PERICLES - Political Economics of Reforms, Institutional Complexity, and Legislative Evaluation Studies

WHAT WE DO

Unit Director: Massimo Morelli

The goal of the unit is to help cooperation and generation of new ideas on the broad questions of institutional design that society in general and Europe in particular are facing. Artificial Intelligence, climate change, the cyber threats and the incentive to occupy and utilize the space for military purposes are only the most prominent global examples of threats and increased salience of issues that seem to require the creation of new institutions, new treaties that need to be self-enforcing, new linkages between the traditional scopes of different national and international organizations.

At the national level there are important necessary institutional reforms being advocated, ranging from the reforms of the public administration and the bureaucracy to the reform of the judicial institutions. The unit aims to contribute to these important debates with coordinated positive and normative analysis of institutional systems, historical evaluation of different institutional forms, new empirical methodologies for evaluation of current institutions and of proposed reforms. Such evaluations require knowledge also of the relevant political feasibility constraints and political incentives of the key decision makers. Hence, a key role in the coordination of these research and policy questions can be played by political economists.