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Scientific progress
A variety of thematic and programmes
NIE being characterised by multidisciplinary approaches and by a variety of techniques and tools, bringing in the same place and for a short period of time a number of high level experts from many different fields and traditions is a unique opportunity to advance the state of the art of this field and more crucially to teach and transfer the methods, theories and research practices of NIE.
The Spring School is held for a full week every year at the Institut d'Etudes Scientifiques de Cargèse in Corsica (France). Every year the School lasts six days. It combines lectures given by internationally recognized scholars, and workshops and seminars coordinated by young scientists — typically with 10 to 15 years of experience — known for their expertise either on a research topic or on a methodology.
In addition to providing the participants with up-to date synthesis of the state of the art of the discipline, the spring school aims at providing them with the opportunity to benefit from comments and advises of advanced researchers active in the field. The school is indeed especially designed to allow the meeting and the development of relationship between the participants and the faculties. First, the participants are required to present their work in progress in the seminars during which they are discussed by the faculties who attend the various seminars all the week long. Second, the participants have the opportunity to meet the morning lecturers for at least half an hour in a bilateral business meeting during the week. Third, several social events are organized to allow the development of more personal relationship among the faculties and the participants. The combination of these three type of tools and of the facilities that are especially designed for favouring the development of interactions among those who attend a session proves to be an efficient tool to favour the development of personal and cooperative relationships, to the benefit of both the young scientist and the most advanced ones.
Formal lectures are given every morning of the week. Each morning is devoted to a special topic addressed by two complementary lectures. Each lecture includes not only the state of the art of the discipline, but also the main research questions, the policy implications and an assessment of the future directions of research. Discussion is planned after each lecture. The following themes are covered in each spring school: Contractual issues: (e.g. contract regulation, economics of franchising, interconnection agreements in network industries, etc.) / Industrial Organisations: e.g. European exemption regulations, the relationships among public and private labs, vertical restraints, etc.) / Organisational issues: e.g. corporate governance, skill management, new forms of organisation, team production,) / Institutional issues: e.g. economics of formal and informal institutions, theories of institutional evolutions, the performing of alternative political institutions, etc.) / Law and Economics: e.g. the economics of conflict settlement, the competition among legal frameworks in a global economy, Intellectual Property Regimes, etc.).
Workshops involve the participants in a more interacting process with teachers. The aim is to present the "state of the art" either on a "research question" or on a "technical topic" in order to make participants aware of the recent developments in the field, and to enable them to imagine how they can take into account and contribute to the "frontier" of research in their own work. A "workshop organiser" — typically an advanced young scientist — prepares a 3/4-hour talk on the topic, and a general discussion with the attendance follows. Two workshops are held in parallel every afternoon.
- Workshops on "research questions" put the emphasis on addressed topics, related research practices, the emergence of specific fields, and on their relationship with the more general evolution of the research program in NIE and the intrinsic problems raised in this field of research (for instance how to use transaction costs analysis in research; how to describe and formalise an institutional environment). Discussing around precise research questions is viewed as an efficient instrument to reinforce the transfer of research know-how and tacit knowledge to students and young researchers.
- Workshops on "technical topics" include the following subjects: simulations, experimental economics, qualitative data analysis, survey and questionnaire techniques, performing and interpreting interview econometrics, etc. They intend to make participants familiar with these techniques, and give them a flavour of the relevant methods necessary for those who want to complete a Ph.D. or more generally programs of research in NIE.
Seminars: To stimulate a continuous process of learning and interacting all along the week, both among the participants and between the participants and the more advanced scholars, the second part of the afternoon is dedicated to seminars that are held all along the week. The participants are divided into small consistent groups (maximum 10 persons per group) based on the topic of their research program. Collective discussion of their research program and of the working papers of most advanced PhDs students enable them to experience the process of the making of science and to benefit from comments and advices from leading scholars in the field (i.e. the morning lecturers and the workshops organizers).
Bilateral and informal meetings: Having world-class researchers and young scientists for a week in the same place allows multiple informal and bilateral meetings. ESNIE allows networking and provide participants and lecturers with multiple occasions to launch co-operative processes.
Audience enlargement
Between 2002 and 2009, 668 participants and lecturers participated to ESNIE. Due to the internationalisation of the BOD, of the Scientific Committee and of the ESNIE faculty, ESNIE benefits of a good audience in the various European countries and in the Americas. The support of ISNIE is also worthwhile in attracting students from Asia and Africa. Indeed, together with the Ronald Coase Institute, ISNIE is active in disseminating NIE in those countries and in stimulating co-operation with them. All this together favour the development of ESNIE as a major place and tool to encourage interaction between researchers of different nationalities, to favour the development and the diffusion of NIE within and outside Europe. The School attracts participants from all over world. In 2002, less than 10 of them were coming from non EU countries, in 2009 they were more than 20. In the same time, the proportion of French participants decreased from 40 to 18%.
ESNIE : a world audience |
|
|
Number of participants |
Africa : South of Africa, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Malawi, Togo, Tunisia, Zimbabwe |
10 |
America
|
65 |
Asia and Middle East: Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, China, India, Indonesia, Israel, Japan, Kazakhstan, Kirghizstan, Lebanon, Malaysia, Philippines, South Koréa, Thailand, Uzbekistan, Vietnam, |
60 |
Australia |
4 |
Europe
|
403 26 |
Total |
668 |
A system of financial support (which represents between 20 000 to 30 000 euros each year) allows the students and the most underprivileged researchers to take part of the ESNIE. They are in general students or researchers from low income countries, or students whose institutions don’t grant them with sufficient funding to attend the school.
