2024: Madelaine Moore
The 2024 EAEPE William Kapp Prize went to Madelaine Moore for her paper “Water trading markets: Facilitating financial flows through the hydro-social cycle?“ published in the Journal Geoforum. The paper explores the increasing articulation of water governance to circuits of global finance, seen through growth in financial investors in the water sector, and how water, water services, and infrastructures are being legitimized for inclusion in financial markets. It is argued that the logic of crisis, risk management, and financing questions appear to characterize the shifting terrain of water governance across the hydro-social cycle.
The paper stands out for its originality and innovation, exploring the financialization of environmental resources by examining whether water, specifically water futures, can or should be treated as a new financial asset class. It directly addresses a pressing real-world policy and societal issue, deepening our understanding of water governance and highlighting its profound social consequences, as well as the broader implications of equating economic, social, and ecological values. Aligned with the EAEPE’s core perspectives—environmental focus, comparative methods, and discussions on financialization and the state’s role—the paper also paves the way for further research in these areas.
2023: Karsten Kohler & Roberta Terranova and Enrico M. Turco
The 2023 EAEPE Kapp Prize went ex aequo to (1) Karsten Kohler for his paper titled “Capital flows and geographically uneven economic dynamics: A monetary perspective” published in Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space and (2) Roberta Terranova and Enrico M. Turco for their paper titled “Concentration, stagnation and inequality: An agent-based approach” published in the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization.
Karsten Kohler
I’m honoured to be among the recipients of the 2023 Kapp Prize. For me, the great thing about the EAEPE is that it creates a dialogue between scholars who approach important economic issues from diverse perspectives and methodologies. I hope that my paper on Capital Flows and Geographically Uneven Economic Dynamics (Environment and Planning A) makes a modest contribution to this dialogue.
The paper asks how capital flows across countries can contribute to macro-financial instability. While this is a topic that has attracted much interest since the 2008 Global Financial Crisis, the existing literature has not always been clear about the underlying causal mechanisms. In the paper, I argue that this ambiguity is partly due to an incomplete understanding of the workings of money and finance in monetary economies. Parts of the literature implicitly draw on a loanable funds framework that does not distinguish between gross and net capital flows and ignores endogenous money creation by banks. Additionally, there has been confusion regarding the accurate accounting of capital flows on balance sheets and in the balance-of-payments. To clear up some of these misunderstandings, the paper draws on post-Keynesian monetary theory and coherent balance sheet accounting. I have intentionally presented this material in an accessible manner. Rather than constructing a formal model, I have chosen to provide straightforward balance sheet examples and engage with arguments and empirical evidence from existing literature. I hope that this approach fosters dialogue between scholars from different theoretical traditions, and also makes the paper useful for young scholars and educators.
In a nutshell, the key arguments made in the paper are, firstly, that trade imbalances are usually financed endogenously by net inflows that need not originate from surplus regions. Thus, it makes little sense to attribute current account deficits in a particular region to the excess savings in countries such as China or Germany. Secondly, the much-highlighted bank inflows are not a precondition for local credit creation and do not mechanically drive domestic credit booms. Instead, gross financial flows can contribute to destabilising financial booms through exchange rate appreciation and asset price inflation. Thirdly, sudden stops in capital flows can be entirely unrelated to current account deficits but may trigger financial instability, resulting in negative gross flows rather than increased outflows. These arguments imply that the focus on surplus countries as originators of net flows can be misleading and that gross flows from global financial centres are likely to be more important. More attention is needed to gross portfolio and FDI flows into asset markets rather than bank loan flows and net flows.
We are honored and grateful to be the recipients of the 2023 William Kapp Prize for our article “Concentration, stagnation, and inequality: An agent-based approach.”
We started thinking about these issues a few years ago, inspired by the contributions of authors like Paolo Sylos Labini, Joseph Schumpeter, and proponents of the evolutionary school of thought, as well as the insights from Keynes and Kalecki, among others. Our attempt aimed at building on and applying their intuitions to recent macroeconomic phenomena – particularly the rising trends of concentration, stagnation, and inequality. This was possible also thanks to associations like EAEPE, which promotes a pluralistic view and convenes the academic community to engage in dialogue on such topics and the works of such authors.
In the paper we develop a macroeconomic agent-based model with endogenous innovation driven growth and knowledge accumulation. The source of concentration lies in the fact that heterogeneous firms do not have equal access to capital-embodied innovations, as we assume that this depends on the “knowledge gap”, i.e., the difference between the degree of capital good’s technical advancement and the firm’s accumulated technological knowledge. The analysis shows that, in the absence of consistent knowledge spillovers and as long as capital goods remain considerably different from each other, technical progress generates systematic differences in productivity across firms, leading to a reallocation of market shares towards more productive firms. Consequently, as the newly-emerging large firms seek to translate the enhanced market power into higher mark-ups, the resulting shift in the income distribution from wages to profits eventually undermines aggregate demand and growth.
We are currently developing an extension and adaptation of the model. The Kapp prize stimulates us to further our research in this direction.
Roberta Terranova
Enrico M. Turco
2022: Kerstin Hötte, Dani Lang and Italo Pedrosa
The 2022 EAEPE-Kapp Prize went ex aequo to (1) Kerstin Hötte for her article on “Skill transferability and the stability of transition pathways – A learning-based explanation for patterns of diffusion” published in the Journal of Evolutionary Economics and (2) Dany Lang and Ítalo Pedrosa for their article on “To what extent does aggregate leverage determine financial fragility? New insights from an agent-based stock-flow consistent model” published in the Journal of Evolutionary Economics.
Kerstin Hötte
Skill transferability and the stability of transition pathways – A learning-based explanation for patterns of diffusion (published in the Journal of Evolutionary Economics).
It is a great honour to be one of the recipients of the Kapp Prize 2022. The paper is one of the outcomes of my PhD thesis and I presented an earlier version on the EAEPE conference 2019 in Warsaw. The work greatly benefited from feedback by the EAEPE community and from incredibly valuable comments by the reviewers.
In the paper, I use a technology-extension of the macroeconomic ABM Eurace@unibi to analyse the impact of knowledge characteristics on pathways of technology transitions. A technology transition is a process when one incumbent technology is replaced by an entrant alternative. The most prominent empirical example of our time is the low-carbon transition when incumbent fossil fuel technologies are replaced by green alternatives.
In the paper, I can show that the process of transition and its economic consequences may be dependent on the transferability of knowledge between the two competing technologies. Intuitively, it is easier to adopt a new technology when the transferability of knowledge between the old and new technology is high. Hence, the new technology initially diffuses very fast. In contrast, if the transferability is low, the economy may be locked in the old technology and it is hard for the new technology to take off.
However, the paper illustrates that there is a trade-off: a high transferability means that it is easy to adopt a new technology but it is also easy for adopters to switch back to the old technology. This may create technological instability which is economically costly as it hampers productivity-enhancing technological specialisation. In other words, the analyses show a trade-off between technological exploration and exploitation arising from the transferability of technological knowledge.
It is a great honor and achievement for Italo Pedrosa and me to receive this prize, and to succeed such prestigious researchers as Joseph Stiglitz and Giovanni Dosi, and all the other beloved colleagues who were attributed the prize over the past years, notably Andrea Roventini, Alberto Botta, Mark Setterfield, Antoine Godin, …
For me, coming from a family background were nobody would study and go to the university, this prize embodies the recognition of a long and most difficult journey outside of the box of conventional economic thinking, and constitutes the reward and accomplishment of years of non-conventional, but meaningful, modelling, combining post-Keynesian, evolutionist and Regulationist views.
Italo and I started this paper while Italo was in the last year of his PhD in Campinas, and got a grant to come to Paris, in order to work with my team and myself. We were both convinced that some of the critiques of Minsky’s’ Financial Instability Hypothesis (FIH), most notably the ones of Toporowski and Lavoie, made sense. And this, even more than the empirical literature finds little support for the FIH. Minsky’s views regarding the link between increased private debt and financial instability had to be completed to consider the possibility of Steindlian dynamics, i.e., that investment by some firms can result in higher profits, fostering the accumulation of liquid assets and leading to an ex-post decrease in the aggregate leverage. Consequently, profit-rate heterogeneity plays a crucial role.
We then constructed an agent-based stock-flow consistent model (AB-SFC), evolutionary and Keynesian-Kaleckian, that adds the missing elements to the FIH. We used it to show how cash flows distribution across firms impact the aggregate leverage ratio-systemic financial fragility relation. As a matter of consequence, systemic financial fragility is a cushioned and imperfect mirror of the aggregate leverage ratio.
This process has been long, and we are more than happy that the result has been published in the Journal of Evolutionary Economics and elected by the EAEPE as a recipient of the Kapp prize. Thank you so much for this recognition of the work, that means a lot to us!
Dany Lang
Ítalo Pedrosa
To what extent does aggregate leverage determine financial fragility? New insights from an agent-based stock-flow consistent model (published in the Journal of Evolutionary Economics).
2021: Not awarded
The Kapp prize was not awarded in 2021
2020: Botta et al., Gräbner et al. & Lamperti et al.
The 2020 EAEPE-Kapp Prize went ex aequo to (1) Alberto Botta, Eugenio Caverzasi, Alberto Russo, Mauro Gallegati and Joseph E.Stiglitz for their article on Inequality and finance in a rent economy Journal of Economic Behavior and organization (2019), (2) Claudius Gräbner, Philipp Heimberger, Jakob Kapeller and Bernhard SchützStructural change in times of increasing openness: assessing path dependency in European economic integration, Journal of Evolutionary Economics (2019), and (3) Francesco Lamperti, Valentina Bosetti, Andrea Roventini and Massimo Tavoni for their article on The public costs of climate-induced financial instability, Nature Climate Change (2019) 9: 829–833.
2019: Keun Lee & Jongho Lee and Yun K. Kim, Yun K., Gilberto Tadeu Lima & Mark Setterfield
The 2019 EAEPE-Kapp Prize went ex aequo to Lee, Keun and Lee, Jongho for their article on National innovation systems, economic complexity, and economic growth: country panel analysis using the US patent data, Journal of Evolutionary Economics (2019): 1-32 and Kim, Yun K., Gilberto Tadeu Lima, and Mark Setterfield for their article on Political aspects of household finance: debt, wage bargaining, and macroeconomic (in) stability, Journal of Post Keynesian Economics (2019): 16-38.
2018: Steffen Murau
The 2018 EAEPE-Kapp Prize went to Steffen Murau for his paper on “Shadow money and the public money supply: the impact of the 2007-2009 financial crisis on the monetary system”, Review of International Political Economy, vol. 24 issue 5.
2017: Franklin Obeng-Odoom and Toru Yamamori
The 2017 EAEPE-Kapp Prize is shared between Franklin Obeng-Odoom for his paper on “Marketising the commons in Africa: the case of Ghana”, Review of Social Economy and Toru Yamamori for his paper on“The concept of need in Adam Smith”, Cambridge Journal of Economics.
2016: Agnès Labrousse & Alessandro Caiani, Antoine Godin and Stefano Lucarelli
The 2016 EAEPE-Kapp Prize is shared between Agnès Labrousse for her paper on “Not by technique alone. A methodological comparison of development analysis with Esther Duflo and Elinor Ostrom”, Journal of Institutional Economics and Alessandro Caiani, Antoine Godin, Stefano Lucarelli for their paper on “Innovation and finance: a stock flow consistent analysis of great surges of development”, Journal of Evolutionary Economics.
2015: Angelo Fusari and Angelo Reati
Earlier Awardees
2014 EAEPE-Kapp Prize was awarded to Peter Ho for his 2013 paper, “In Defense of endogenous, spontaneously ordered development: Institutional functionalism and Chinese property rights”, The Journal of Peasant Studies Vol. 40 (6): 1087–1118.
2013 EAEPE-Kapp Prize was awarded to Jakob Kapeller, Bernhard Schütz and Stefan Steinerberger for their 2013 article, ‘The Impossibility of Rational Consumer Choice: A Problem and Its Solution‘, Journal of Evolutionary Economics, 23(1): 39-60.
2012 EAEPE-Kapp Prize was awarded to Guglielmo Forges Davanzati for his 2011 article, ‘Income Distribution and Crisis in a Marxian Schema of the Monetary Circuit‘, International Journal of Political Economy, 40(3): 33-49.
2011 EAEPE-Kapp Prize was awarded to Philip O’Hara for his 2009 article, ‘The Political Economy of Climate Change, Ecological Distribution and Uneven Development‘, Ecological Economics, 69(2): 223-234.
2010 EAEPE-Kapp Prize was awared to George Liagouras for his 2009 article, ‘Socio-Economic Evolution and Darwinism in Thorstein Veblen: A Critical Appraisal’, Cambridge Journal of Economics, 33(6): 1047-1064.
2009 Kapp Prize winner was Edward Nik-Khah for his 2008 article, ‘A Tale of Two Auctions‘, Journal of Institutional Economics, 4(1): 73-97.
2008 Kapp Prize was awarded to Xosé H. Vázquez for his 2006 article, ‘Eclectic Explanation of Shopfloor Control Using Efficiency and Power Theories‘, Organization Studies, 27(10): 1421-1446.
2007 Kapp Prize was awarded to Eyüp Özveren for his 2007 article, ‘Where Disciplinary Boundaries Blur: The Environmental Dimension of Institutional Economics‘, in Stravos Ioannides and Klaus Nielsen (eds), Economics and the Social Sciences: Boundaries, Interaction and Integration, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
2006 Kapp Prize was awarded jointly to Otto Steiger for his 2006 article, ‘Property Economics versus New Institutional Economics: Alternative Foundations of How to Trigger Economic Development‘, Journal of Economic Issues, 40(1): 183-208, and to Guido BuenstorfandJohann Peter Murmann for their 2005 article, ‘Ernst Abbe’s Scientific Management Theoretical Insights from Ninetieth-Century Dynamics Capabilities Approach‘, Industrial and Corporate Change, 14(4): 543-578.
2005 Kapp Prize was not awarded.
2004 Kapp Prize was not awarded.
2003 Kapp Prize was awarded to Yval Milloand Donald MacKenzie for their 2003 article, ‘Constructing a Market, Performing Theory: The Historical Sociology of a Financial Derivatives Exchange‘, American Journal of Sociology, 109(1): 107-145.
2002 Kapp Prize was awarded Yadira Gonzalez de Lara for her 2002 article, ‘Institutions for Contract Enforcement and Risk Sharing: From Debt to Equity in Late Medieval Venice’, European Review of Economic History, 6(2): 257-262.
2001 Kapp Prize was awarded jointly to Matthias Klaes for his 2000 article, ‘The Birth of the Concept of Transaction Costs: Issues and Controversies‘, Industrial and Corporate Change, 9(4): 567-593, and to John Finchand Robert McMaster for their article, ‘On Categorical Variables and Non-Parametric Statistical Inference in the Pursuit of Causal Explanations‘, later published in Cambridge Journal of Economics, 26(6): 753-772.
2000 Kapp Prize was Stephen Dunn for his 2000 article, ‘Wither Post Keynesianism?‘, Journal of Post Keynesian Economics,22(3): 343-364.
1999 Kapp Prize was not awarded.
1998 Kapp Prize was not awarded.
1997 Kapp Prize was awarded jointly to Elias L. Khalil for his 1997 article, ‘Buridan’s Ass, Risk, Uncertainty and Self-Competition: A Theory of Enrepreneurship‘, Kyklos, 50(2): 147-163, and to Ugo Pagano for his article, ‘Transition and the Speciation of the Japanese Model‘, later published in Oliver Fabel, Francesco Farina and Lionnello F. Punzo (2000) (eds), European Economies in Transition: A Search of a New Growth Path, Basingstoke: Macmillan.
1996 Kapp Prize was awarded to Bart Nooteboom for his article, ‘Towards a Cognitive Theory of the Firm: Issues and a Logic of Change’.
1995 Kapp Prize was not awarded.
1994 Kapp Prize was awarded to Giovanni Dosi, Luigi Marengo and Marco Valente for their article, ‘Norms as Emergent Properties of Adaptive Learning’, later published in 1999 as ‘Norms as Emergent Properties of Adaptive Learning: The Case of Economic Routines’, Journalof Evolutionary Economics, 9(1): 5-26.
1993 Kapp Prize was awarded to Tony Lawson for his article, ‘A Realist Perspective on Contemporary “Economic Theory”‘, later published in 1995, Journal of Economic Issues, 29(1): 1-32.
1992 inaugural Kapp Prize was awarded to Ulrich Witt for his article, ‘Innovation, Externalities and the Indeterminateness of Progress’, later published in 1996 as ‘Innovation, Externalities and the Problem of Economic Progress‘, Public Choice, 89(1-2):113-130.
