Call for Application Global response to COVID-19 a comparative study

Dear all,

The Finance, Law and Economics working group is pleased to announce the launch of a comparative Law and Economics study on the global regulatory response to COVID-19.
You can find the text of the application below and you can apply at this link: https://fs8.formsite.com/CNZLjX/xbytfw6hav/index.html

Call for applications

The Association for Promotion of Political Economy and Law, the Institute for New Economic Thinking – Young Scholar Initiative and the International University College of Turin invite you to participate in a comparative study of legal-economic responses to COVID-19 across jurisdictions.

The project will involve a collaboration between young and senior scholars across the world to help shed light on the procedural, substantive and social dimensions of the regulatory responses to the pandemic, as they begin to affect toe post-COVID19 world. In other words the study will provide a comprehensive map of diverse levels of participation of constituencies in decision making, forms of exercising power and surveillance and distributions of relief measures across different social groups. The main activity will consist of young scholars’ writing a report that answers one of the defined questions. This activity will be supported through group meetings online and in person (within region) and they will be followed by advanced comparative analysis using this material from the reports. With the help of partner organisations we aim to publish the reports and the analysis in an edited book with one of the renowned academic publishers. The reports will go through a blind peer review in order to ensure that they are evaluated for professional advancement.

The main effort will be made by the young scholars. Senior scholars will be invited on the basis of their expertise in one of the disciplinary fields and a specific jurisdiction (or group of jurisdictions). They will be involved in supervision and analysis of some of the specific topics on a general level. We invite senior scholars to express their interest in being involved in the project and to circulate this call among the younger colleagues.

If you are a young (MA or PhD candidate) or early career scholar in law or in economics and you are interested how the regulatory response to COVID-19 in your country compares to the responses around the world please consider applying to this call.

In order to apply to participate in the project, please submit a 300 word abstract on the legal response to the virus in a specific jurisdiction with regards to one (or more) of the specific questions and 150 words on yourself in this form: https://fs8.formsite.com/CNZLjX/xbytfw6hav/index.html

The applications close on Sunday 19th of April at 10AM EST. After a quick first round of selection, successful applicants will be invited for the first Zoom meeting that will take place at 9AM EST on Wednesday the 22nd of April to discuss next steps.

You can choose among the following questions:

(1) What kind of (non-)democratic procedure is involved in adoption of the response? What is the relationship between competences among different levels of government involved? How long are the measures intended to last (are there measures that are supposed to remain in effect after the crisis)?
(2) What specific enforcement and surveillance techniques have been implemented? Which practices are to be voluntarily engaged in by the citizens, which are to be strictly enforced and is there a grey space in-between?
(3) Which monetary, fiscal, insurance (in particular regarding included provisions on the occurrence of pandemic), solvency and tax relief measures were adopted, and what are their distributional characteristics (e.g. do they target the poor in a specific way)?
(4) What are the differences in the way that relief is offered to employers, employees and the unemployed? In particular among the employees, how are self-employed and informally employed being treated?
(5) Which measures have been adopted for economically sustaining companies? How do they differ across the private and public sector, and across different scales (e.g. SMEs vs big corporate actors)?

For any further questions and inquiries please contact Luisa Scarcella and Aleksandar Stojanović on fle@youngscholarsinitiative.org