Dr. Wolfram Elsner, founding member of ECAAR-Germany, organized ECAAR members as panel participants and a keynote speaker at the annual conference of the European Association for Evolutionary Political Economy (EAEPE), in Rethymno, Crete, Greece, October 28 - 31, 2004. This year marked the first official ECAAR presence at this important conference.

Dr. Michael D. Intriligator, Vice Chair of ECAAR’s Board of Directors, gave a keynote address at the first plenary session. His talk was entitled “Globalization of the World Economy: Potential Benefits and Costs and a Net Assessment.”

Dr. Elsner chaired two panel sessions on “The Political Economy of War, Peace and (Dis)Armament, and Arms Industries and Conversion.” At the first session, Dr. Intriligator made introductory remarks. Two ECAAR members presented papers: Clark Abt (Countering Global Terrorist Use of Biological and Nuclear Weapons by Civil Means) and Christos Kollias (The Effects of External Security Related Shocks on Financial Markets).

The second panel session included papers by the Chair of ECAAR-UK, Paul Dunne on “The Evolution of the International Arms Industries,” ECAAR member Fanny Coulomb on “The Concept of Economic War,” members Claude Serfati and Luc Mampaey on “The Alliance between the Arms Industry and the Financial Markets at the Turn of the Century,” and Board member Lucy Webster’s paper on “Overcoming War and Empire by Incentivizing Justice.” (For more work by Drs. Serfati and Mampaey, see “Boom Time for War Inc.”)

According to the EAEPE website at http://eaepe.org/:
“The main purpose in forming the association was to promote evolutionary, dynamic and realistic approaches to economic theory and policy. Instead of the over-formalistic and often empty theorizing of orthodox economics, the aim was to bring together the ideas of a number of theorists and theoretical traditions, and to help to develop a more realistic and adequate approach to theory and policy.”

EAEPE is the largest association of economists in Europe. It sponsors three awards: the Kapp Prize, the Myrdal Prize and the Herbert Simon Young Scholar Prize. EAEPE publishes a newsletter, and with Edward Elgar Publishing produces conference papers and other volumes. Members receive substantial discounts on publications.
Next year’s conference will be held at the University of Bremen in Bremen, Germany. We all hope that this year’s extensive ECAAR presence can be reproduced in 2005. If you are interested in participating, please contact Wolfram Elsner at welsner@uni-bremen.de.