Institutions and the Transformation of Small-Scale Agriculture:
Welfare and Inequality in a Study from India

January 29, 2009
Ricardo Vudoyra-Nieto
The Politics Indigenous Autonomy in Mexico

January 8, 2009
Carlos Costa
Endogenous Protection and Proportional Representation Systems

2008 Speaker Series

December 16, 2008
Noel P. Johnston
Structures of Impersonal Exchange in Economics and Politics: Theory and Statistics

December 12, 2008
Jennifer Solveig Wistrand
Migratory Employment in Post-Soviet Rural Azerbaijan: Changing Traditional Gender Roles and Diminishing Educational Prospects of Females

December 2, 2008
Ian Ostander
Presidents and Their Institutional Legacies

November 30, 2008
Mariana Medina
Ideal Point Estimation a Immigration Policy in the United States, 2005-2006

November 25, 2008
Gautam Yadama & Peter S. Hovmand
Community and Natural Resource Management: Modeling Complexity in Natural & Human System Interactions

November 18, 2008
Donna-Mae Knights, CNISS Fellow
Tertiary Education as a Catalyst for Community Development: The Case of Kalamazoo, Michigan

November 11, 2008
Camilla Schofield
Enoch Powell and the Politics of Britain's Imperial Past Abstract
Enoch Powell and the Politics of Britain's Imperial Past Paper

October 24, 2008
Ricardo Vudoyra, Washington University
The New Institutionalism of Legal Pluralism: Social Norms, Legal Rules, and Political Bargaining

October 21, 2008
Murray Weidenbaum, Washington University
The Competition of Ideas: The World of Washington Think Tanks

October 14, 2008
Jennifer Solveig Wistrand
Azerbaijan's Changing Public Schools: Teaching Citizenship in a Post-Soviet World Introduction
Teaching Citizenship in a Post-Soviet World: Azerbaijan's Changing Schools

October 7, 2008
William Black
Hindsight is Rarely 20:20 - Why the Unlearned Lessons of 'Control Fraud' Epidemics Produce Recurrent Financial Crisis
Theft by Deception: Control Fraud in the S&L Industry

September 30, 2008
Raghavan, Lama, and Hamilton
Geographic Disparities in Access to Mental Health Services Among a National Sample of Children in the Child Welfare System

September 30, 2008
Noel P. Johnston
Structures of Impersonal Exchange in Economics and Politics

September 9, 2008
Ian Ostrander, CNISS Fellow
The Politics of Presidential Legacies
The Politics of Presidential Legacies

September 2, 2008
Dino Falaschetti, Florida State University College of Law
Democratic Governance and Economic Performance: How Accountability Goes Too Far in Politics, Law, and Business
Democratic Governance and Economic Performance
Can Lobbying Prevent Anticompetitive Outcomes?

April 17, 2008
Steven Brams, New York University
How Democracy Resolves Conflict in Difficult Games

April 15, 2008
Jean Ensminger, California Institute of Technology
Theoretical Foundations of Social Norms: The Co-evolution of Social Norms, Intrinsic Motivation, Markets, and the Institutions of Complex Societies
Publications and Papers

March 27, 2008
Margaret Levi, University of Washington
Leadership, Performance, and Legitimacy: In Organizations and Governments
Publications and Papers

March 25, 2008
Arun Agrawal, University of Michigan
The Role of Institutions in Adaptation to Climate Change

March 18, 2008
Mike Fitzhugh, CNISS Fellow
Historians and the New Institutional Social Sciences

March 4, 2008
Marsala Dauti, CNISS Fellow
Summary Ideas on overuse and destruction of natural resources of Albania
Related Materials on Agrarian Change in Albania
Related Materials on Sustainable Social-Ecological Systems

February 25, 2008
Kristen Wagner, CNISS Fellow
The Earned Tax Credit (EITC)
Related Materials

February 19, 2008
Ravit Hananel, Harvard University
Ideological Changes in Public Land Policy
Zionism and Agricultural Land

February 12, 2008
Ian Ostrander, CNISS Fellow
Public Opinion and Presidential Appointment Success
Related Materials

February 4, 2008
Carlos Costa, CNISS Fellow
Multitiered Government and Swing Voter Theory
Related Materials

January 29, 2008
Mario Small, University of Chicago
Racial Differences in Networks: Do Neighborhood Conditions Matter
Lost in Translation: How Not to Make Qualitative Research More Scientific

November 27, 2007
Margaret Humphreys, Duke University
Racial Disparities in Diabetes a Century Ago: Evidence from US Civil War Veterans

November 13, 2007
Yang Yao, Peking University
Grassroots Democracy and Income Distribution: Evidence from Village Elections in China

November 7, 2007
CNISS Roundtable Series
Douglass North, Nobel Laureate in Economics
A Conceptual Framework for Interpreting Human History

April 24, 2007
Lyle Scruggs, University of Connecticut
Research on Globalization and the Welfare State: Do We Know What We Think We Know?

April 10, 2007
Carolyn Lesorogol, George Warren Brown School of Social Work
"Understanding Institutional Emergence: Land Inheritance among Samburu pastoralists in Kenya"

March 20, 2007
Professor Susan Cutter, Director, Hazards and Vulnerability Research Institute
Distinguished Professor, Department of Geography University of South Carolina
Race, Class, and Catastrophe: Social Vulnerability and the Preparedness Divide
"Moral Hazard, Social Catastrophe: The Changing Face of Vulnerability along the Hurricane Coasts"
"The Long Road Home: Race, Class, and Recovery from Hurricane Katrina"

February 6, 2007
David Speetzen, CNISS Certificate Program Fellow
A Human Right to Democracy

January 23, 2007
William Elliott, CNISS Certificate Program Fellow
Examining Minority and Poor Youth's College Aspirations and Expectations: The Potential Role of College Savings

2006 Speaker Series
Click here for 2006 Speaker Schedule

December 8, 2006
Priya Mathew, CNISS Undergraduate Minor Student
The Effects of Microfinance Program Participation on Income and Income Inequality: Evidence from Ghana

November 28, 2006
Douglass North, Nobel Laureate, Washington University in St. Louis
A New Approach to Economic Development

October 31, 2006
Dr. Murray Weidenbaum, Washington University in St. Louis
Public Policy Think Tanks: Advocates or Oracles?

April 19, 2006
Mary Beth Combs, Fordham University
"A Measure of Legal Independence":The 1870 Married Women's Propert Act and the Portfolio Allocations of British Wives

April 5, 2006
Lesley Sharp, Barnard College
Commodified Kin: Death, Mourning, and Competing Claims on the Bodies of Organ Donors in the United States

March 29, 2006
Bruce Carruthers, Northwestern University
The Mechanization of Trust: Credit Rating in 19th Century America

March 9, 2006
"Recognized and Violated by International Law: The Human Rights of the Global Poor"
by Dr. Thomas Pogge
Center for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics (CAPPE), Australian University
Columbia University

March 1, 2006
Guido Cataife, CNISS Fellow
Political Discomfort and Ouster

February 22-23, 2006
"Redundancy in Federal Safeguards: Overcoming and Embracing Institutional Imperfection "
by Jenna Bednar
University of Michigan

February 15, 2006
Amy Wilson, CNISS Fellow
Just War Theory and Civil War: The Challenges of Adapting an Interstate Theory to an Intrastate Problem

February 8-9, 2006
"Political Accountability and Public Service Provision in Africa: Evidence from Tanzania and Zambia"
by Barak D. Hoffman and Clark C. Gibson
University of California, San Diego

February 1, 2006
David Speetzen, CNISS Fellow
Just War and Forcible Democratization

2005 Speaker Series

December 7, 2005
James Butikofer, CNISS Fellow
Health Affects of the Children's Health Insurance Program

November 9, 2005
Catrina Adams, CNISS Fellow
Dissertation Improvement Grant: Paleoethnobotanical Study of Economic Change (c.AD 900-1400) at Quoygrew Farm, Orkney, Scotland
Click here for abstract
Click here for bibliography

October 12, 2005
Jeremy Meiners, CNISS Fellow
Was Lil' Johnny Left Behind? Differences in Primary School Educational Attainment Due to Reliance on Local Funding, 1935-1955

October 5, 2005
Art Carden, CNISS Fellow
Inputs and Institutions as Conservative Elements
Under revision. Can correspond with the author at cardena@rhodes.edu

September 7, 2005
Art Carden, CNISS Fellow
Trial by Fury: Productivity and Southern Institutions
Under revision. Can correspond with the author at cardena@rhodes.edu

May 2, 2005
Marc M. Treutler, Visiting Scholar, Bauhaus University of Weimar, Germany
The Order of the Senses: A Summary

April 27, 2005
René Lindstädt, CNISS Fellow
Dissertation Draft Chapter: A Multilevel Model of New Deal Spending
Paper not available at the time of this writing

April 20, 2005
Gonzalo Caballero, Visiting Scholar, University of Vigo, Spain
The Industrial Organization of the Spanish Congress: Property Rights, Transactions, and Hierarchies

April 15, 2005
"The Bourgeois Virtues and the Rise of the West"
Full Manuscript of above
by Deidre McCloskey, UIC Distinguished Professor of Economics, History, English, and Communication, University of Illinois at Chicago
Tinbergen Visiting Professor of Philosophy, Economics, and Art and Cultural Studies, Erasmus University of Rotterdam

April 13, 2005
Art Carden, CNISS Certificate Program Fellow
Institutions and Southern Development: The Strange Career of Judge Lynch
For anyone who would like information on this paper, please send email to cardena@rhodes.edu

April 6, 2005
Jeremy Meiners, CNISS Certificate Program Fellow
Bypassing Holdup: Transaction Costs and Investment Decisions of Midwestern Drainage Districts, 1920-1950

March 5, 2005
Konstantin Sonin, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, NJ
"Businessman Candidates: Special-Interest Politics in Weakly Institutionalized Environments"
New Economic School/CEFIR, Moscow

December 13, 2004
Catrina Adams
Broadening Horizons: Effects of Expanding Trade Networks on Economic Decision-Making at the Viking/Medieval Farm of Quoygrew, Orkney, Scotland

December 8, 2004
Buthaina Elanaiem, Phillips University
"Impact of Social Institutions on the Situation of Women and Children in Northern Sudan"

November 29, 2004
Santiago Amaya
F-Twists

November 8, 2004
Andreas Reichart
Corruption, the Rule of Law and Prosperity
Paper not available at the time of this writing

November 1, 2004
Gonzalo Caballero
Institutions and Credible Commitment in the European Union Institutions: The "Stability and Growth Pact"

October 25, 2004
James A. Butikofer
Does Cost-sharing Effect Take-up Rates for the Children's Health Insurance Program?

October 18, 2004
Marc M. Treutler
Media Economics: A Media Theoretical Approach

September 27, 2004
Douglass C. North, Nobel Laureate, Washington University in St. Louis 
Understanding the Process of Economic Change

September 15, 2004
Christopher Kingston, Amherst College
Marine Insurance in Britain and America, 1720-1844: A Comparative Institutional Analysis

May 6, 2004
Ryan Compton 
Revolutions, Institutions, and Economic Growth 

April 29, 2004 
"Raiders of the Last Auk: What the 19th Century Extinction of a North American Seabird Tells Us About Some Economic Factors Affecting Endangered Species"
by Catrina Adams, CNISS Fellow

April 29, 2004
Eric Rovie 
On the Failed Analogy Between Perfect Freindship and Loyalty in Business

April 22, 2004
Gonzalo Caballero, University of Vigo
Institutional Change and Economic Development: From the Self- Destructing Predatory Francoism Toward the Self-Reinforcing Contractual Democracy in Spain

April 15 & 16, 2004
The Land of the Fearful and the Free 
The Revolt of the Masses 
Unilaterlism in the Peace Process Between the Palestine Authority and the State of Israel 
by Yael Tamir, Tel Aviv University and a Member of the Israeli Labor Party 
There are no materials available on these lectures

April 15, 2004
Larry White, Hayek Chair in Economic History at University of Missouri-St.Louis
Can we rank slavery against free labor in terms of economic efficiency?

April 2, 2004 
"Clientelism, Credibility, and Democracy"
"Democratization and clientelism: Why are young democracies badly governed?"
by Philip Keefer, World Bank 

"Social Learning with Private and Common Vaules"
"Self-correcting Information Cascasdes"
by Thomas Palfrey, CalTech 

February 16, 2004 
"Optimal Dynamic Nonlinear Income Taxes with No Commitment"
by John Ledyard, California Institute of Technology

December 17, 2003
Eliana Balla and Gina Reinhardt
Estimating Strategic Determinants of Aid Allocation for Multiple Donors: Old Questions, New Empirics
Paper available by contacting authors at gmyreinh@artsci.wustl.edu or balla@wueconc.wustl.edu

December 4, 2003 
"The New Institutional Economics: Its Start, Its Meaning, Its Prospects"
Graph 1 in paper
Graph 2 in paper
by Dr. Rudolf Richter, Professor Emeritus at the University of Saarland & Director of the Center for the Study of New Institional Economics; Visiting Scholar at the Hoover Institute at Stanford University

December 3, 2003 
Janice Compton
Time Preference and Relationship Stability
Paper available by contacting author at jcompton@wueconc.wustl.edu

November 19, 2003
Gina Reinhardt
The Organizational Structure of US Bilateral Foreign Aid and its Recipients
Paper available by contacting author at gmyreinh@artsci.wustl.edu

November 12, 2003
Ryan Compton
On the Evolution of Financial Development and Economic Growth 
Paper available by contacting author at rcompton@wueconc.wustl.edu

November 5, 2003
Kevin Shaver
Strategic Moral Hazard: Raising Competitor Costs through Pricing in the Insurance Industry
Paper available by contacting author at caerula@yahoo.com

October 29, 2003
Rene Olate
Local Institutions, Social Capital and Capabilities: Challenges for Development and Social Intervention in Latin America

October 23, 2003 
"The Two Faces of Beliefs"
by Elias L. Khalil, Director, American Institute for Economic Research

October 8, 2003
Eliana Balla 
Development Assistance and Domestic Investment in Recipient Countries: Investigating Recipients' Institutions as an Intermediary 
For anyone who would like information on this paper, please send email to balla@wueconc.wustl.edu

October 1, 2003
Tim Hsu 
The Relationship between Social Norms and the Law-from the Perspective of Economic Cost

September 24, 2003
Art Carden
Technical Efficiency and Development: the US South
For anyone who would like information on this paper, please send email to cardena@rhodes.edu

September 17, 2003
Douglass North
Understanding the Process of Economic Change

May 7, 2003
Raul Francisco Andrade

April 30, 2003 
Art Carden 
How the Heavens Go: Economic and Institutional Change
For anyone who would like information on this paper, please send email to cardena@rhodes.edu

April 23, 2003 
Noel Johnson 
Banking on Bureaucrats: The Company of General Farms, Sovereign Debt, and the Coming of the Revolution in France

April 16, 2003 
Eliana Balla 
Institutions and Investment: What is the role of development assistance?
Paper not available at the time of this writing

April 9, 2003
Gina Marie Yannitell Reinhardt 
How Do Agencies Compete in the Aid Business? A Signaling Game between Donors and Recipients

March 24, 2003
"Educational Policy and the Economics of Family"
"History, Institutions,and Economic Performance: The Legacy of Colonial Land Tenure Systems in India"
by Abhijit Banerjee, Massachusetts Institute of Technology 

March 21, 2003 
"A Computational Political Economy Model of Transition, with Empirical Evidence"
by John E. Jackson, University of Michigan 
Chapter 6 of Draft Version of "Political Economy of Transitions" Manuscript

March 14, 2003 
"Water for Life: The Impact of the Privatization of Water Services on Child Mortality"
by Sebastian Galiani, University of San Andres, Argentina 
Galiani CV

"Biotechnology and the Burden of Age-Related Diseases"
by Robert W. Fogel, University of Chicago 
Although this workshop was cancelled, we include information on his topic for your perusal.
Figure 1 of Fogel paper
Figure 2 of Fogel paper
Figure 3 of Fogel paper
Figure 4 of Fogel paper
Figure 5 of Fogel paper
Figure 6 of Fogel paper
Figure 7 of Fogel paper
Table 1 of Fogel paper
Table 2 of Fogel paper
Table 3 of Fogel paper
Table 4 of Fogel paper

October 22, 2003
Raul Andrade
Formal Institutions, Informal Institutions, and Female Labor Force Participation
For anyone who would like information on this paper, please send email to andrade@wueconc.wustl.edu

October 15, 2003
Itai Sened
Institutional Structures as Institutional Matrices or The Distribution of and Access to Property Rights in Developing Countries

December 11, 2002 
Foreign Aid and Capital Markets in Development
Eliana Balla 
Paper not available at the time of this writing

December 4, 2002 
Government-Nonprofit Partnership: Funding Accountability, Promoting Autonomy
Prema Thirupathy

November 20, 2002 
Interest-group building bureaucracy-style: Bureaucratic agencies and the organization of unorganized interests
René Lindstädt 
Paper not available at the time of this writing

November 13, 2002 
Constraint or Enabler? The Inflation-Indexed Bond and Inflation
For anyone who would like information on this paper, please send email to rcompton@wueconc.wustl.edu
Ryan Compton

November 6, 2002
Globalization and Corruption
Vitaly Bigdai

October 30, 2002 
A Microeconomic Explanation for Stalins "Great Terror"
Vahe Lskavyan

October 23, 2002 
Art Carden
Northern Black Codes: Were They Effective?
For anyone who would like information on this paper, please send email to cardena@rhodes.edu

October 16, 2002 
Currency Crises in Emergent Markets and Minsky Financial Fragility Theory: Is There a Link?
Jose Ricardo da Costa e Silva

October 10, 2002
"Why the Welfare State Looks Liks a Free Lunch"
by Peter Lindert, University of California at Davis 
Table 1 of Lindert paper
Table 2 of Lindert paper
Table 3 of Lindert paper
Table 4 of Lindert paper

October 9, 2002 
Janice Compton 
Property Right Assignment and Investment in Children: The British Child Emigration Programme
Paper not available at the time of this writing

October 2, 2002
Meg Rincker
Policy Decentralization: Motivations and Outcomes In the Case of Polish Health Care Policy -- A Research Proposal

September 25, 2002 
Eliana Balla 
Fiscal Policy Constrained by Religious Conversion: The Case of the Balkans in the Ottoman Empire
Paper not available at the time of this writing

September 18, 2002 
Douglass C. North 
Cliometrics, the New Institutional Economics, and the Future of Economic History

September 12, 2002 
"Portfolio Allocation and Ministerial Policy Positions"
by Daniela Giannetti, University of Italy-Bologne

September 11, 2002 
Marc Law 
The Origins of State Pure Food Regulation

September 4, 2002
Noel Johnson
Banking on the King: The Evolution of The Royal Revenue Farms in Old Regime France

February 18, 2002 
"Assessing Preference Change on the U.S. Supreme Court"
by Andrew Martin, Washington University in St. Louis, MO and Kevin Quinn, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 

November 30, 2001 
"State Constitution Reforms in the 1840s and 1850s and the Relationship of American Government and the Economy"
by John Wallis, University of Maryland and NBER 

October 19, 2001 
"Market Integration and Fairness: Evidence from Ultimatum, Dicator, and Public Goods Experiments in East Africa"
by Jean Ensminger, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA
 
 

Writers' Workshop
CNISS sponsors a spring workshop each April that will bring an established scholar to campus to discuss in detail a prominent forthcoming volume of work before it is published. 

April 16 & 17, 2002 
AVNER GREIF
The first guest will be Professor Avner Greif from Stanford. Professor Grief will talk about his book, forthcoming in 2003 with Cambridge University Press, on institutional evolution in the 9th through the 12th centuries in the Magreb merchant society and Italian city state era.

For more information on his manuscript, click on chapters below: 
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6

April 23 & 24, 2003 
AZAR GAT
The guest scholar for the 2003 year is Professor Azar Gat from Tel Aviv University. Professor Gat will discuss his project studying the history of human social life from the first pre-historic signs of social life to modernity. His book is forthcoming with Oxford University Press in 2004. 

Readings from Presentation I: 
"The Human Motivational Complex:1"
"The Human Moviational Complex:2"
"The Causes and Origins of 'Primitive Warfare'"
References for above papers

Readings from Presentation II: 
"Why City-States Existed?"
"All the King's Horsemen"

April 22, 2004 
DOUGLASS C. NORTH
For 2004, the guest scholar is Douglass C. North, Nobel Laureate for 1993 and the Spencer T. Olin Professor in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis. Professor North will discuss his forthcoming book, Understanding the Process of Economic Change to be published in the Fall of 2004. 
Selected articles are available in hard copy by emailing you name and address to cniss@cniss.wustl.edu

Business Lecture Series
This series brings together faculty, students, and people active in the business world in the United States to explore research topics with "real world" business implications. 

November 22, 2002 
How Do We Help Developing Countries?
Presented by Gina Marie Yannitell Reinhardt, CNISS Certificate Fellow, and James Schwartz, Executive Vice-President for Marketing, Mast Industries, Inc. They spoke on "The Bureaucratic Structure of Foreign Aid Agencies: How Recipients Compete for Funding Across Bureaucracies" and "The African Growth and Opportunity Act" respectively. 

October 25, 2002 
The Issue of Trust
Presented by Barry Z. Cynamon, an Undergraduate Student in the CNISS Minor Program and Gary Hirsch, of Elk Capital. They spoke on trust and its implications in the business environment.