The proposed international symposium affirms its continuity with a current international and interdisciplinary research program launched in 2009, on Business and Trade Organizations in Europe (19-20th C.).
The aim of this symposium is to better understand how the BIA’s have managed the regulation of economic life. The notion of regulation has to be understood in a broader definition than the Economics concept. It refers to the specific combinations of institutions and graduating system of rules sustaining an economic framework in time and space.
More specifically, our aim is to discuss: how have BIAs contributed to set down or to undo a diversity of economic and social rules (customs, norms, law, appellations, labour organization etc.) which have helped to run the markets of goods and services ; how have these groups, with conflicting and competing interests, achieved -or not- to agree on measures they would want to run for them ; how have they been able to secure those obligations (rules of procedure, national and European public authorities etc.) ; what were the pressures and circumstances under which the BIAs had to change their policies over time (international trade, pricing policy, interwar period, European and national polices, political events, etc.) ; how have the BIAs extended their competences, skills and influences in matter of economic, financial and social regulation, from national to regional and international levels.
In other words can the results and the effectiveness of the BIAs activities be measured and at which levels? In turn, had the vast action in favor of the regulation of the economic life redesigned the BIAs with new hierarchies?
