The Institute for Mathematical Studies in the Social Sciences (IMSSS) will hold two month long workshops in the summer of 1988 and the summer of 1989 at Stanford University in order to bring together for extended periods of work a large number of the top senior and the most promising junior economic theorists. During the IMSSS summer workshops an extensive number of formal seminars and workshops provide the arena for a review and discussion of the work of each one of the participants. The extensive interaction among the participants provides the environment for generating new ideas which become the basis of their creative work during the period that follows the workshop. In many instances the discussion at the workshop provides an evaluation of "the state of the art" and some workshop publications have been very influential in setting the stage for the scientific developments to follow. The IMSSS selects basic "themes" which unify most of the activities of each summer. In the summer of 1988, the two central themes will be: (1) The Economics of Organization and (2) Learning and Expectation Formation. Two one-day workshops will also be held on the economics of organization and on positive political economy. The central themes for the summer of 1989 will be selected in August 1988. Two themes will be selected from the following: (1) Bounded Rationality, (2) Incomplete Markets and Macro-economic Phenomena, (3) Contracts and (4) Alternative Theories of Unemployment.
