4th RUCAM Political Economy Workshop 2025

The workshop/conference consists of

• Model theory teaching by Stephane Wolton (professor, London School of Economics, U.K.) and Otto Swank (professor, Erasmus University Rotterdam, The Netherlands) in the mornings;
• Research presentations (50 min.) by participants in the afternoons, with Prof Wolton and Prof Swank being present;
• Evening activities (1. panel on populism, polarization and the threat of autocracy; 2. cooking workshop with gala dinner; 3. award dinner).

Your research presentations: You will present your own paper and benefit from feedback from a discussant and from the experts. We welcome empirical, experimental and theoretical papers from a wide range of topics such as (but not limited to) the economics and politics of public and non-market decision-making, political economy, public policy and the economics of institutions. Your discipline could be economics, political science, another social science or physics.

The cooking workshop: We’ll cook our own gala dinner. We’ll be split in groups to prepare parts of our own dinner (soup, entrée, main course(s) and desert) and then enjoy it together.

Important Dates:

There are two opportunities for submitting your paper. If you know early on that your paper is accepted, this may help with planning your summer.

You can submit your paper by Monday, 14 April, or by Monday, 26 May. In each case, you will have to confirm your participation one week later, if your paper is accepted. You will then receive an invoice which must be paid within 5 working days.

First Round Submissions:

14 April, 2025           Deadline for paper submission (use rucam@ru.nl).

We’ll inform you (within days) whether your paper is accepted or not.

22 April, 2025           Deadline for confirming your participation (use rucam@ru.nl).

We’ll send you an invoice (within days) for which we expect to receive the payment within 5 working days (deadline).

Second Round Submissions:

26 May, 2025            Deadline for paper submission (use rucam@ru.nl).

We’ll inform you (within days) whether your paper is accepted or not.

3 June, 2025             Deadline for confirming your participation (use rucam@ru.nl).

We’ll send you an invoice (within days) for which we expect to receive the payment within 5 working days (deadline).

Programme and Final Paper:

Beg. of Aug. 2025      We’ll send out the programme, the reading list for the model theory teaching and the allocation of discussants.

13 August, 2025        Deadline for sending your final paper (to rucam@ru.nl and to your discussant).

Conference details:

• The RUCAM Workshop/Conference is organized by Frank Bohn, Radboud University (RU) Centre for Analytical Modelling (www.rucam.nl). It is sponsored by the RU Department of Economics and Business Economics, the RU Hotspot Sustainable Democracy, the European Journal of Political Economy, Gary Wagner (University of Louisiana) and Friedrich Schneider (University of Linz). 
• It takes place at Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands, from 20 August to 22 August, 2025 (three full days).
• We expect participants to arrive on Tuesday, 19 August (not later), and to depart on Saturday, 23 August (not earlier). If this is not possible for you, please consult with the conference organizer.
• Registration for the workshop is from 8:00-8:30 on Wednesday, 20 August. On the other days, we start at 9 o’clock.
• The conference finishes on Friday, 22 August, with dinner in combination with the best paper award.
• You are encouraged to travel by train or another environmentally friendly way or to compensate the CO2 emission of your flight.

Paper submission and presentation:

• Completed (or unfinished) papers must be submitted to rucam@ru.nl.
• Presenters have 25 minutes for the content presentation of their paper.
• Discussants have maximally 5 minutes for comments.
• Presenters then get another maximally 5 minutes for a critical reflection on their ideas and publication strategy. 
• Expert comments and plenary discussion: 15 minutes.
• There will be a best paper award.
• We expect 20-30 participants. Depending on the number of presenters we may have to reduce the presentation time slightly for some less complex papers.

Your obligations:

• The conference fee is 200 Euro. Payment must be received within 5 working days upon receipt of our invoice. In very exceptional circumstances, a fee reduction is possible. Please request it from frank.bohn@ru.nl, but only if you would absolutely not be able to attend the workshop without it.
• You are expected to actively participate in all  sessions. Please do not submit a paper, if you are planning on not being present in all sessions.
• If your paper is accepted, we also expect you to prepare a couple of slides for discussing the paper of another participant.
• When you confirm your participation, you also accept that your email address will be shared with other workshop/conference participants.

The conference fee covers:

• Conference information / documentation
• Morning and afternoon breaks
• Conference lunches and buffet dinner during the panel discussion.
• Cooking workshop / gala dinner (it does not the cover the award dinner on the last day)

Cancellation policy:

• All cancellations must be received in writing via email to frank.bohn@ru.nl by 4 July 2025.
• Maximally, 100 Euro will be refunded (100 Euro will always be retained for administrative charges).
• No refund will be given for cancellation requests received after 4 July 2025.
• No-shows are subject to the full conference fee.

This announcement will be included in the Inomics email alerts at three moments in time only (Monday and Thursday postings each time):

• in March: 17 and 20 March;
• before the first (14 April) submission deadline: 7 and 10 April;
• before the second (26 May) submission deadline: 19 and 22 May.

However, you can always find it on the Inomics website under Conferences, then Workshops, then search for "RUCAM" or "democracy".