OPINIONS AND ATTITUDES IN TIMES OF ECONOMIC TURBULENCE
Gdansk, Poland
15-16 March 2012
Organized by the Leon Kozminski University, Warsaw
What are the main features, determinants and consequences of economic opinions,
economic attitudes and economic culture in the broader current economic and
political context?
The last world financial crisis has caused a long and deep economic recession. While
it has affected various countries to various degrees and in somewhat different
manners, it is now more universally followed by governmental budgetary problems
and constrains, especially concerning social services and welfare. This new
economic situation has generated a discussion about strengthening governmental
control and the active involvement of state institutions in economic processes. Even
the most liberal (in European rather than American meaning) economists advocate
nowadays some more state interventionism and some limits to excessive free market.
However, there is surprisingly little systematic and generalized knowledge about
public opinions and attitudes in this respect as well as psychological well-being,
feeling of self-directness or helplessness and their consequences. Some countries
experience growing social protest, sometimes quite violent. While violent protests are
seldom universal, the growing and spreading dissatisfaction or disillusion may be very
dangerous for the legitimacy of economic and political system of free market
democracy as a whole.
This regional conference will focus on economic opinions and attitudes, especially
those concerning current problems related to different aspects of contradiction or
continuum between free market and state interventionism, in their relations to
changing economic and particularly living conditions on one hand and support for
socio-economic and political system as a whole on the other. We may also try to
reconstruct economic imagination or economic culture of the societies.
While dynamic and/or comparative papers are the most desired, cross-sectional
analyses and case studies will be welcomed as well.
We welcome abstracts related to the broad range of topics in this area, including:
- trust and distrust in economic institutions;
- etatist (interventionist) versus free market attitudes;
- liberalism, neo-liberalism, post-liberalism;
- objective and subjective living conditions;
- consumer sentiments and behavior;
- individual economic strategies;
- self-directness, self-confidence, helplessness;
