NEW: FRIBIS’ UBI Experiments team gets off the ground

Why the team was founded

Interest in basic income has increased significantly in recent years, both in academia and in politics. This growing attention from the media has contributed to a greater willingness to fund UBI pilot projects. As a result, numerous basic income pilots have been launched around the world in recent years. Nevertheless, there is as still no international platform to enable the mutual exchange of pilot results to promote collaboration within different teams or help researchers to work effectively with policy-makers. The UBI Experiments Team aims to change this by setting up the first global pilot network. With Jurgen De Wispelaere, Karl Widerquist, Leah Hamilton, Miriam Opwonya Laker, Neil Howard and Nika Soon-Shiong, the team includes many well-known faces from the Basic Income scene.

Next steps

The team has set itself a 4-point plan to be tackled, starting this year. 1) Starting in the summer of 2023, UBI Experiments will publish a monthly newsletter for the global pilot community, providing updates on research, policy developments, possible meetings, publications and opportunities for collaboration. 2) The team will also host a quarterly online seminar series in which members of the pilot project community can share and discuss the latest findings and developments in their work. 3) In late 2023 the team will host a FRIBIS Winter School entitled “How to Build a Pilot” for students, researchers and pilots. (This will complement the one-day Summer School offered by FRIBIS in July 2023). 4) Finally, the team will host the world’s first pilot community conference at FRIBIS in summer 2024.

Click here for the team page

Freiburg Rising Stars Academy (Excellence funding): FRIBIS encourages outstanding young researchers to apply

What is the Rising Stars Academy?

Rising Stars is a program launched by the University of Freiburg to support highly qualified international young researchers. The Freiburg Rising Stars Academy offers researchers from various disciplines the opportunity to apply for funding. Applicants have the opportunity to join already established research teams and projects with their own research proposals. For more information, see the Rising Stars Academy Fact Sheet.

Notice: The deadline for submission has been extended to July 8, 2023.

What are the benefits of being a Rising Star?

  • International experience and recognition
  • Research collaboration at the highest level
  • The opportunity to build and expand professional networks
  • Travel grants to Freiburg, and much more.

What role does FRIBIS play?

The head of FRIBIS, Prof. Bernhard Neumärker, is a Host Principal Investigator of the Rising Stars Academy. As an interdisciplinary research network, FRIBIS welcomes applicants from all disciplines who are interested in Universal Basic Income research. Joint projects and publications as well as new cooperation partners and third party funding for future research projects are desired by us. There is a possibility to fill doctoral positions with suitable Rising Stars. Interested applicants contact Dr. Bianca Blum.

If you would like to invite or encourage interested persons to participate in the Rising Stars Academy, you can download a sample letter here.

Open for applications: FRIBIS Summer School on “Empirical methods of UBI investigations” in July 2023

FRIBIS will be hosting a three-part Summer School this year which will take place in Freiburg. Each part will focus on the topic of “Empirical Methods in UBI Investigation” but from different perspectives. The Summer School will be held in English and applications can be submitted now. (For Deadlines, see below)

Part 1/3: How to build a UBI pilot

The first part of the Summer School (July 10, 2023) will start with the topic How to build a UBI pilot. A growing number of UBI pilot tests are being proposed or are in preparation around the world. However, there is limited knowledge about how to design a pilot, the most appropriate methods, and the ethics of pilot research. Participants will address these issues.

Application deadline: 22nd May 2023.

Part 2/3: Social Contract Lab Experiments

The second part of the Summer School (11th-14th July) is entitled Social Contract Lab Experiments. It will focus on the application of Social Contract Theory to behavioural and experimental economics, both in theory and practice. Participants will discuss the relevance of behavioural experiments for normative theories and learn how to design and conduct lab experiments.

Application deadline: 22nd May 2023.

Summer School 3/3: Microsimulation and Social Welfare Maximization

The third part of the Summer School (18th-20th July) will focus on the topic of Microsimulation and Social Welfare Maximization. Both young researchers (MSc, PhD) and more advanced academics who are nevertheless still beginners in static modelling will have the rare opportunity to learn from an extensive introduction to the development of static microsimulation models and welfare analysis, covering both theory and practice.

Application deadline: 22nd May 2023.

A tribute to Götz W. Werner: New YouTube videos with Prof. Bernhard Neumärker and Enno Schmidt

Two videos on the legacy of Götz Werner produced by Enno Schmidt have just been published on the FRIBIS YouTube channel: Prof. Bernhard Neumärker draws connections between Götz Werner’s various guiding entrepreneurial principles in his lecture “UBI & New Ordoliberalism“, while Enno Schmidt paints a vivid picture of Götz Werner as an entrepreneur and basic income advocate in his tribute film.

Bernhard Neumärker: UBI & New Ordoliberalism

In this lecture, Prof. Neumärker shows how Götz Werner’s entrepreneurial guiding principles and the academic UBI discourse are interrelated in numerous ways. These principles include Ex ante Social Contracting, Ex post stable Social Contracting, Ex post Governance and aspects of a paradigm shift in the social market economy. Prof. Neumärker shows how New Ordoliberalism and Basic Income can be derived from Werner’s principles as basic cornerstones of a just social contract.

Neumärker discusses the ‘Libertarian Trap’ in the Political Economy of Freedom as well as the ‘Authoritarian Trap’. He shows how the Participatory UBI could help to avoid the libertarian trap and to get a step out of the authoritarian trap. The paradigm shift he envisions also extends to the means-tested welfare system, the redistribution of power in labor contracts, and the potentials of a UBI, in terms of time sovereignty (multiplicative utility function) and intrinsic motivation. Finally, Neumärker argues that the consumption tax is an adequate way to finance the basic income.

An obituary for Götz W. Werner by Enno Schmidt

At the 2022 BIEN Congress in Brisbane, Australia, Enno Schmidt presented this obituary to raise Götz Werner’s international profile.

Enno Schmidt is co-founder of the popular initiative and referendum for the introduction of Unconditional Basic Income in Switzerland, author of the film “Grundeinkommen – ein Kulturimpuls” (“Basic Income – A Cultural Impulse”) and managing director of FRIBIS.

Götz Werner was a multi-award-winning entrepreneur and the most prominent proponent of an Unconditional Basic Income in Germany. In the period from 2005 until shortly before his death, Enno Schmidt conducted numerous interviews with him and examined Götz Werner’s mindset and corporate leadership as well as its actual impact on the people in his company.

Six policy papers published in connection with the FRIBIS Winter School 2023

This year, between 16 and 20 January, the first FRIBIS Winter School was held under the title “Today’s global challenges and the UBI debate”. Philippe Van Parijs, one of the world’s leading basic income researchers, hosted the event. Over the five days, the participants focused on whether recent challenges, such as the climate crisis, the pandemic and international tensions and conflicts, will put UBI on the backburner or provide grounds for its growth.

Many participants of the Winter School have taken the past months as an opportunity to reflect on the event and to formulate their own thoughts on issues related to the UBI. The results can now be read in six recently published English-language policy papers:

 

 

 

 

 

Basic Income Globetrotter: Prof. Jurgen De Wispelaere now in Freiburg

His academic interest in Basic Income has already taken Jurgen De Wispelaere to many places: From Belgium to Great Britain, Ireland, Australia, Canada, Spain, Finland, Argentina and finally Chile. His research focuses on Basic Income experiments and how they have impacted policy. Now Prof. De Wispelaere will stay in Freiburg for three months to research, teach, write and share ideas with members of both FRIBIS and GWP.

Wissenschaftliche Veranstaltungen mit Jurgen De Wispelaere

Between 24 April and 10 May, Jurgen De Wispelaere will host a Public Lecture Series on “The State Of The Art In Basic Income Policy: A Public Lecture Series“, to which he has invited prominent participants. In the summer semester, Prof. De Wispelaere will also offer a seminar for Master’s students: “Recent Advances in Basic Income Policy Research“.

 

 

On Thursday, 27th April, he will present an evening lecture on Basic Income Trials: The problem of assuring (continued) political commitment. This event will take place online as well as onsite.

On 11 May, as part of the UBITrans Public Seminar Series, he will give a lecture on “Basic income as an Eco-Social Policy Instrument? A Preliminary Framework and Comparative Analysis of Policy Alternatives“.

Interview with Jurgen De Wispelaere about his visit in Freiburg

What do you hope to gain from your time in Freiburg on both a private and academic level?

On a personal level it is really interesting for me to visit Germany again and reclaim my long-lost quasi-German heritage. I was actually born in Köln — hence the name Jürgen, although I dropped the Umlaut when I moved to the UK in the late 1990s because the English don’t know what to do with that. I moved to Belgium when I was 10y old and haven’t been back to Germany since. At the time I was fluent in German, but 40 years later, I hope to use the three months in Freiburg to recover as much as possible. Of course, it isn’t just about the language but also reconnecting to the German culture and lifestyle I still vaguely remember.

On a professional level I look forward to meeting and discussing basic income with a whole group of students — master, PhD and postdocs — at GWP and FRIBIS. Meeting fresh faces and discussing their and my research is what research visits are all about. As you become more senior in your career, you start to realise that the really exciting new ideas often come from people at the start of their career. So I’m keen to learn and explore collaborating with both students and faculty in Freiburg. At the same time, I also look forward to connecting again with broader research communities in Europe, which is much easier to do from Freiburg than from Valdivia in the south of Chile (where I normally live).

Are there any writing projects you want to focus on during your stay?

Funnily enough, yes! In addition to finishing up some small pieces of research, I’ll be working on three main areas of research. First, I will continue working on the policy impact of basic income experiments, which is an area of research strangely absent from much of the debate around basic income experiments. People talk about the design, implementation and findings of experiments, but no one really looks at what happens after. This is a project I have started with Joe Chrisp, which already led to a special issue of the European Journal of Social Security, but which we are now developing and expanding.

A second project is also related to basic income experiments. With my long-standing collaborator Lindsay Stirton, I plan to work on a paper that examines how to assure that political actors continue their initial commitment to funding, designing, implementing and evaluating a basic income experiment. It turns out that governments who make an initial political commitment to a basic income experiment immediately face all sorts of political pressures and circumstances that threaten this continued commitment. By looking at several of the recent cases (Finland, Ontario, Catalonia and Ireland) I hope to get more insight in what is the core problem and how we might think of protecting basic income experiments from loss of political commitment over time. This will be the topic of my public lecture on 27 April. Third, building on earlier work I published on the relation between basic income and exit from the labour market, I will explore the option of collaborating on some research in the political economy of basic income and the exit option with Prof Neumärker and several of the PhD students. These projects should keep me busy during the three months I’ll be visiting Freiburg.

The State Of The Art In Basic Income Policy: A Public Lecture Series (hosted by Prof. Dr. Jurgen De Wispelaere)

The public lecture series is the perfect opportunity to delve into some of the cutting-edge work in the field of basic income policy research. Featuring six expert authors, each discussing a key article in their research, this series promises to offer unique insights into the challenges and opportunities surrounding basic income policy. Join us online for this enriching event series and explore the latest research and findings on basic income policy.

The host of the public seminar series is Professor Jurgen De Wispelaere who is the visiting professor at the Götz-Werner-Chair. Professor De Wispelaere is a political theorist and policy scholar, and a world-leading expert on the politics of basic income. This event series is inspired by the seminar he offers this semester at the University of Freiburg.

On Monday, 24th April, Prof. Dr. Milena Buchs (University of Leeds) will present an evening lecture on Sustainable welfare: How do universal basic income and universal basic services compare?.

Video recording:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9KBiA-TVjE

On Wednesday, 26th April, Assit.-Prof. Dr. Femke Roosma (Tilburg University) will present an evening lecture on Between left and right: A discourse network analysis of Universal Basic Income on Dutch Twitter.

Video recording:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cnyvNsrr8JI

On Friday, 28th April, Prof. Dr. Yannick Vanderborght (UCLouvain Saint-Louis Bruxelles) will present an evening lecture on Basic Income and the Social Investment State: Towards Mutual Reinforcement?.

On Wednesday, 3rd May, Assist.-Prof. Dr. Pilar Gonalons-Pons (University of Pennsylvania) will present an evening lecture on Exit, voice and loyalty in the family: findings from a basic income experiment.

Video recording:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BsMHDoGm6JU

On Monday, 8th May, Prof. Dr. Tim Vlandas (University of Oxford) will present an evening lecture on The political economy of individual-level support for the basic income in Europe.

Video recording:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pjfx0YeQ_kY

On Wednesday, 10th May, Dr. Leire Rincón (Autonomous University of Barcelona) will present an evening lecture on A Robin Hood for all: a conjoint experiment on support for basic income.

Video recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7tSw-0tKKI

International Women’s Day and Universal Basic Income

Authors: Jessica Schulz and Toru Yamamori (FRIBIS Team: UBI & Gender)

50 years ago, thousands women across the U.K. gathered in London for an ‘International Women’s Day’ march. After the march, some of them occupied a post office in London. It was a symbolic act to express their opposition against the government plan to scrap ‘family allowances’ which were paid to mothers with two or more children. They were paid through post offices every week.

Today International Women’s Day stands between a global networked activism for equality, especially in education and work, for example the demand for equal pay, and capitalist commercialization. But what can we learn from its origin of this struggle for equality of class and gender?

The photo on the left is the poster for 1973 London ‘International Women’s Day’ march. The photo on the right was the original photo taken by Angela Phillips in August 1972. For the story behind these two photos, see https://www.academia.edu/11019408/A_Feminist_Way_to_Unconditional_Basic_Income_Claimants_Unions_and_Women_s_Liberation_Movements_in_1970s_Britain

Women’s Class Struggles and the History of International Women’s Day

As both the activism for gender equality as well as class equality are theoretical interlaced, a further look on the history of International Women’s Day gives an idea of the practical interrelation of these concepts. Starting from the United States in 1909, feminists led by the Women’s Trade Union League, proclaimed a National Women’s Day to emphasize the need for women’s suffrage to offer a political voice for women working in factories. In Germany, probably the most famous activist is Clara Zetkin (1857-1933) who, inspired by the U.S. National Women’s Day led the women of the Second International, a socialist alliance, to call for an International Women’s Day.

Continue reading: Jessica Schulz: “Through the lens of feminism. Basic income from a feminist perspective (FRIBIS Team UBI & Gender)” https://www.fribis.uni-freiburg.de/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/FRIBIS-Team-Policy-Paper_UBI-and-Gender_Jessica-Schulz.pdf

International Women’s Day, working-class women, and Universal Basic Income in the 1970s Britain

In the above occupation after the London International Women’s Day march in 1973, working-class women in the Claimants Union movement played a significant role, along with other working-class women. They demanded Unconditional Basic Income (UBI), and family allowances were a major source of their imagination that helped them to articulate UBI. Several years later, they succeeded in making UBI one of demands of the British Women’s Liberation Movement.

For details of working-class women in the Claimants Unions and their demand for UBI, see https://www.historyworkshop.org.uk/feminism/the-forgotten-feminist-history-of-the-universal-basic-income/

Philippe van Parijs: A world in crisis: boost or damper for basic income?

Some argue that global warming, the Covid pandemic and the war in Ukraine strengthen the case in favour of the introduction of an unconditional basic income. Others argue instead that they shatter the prospect of introducing it in the foreseeable future. Who is right? This question was the starting point of the lecture given by Philippe Van Parijs on January 19, 2023 in Freiburg as part of the FRIBIS Lecture Series.

The lecture was held in the context of the FRIBIS Winter School 2023, chaired by Philippe Van Parijs. The Winter School (January 16-20, 2023) was dedicated to the theme “Today’s Global Challenges and the UBI Debate”.

Announcement Seminar “Basic Income And Social Justice” at the Götz-Werner-Professorship in Summer Semester 2023

In the summer semester of 2023, the Götz Werner Professorship at the Albert Ludwigs University in Freiburg will again offer the seminar “Basic Income and Social Justice”. The seminar is aimed at Master’s students with an interest in research on the topic of unconditional basic income.

We are pleased to welcome this semester’s special guest Ugo Colombino in the last seminar session on 07/17/2023. He is the author of the various papers on which the experimental topics of the seminar are based.

For more information about the seminar and how to participate, please visit the GWP page under Announcement and the course website.