The emergence of the Internet, about half a decade ago, is causing significant changes to society at large and to several academic disciplines in particular. Technologically-Assisted Trading (known colloquially as e-commerce) is now becoming a focus of increasing research interest at the boundary between Economics and Computer Science. While the first boom-and-bust cycle of these changes has passed, it is clear that profound changes still await us and that it will take society some time to fully develop all the consequences as well as adopt many of the new technical possibilities.

The group will conduct a program of interdisciplinary research on one of the most important new possibilities opened up by the internet: electronic commerce. Which much practical work has been done on the "mechanics" of electronic conmmerce (communication protocols, security, software tools, cash transfers, etc.), less attention has been paid to understand the nature of the content that is is supposed to be delivered by these "mechanics". In other words, what are the economic mechanisms that will or should be implemented by such "mechanics"?

We believe that there are theoretical foundations for electronic commerce and that the time is ripe to start formulating them.

 

Can emotions be historicized? Are they universal and biologically determined or socially determined, culturally dependent and varying through history? What is the role of emotions and their changing character in the course of history? Is there a history of emotions just as there is a history of ideas, of manners, of political institutions or social movements? More specifically, to what extent can love, fear or hate be historicized? Do they change through history, and if so, in what senses? Is it in the objects they relate to? (Fear of what? Hate – towards whom?) In the means and legitimacy of expressing them? In the ways they are institutionalized (families, churches, political parties)? Can emotions themselves be separated from these social and cultural means of expressing and legitimizing them?

Though some historians have posed these questions earlier, it is only recently, in the 1970s and especially since the early 1980s, that historians have begun to address these questions directly. Interestingly enough, the early 1980s were also the time when psychologists, especially social psychologists, became increasingly aware not only of the issues of affects and emotions in general, but of their historical dimension, namely their possibly changing nature, as well.

Our group will try to deal with some of these questions, focusing mostly on the late medieval and early modern period, both in Christian Europe and in Jewish communities in Europe at that time. The comparison between Jewish and Christian societies will add an important dimension to the research.