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NewsletterIssue no. 185 April 2019

ObituariesSir James Mirrlees p.22

Mardi Dungey p.24

RES office news

Conference diary

What have we learned? At its 2016 Annual Conference, society membersoverwhelmingly expressed the view that the UK’sleaving the EU would have negative economic con-sequences — an opinion they reiterated last year.The tone at both meetings was one of regret sincemost members took the view that, however misguid-ed, the ‘people had spoken’ and the outcome wasdone and dusted. Who, at those meetings wouldhave thought that, come March 29th 2019 nothingwould have been resolved? As we go to press, still nothing has been decided, andthat may still be the position on April 12th (when theNewsletter is distributed). Your editor’s view in 2016and after was that any substantial delay, implausibleas it was, was bound to favour a reconsideration ofthe decision as the consequences became more wide-ly and clearly acknowledged. It is true that the possi-bility of another referendum (a ‘people’s vote’) hasincreased somewhat in recent months, but thisappears to owe more to its potential to clear animpasse than to any objective reappraisal of costs andbenefits. Many readers will recall that the decision to‘Leave’ provoked some discussion in these pages(and elsewhere) of the difficulty that the economicsprofession seems to have in connecting with a broadaudience. The fact that the costs of leaving have notbecome more widely recognised with time, is per-haps further evidence of this difficulty.In recent years, the April Newsletter has become the‘issue of the Reports’. These don’t make for themost exciting reading but they all three testify to thesteady progress being made by the Society and itskey publications. Members looking for somethingmore controversial, especially if they have an inter-est in UK universities, will be interested in WoonWong’s argument that the financial position of theirpension fund has been severely misrepresented, andwith seriously adverse consequences.

FeaturesSecretary-General’s Annual Report p.5

The Economic Journal — Editors’ Annual Report, 2018 p.9

Microeconomic Insights — distilling research for public debate p.13

‘Now you see it, now you don’t’ —Is the university pension fund in deficit? p.15

The Econometrics Journal —Managing editor’s Annual Report, 2018 p.17

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CorrespondenceLetter from America —

Minimum wage redux p.3

The Newsletter is first and fore-most a vehicle for the dissemination

of news and comment of interest to itsreaders. Contributions from readers are

always warmly welcomed. We are partic-ularly interested to receive letters, reports

of conferences and meetings, and news ofmajor research projects as well as comment

on recent events.

Visit our website at:www.res.org.uk/membership/newsletter.html

The Newsletter is published quarterly in January, April, July and October

www.res.org.uk/membership/newsletter.html 2

The Royal Economic Society is one of the oldest and most prestigious econom-ic associations in the world. It is a learned society, founded in 1890 with theaim ‘to promote the study of economic science.’ Initially called the BritishEconomic Association, it became the Royal Economic Society on receiv-ing its Royal Charter in 1902. The current officers of the ExecutiveCommittee are listed above.

The Society’s bee logoThe Society’s logo, shown below, has been used from its earli-est days. The story behind the use of the bee refers to the‘Fable of the Bees’ by Bernard Mandeville, an 18th Centuryessayist which alludes to the benefits of decentralisationby looking at co-operation amongst bees and showinghow the pursuit of self-interest can be beneficial tosociety.

For membership benefits, subscrip-tion fees and how to join theSociety, see back cover or go to:www.res.org.uk

THE ROYAL ECONOMIC SOCIETY• President: Professor Lord Nicholas Stern (LSE)• President-elect: Professor Rachel Griffith (University of Manchester and IFS)• Past-president: Professor Peter Neary (Oxford)• Secretary-General: Professor Denise Osborn (University of Manchester)

For other members of the Executive Committee, go to the ‘about us’ pages on the website where allthose involved in the structure and governance of the Society are listed.

The Society’s Newsletter

EditorProf Peter Howells,Bristol Business School,UWE Bristol,Coldharbour Lane, Bristol BS16 1QY

Email: [email protected]@sarum-editorial.co.uk

RES OfficeChief Executive: Leighton ChipperfieldOperations Manager: Marie-Luiza De MenezesRES Office, 2 Dean Trench Street,Westminster, London. SW1P 3HE

Tel: 020 3137 6301Email: [email protected]: www.res.org.uk

Newsletter - subscription rates

The Newsletter is distributed to members of the Societyfree of charge. Non-members may obtain copies at thefollowing subscription rates:

• UK £5.00 • Europe (outside UK) £6.50 • Non-Europe (by airmail) £8.00

Next issue No. 186, July 2019Deadline for submissions 16 June 2019

Correspondence

www.res.org.uk/membership/newsletter.html3

Letter from America —

Minimum wage reduxThe recent death of Alan Krueger prompts Angus Deaton to reflect on the reception accorded to thesuggestion, more than twenty years ago, that a minimum wage can sometimes increase the level ofemployment.

MY FIRST LETTER FROM AMERICA, in 1996, wasabout the minimum wage, a topic that has lostnone of its freshness, relevance or capacity to

divide and upset. I wrote about the work by my then col-leagues David Card and Alan Krueger, who used evi-dence from a number of natural experiments to arguethat modest increases in the minimum wage did not, asthe textbooks asserted, lead to decreases in employment,but might actually do the reverse, causing both employ-ment and wages to rise.

Can a minimum wage increase employment?The work — then and now — polarizes both economistsand politicians. An apt quote is from Jason Furman whowrote that their results ‘changed the mind of half of theprofession’. In 1996, I wrote that, at the time, Princetoneconomists who defended the results were treated as ifthey had been defending child molestation. Both Cardand Krueger were abused in the press — ‘camp follow-ing whores’ — long before Twitter and Facebook madesuch horrors seem almost polite.

I have been thinking back to this because Alan Kruegerdied on March 16. Over his sadly shortened career, hemade lasting contributions to economics over a range offields. He also had a high-level career in policy, in theDepartment of Labor, in the Treasury, and as PresidentObama’s Head of the Council of Economic Advisors,then a cabinet level position. David Card, his coauthor onthe minimum wage studies, now at UC Berkeley, contin-ues a career of extraordinary productivity, less often inthe public eye than Krueger’s, with the notable exceptionlast year when he testified on behalf of HarvardUniversity in the (still undecided) lawsuit alleging that itsadmissions policies discriminate against Asian-Americans. Their work, together with that of others, par-ticularly Joshua Angrist, who was a graduate student atPrinceton around the same time, changed empirical eco-nomics, away from the theory-based structural modellingthat was the standard at the time, and towards a relianceon natural experiments — which they showed were muchmore common than many of us had supposed — andfrom there to a general reliance on methods that createdtwo arguably identical groups that were treated different-ly and, ultimately, to randomized controlled trials.

The evidence suggests soWhen it comes to assessing the ultimate impact of the

empirical revolution of which Krueger was then part, asZhou Enlai said in 1972 about the French Revolution, itis too early to tell. Yet there is no doubting the impact ofthe work on the minimum wage. Although the Federalminimum wage of $7.25 an hour has not been increasedsince July 2009, there have been many increases by thestates. Twenty-nine states have higher rates, rangingfrom $8.25 in Illinois to $12 in Washington (state), andthe cities of Seattle and San Francisco have minimumwage levels of $15 an hour. Using the local changes asnatural experiments, methods akin to Card andKrueger’s have by now been used in many studies. Myreading is that these replicate Card and Krueger moreoften than not, but not always so, and the defenders oftextbook orthodoxy have certainly not given up. Aboutseven out of ten Americans think the Federal minimumshould be raised, and the failure of Congress to pass suchlegislation is a testament to the power of lobbying inWashington, particularly the fast-food lobby. Which alsocontinues to commission studies that buttress the conser-vative position that trying to help people this way canonly hurt them.

My friend Anthony Appiah, a philosopher who thinksabout and comments on public policy, recently askedme, with some irritation, why economists had still notmanaged to settle what seemed like a straightforwardquestion. Rather in the same tone that I imagine theQueen used when asking why the profession had failedto predict the Great Recession. But perhaps Appiah’squestion is ill-posed and has no general answer? Why dowe economists — as well as non-economists — supposethat the effect of a treatment should always be the same,or at least always act in the same direction?

Monopsony may be the keyRecent work has gone back to theory, and asked aboutthe theoretical circumstances under which increasing theminimum will or will not decrease employment. Theconditions were analyzed in Card and Krueger’s bookMyth and Measurement; if the employer has marketpower, and can influence the wage by hiring or dismiss-ing workers, then an increase in the minimum may,depending on the circumstances, increase the demandfor labor. If those circumstances hold, a higher minimumwage not only makes workers better off, but does so atthe expense of the monopsony profits of the employer. Inthe 1990s, monopsony in the labor market, particularly


Correspondence

MORE from CORECan CORE help economics get over its gen-der problem? A call for proposals.

CORE is inviting teachers, students and others to pro-pose ways to explore whether our introductory coursesThe Economy and Economy, Society, and EconomicPolicy may help to correct the gender imbalances inthose studying and teaching economics, or in the econo-my and society at large.

Proposed projects should indicate the research ques-tion(s) to be answered, how a causal impact of exposureto CORE could be identified, the student population andresearch design that will be implemented, and the likelydates of the implementation. Feel free to contactAntonio Cabrales, Eileen Tipoe or Homa Zarghameetodiscuss your ideas. Final proposals (2-4 pp in length)should be sent to Eileen before 1 June 2019.

If the proposals that we receive are sufficiently promis-ing, we will schedule a session to discuss them at ourupcoming CORE Royal Economic Society NuffieldFoundation workshop at Warwick University in lateJune 2019.

Further information: https://www.core-econ.org/core-call-for-research-proposals-economics-gender-problem/

Introducing CORE labsThere is a new feature on the CORE website — CORELabs, a platform for teachers using CORE where theycan ask questions, start discussions and find additionalresources.

CORE Labs works both as a discussion forum and alibrary of resources created by teachers that have beenusing CORE in instruction. Over 7,600 teachers thathave registered on the CORE website have access to it.

Using CORE Labs, teachers can:

• Create their own group, either private or public, andinvite others to join. Use it to start a group discussion orto collaborate.

• Search a database of resources created by other teach-ers – assessment materials, lecture slides, exercises, orsyllabi of their CORE courses.

• Have a question? Ask other CORE teachers if they canhelp.

https://labs.core-econ.org/login/

The CORE project is supported by the Royal Economic Society

Jobs AdvertisingIf you are recruiting or looking for teaching positionsin HE economics we have a jobs page on our website.Contact us if you would like us to add a post to thispage.

Gender Bias in the Economics ProfessionFor International Women’s Day, just a reminder that wehave an ongoing micro-blog about gender bias in theeconomics profession with some key readings, videosand links. Visit the blog and please get in touch if youhave an recommendations of articles or resources wecan include.

New case studyWe have a new teaching case study from ProfessorSteve Cook (Swansea University) which focuses on‘Forecast Evaluation using Theil’s InequalityCoefficients’ — visit our Ideas Bank to find out more.

https://www.economicsnetwork.ac.uk/

EconomicsNetwork

the fast food industry, was generally dismissed; Iremember defending the original results using a monop-sony story and being told that ‘no one believes that.’ Butrecently, there has been a real revival of interest inmonopsony, particularly in places where populationdensity is low and where there are relatively fewemployers-a few fast food places, a chicken processingplant, or a state prison. Geographical mobility has fallenin America, in part because of the high cost of housingin successful cities, and people may find it difficult tomove as a family when several family members are work-ing. So that it does not seem unlikely that fast food restau-rants would use their market power to lower wages, in atleast some places, behavior that is consistent with otherpractices like their widespread use of non-compete clausesand no-poaching agreements.

A charge frequently leveled against Card and Krueger’soriginal work was its neglect of theory, a charge thatmight well be sustained for a good deal of the subse-quent empirical work using natural or actual experi-ments, but not for Myth and Measurement. There is realvindication today when, not only the results, but the the-ory, are being taken seriously as part of the currentreevaluation of the role of market power in the Americaneconomy, and particularly its role in holding downwages.

1. IntroductionFollowing the establishment of the Society’s London officein 2017 and the appointment of its first directly appointedstaff, developments in 2018 were largely concerned withimportant outward-facing matters, notably medium-termstrategy, journal publishing contract, website and member-ship systems. Alongside these, the Society has continued(and indeed further developed) its wide range of activitiesto promote and support economics in the UK and interna-tionally. This report can only give an overview of RESactivities over the past year, together with a brief look atsome developments coming on stream in the near future.

2. Strategy and RES PresidentsAfter consultation with our stakeholders, particularly RESmembers, the Society adopted its first formal medium-termstrategy in summer 2018. The strategic priorities for 2019-2023 (which are published on the RES website and in theRES Newsletter) are:

• Enhancing the credibility and visibility of economics;• Supporting economists;• Improving diversity;• Working effectively.

The Society’s trustees (the Executive Committee) haveagreed mechanisms through which these priorities will besupported over the next four years, and further informationon these can be found on our website (www.res.org.uk).Decisions on new activities are now taken with these prior-ities in mind and success will be judged each year in rela-tion to them.

Thanks are due to Nick Stern for his leadership as RESPresident over this year of change and development. Hisjudgement has been very important in decision-making andhe has led from the front in relation to the Society's first pri-ority of enhancing the credibility and visibility of econom-ics. Everyone involved is also grateful to Peter Neary whosteps down as Past-President at this year’s AGM. As notedin my report last year, Peter has played a pivotal role in theestablishment of the London RES office and hence, in par-ticular, helping the Society to work more effectively.

The 2019 AGM sees Rachel Griffith confirmed as Presidentfor 2019-2020 and Carol Propper as President-Elect. It isworth pausing here to note that Rachel is only the secondwoman President of the Society in its long history datingback to 1890, with the first being Phyllis Deane (1980-1982). It is, however, a mark of change that the RES will

now have two women Presidents in succession. Rachel hasbeen very active during her year as President-Elect, partic-ularly in relation to publishing activities.

3. Website, membership and financesA well-functioning website is crucial for all the Society’sactivities. After much work behind the scenes by RES staffand volunteers, the Society’s new website was launched inDecember 2018. Ease of navigation was a key considerationin the design of the website, with the aim of allowing mem-bers and others interested in economics to quickly findinformation. Further website developments will take placein 2019 and beyond, further enhancing the Society's engage-ment with members, the media and the public.

Engagement with members has been hampered in the pastbecause the Society did not hold its own membership data-base. This situation has now been rectified, with the RESoffice taking responsibility from October 2018 for all mem-bership matters, including renewals. Alongside the newwebsite, development of the membership management sys-tem has been a major undertaking for staff over the past year.

RES membership is healthy, rising from 3,918 at the end of2017 to 4,056 a year later, marking a return to the upwardtrend seen prior to 2017. The number of student membersalso rose slightly, from 1125 in 2017 to 1216 in 2018. Thegeographic distribution of membership remains relativelyconstant, with 43 per cent based in the UK, 27 per cent else-where in Europe, 16 per cent in the US and 14 per cent inthe rest of the world.

Staff appointments and one-off costs associated withdevelopment of the new website and membership sys-tem substantially increased expenditure last year, lead-ing to a deficit of expenditure over income of approxi-mately £200k for 2018. Nevertheless, as reported by theHonorary Treasurer (Sue Holloway), the Societyremains in a relatively healthy financial position due tothe considerable reserves built up over previous years. Asat December, these reserves stood at £6m, despite adecline of over £750k over the year, due not only to thedeficit but also to the general decline in the stock market.

The Society is by no means complacent about its finan-cial position and the Executive Committee has charged aworking group with exploring ways to increase anddiversify income. The aims are to reduce reliance onpublishing income from the Economic Journal and toachieve a break-even budget by 2021. With the consid-

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Secretary-General’s Annual ReportThis is an edited version of the Secretary-General’s Annual Report presented to the Society’s AGM atthe Annual Conference at the University of Warwick on 16th April 2019 The full report is availableat https://www.res.org.uk/about/our-structure/annual-general-meeting.html.

erable uncertainty at the present time about futureincome from academic publishing, due to a movetowards Open Access publishing (specifically the so-called ‘Plan S’ proposed by a coalition of funders), theSociety fully recognises that it needs to develop addi-tional sources of income in order to continue with andbuild on our work to support and promote economics.

4. Academic support: journals and confer-encesPublication of the Economic Journal (EJ) and theEconometrics Journal (EctJ) together with the organisationof the RES Annual Conference remain the principal aca-demically focused activities of the Society. As from thisyear’s AGM, the Society has established a PublicationsCommittee, with Imran Rasul as its first chair. This newcommittee will oversee the Society’s journals, workingwith the editors and others to build on the already stronginternational reputation of the RES in this area.

Having been published by Wiley Blackwell for many years,the EJ and the EctJ are being published by OxfordUniversity Press (OUP) from January this year (2019). Thischange was decided after a tendering exercise and carefuldiscussion. The RES thanks Wiley Blackwell for their sup-port and assistance over a long period, while looking for-ward to working with OUP in the future.

The EJ continues to thrive, with submissions (at 1,770) up6 per cent from 2017, which was itself a record. Alongsidethis, the EJ achieved its highest ever impact factor of 2.946in the latest figures issued (in June 2018). The internationalreach of the journal is emphasised by the geographical splitof 2018 submissions, with 17 per cent from the UK, 37 percent from the rest of the EU, 24 per cent from the US andCanada, and 22 per cent from the rest of the world. TheSociety is very grateful to the editors for the huge effortsthey make to further enhance the already high reputation ofthe EJ and ensure that it remains one of the leading interna-tional journals in economics. Particular thanks are due toMartin Cripps and Kjell Salvanes who completed theirterms as Managing Editors during 2018, and the Societywelcomed Gilat Levy and Barbara Petrongolo to the teamof Joint Managing Editors.

Submissions to the EctJ fell in 2017, when a new editorialpolicy was introduced which aims at fast dissemination ofmore focused papers which have substantive applied value.However, the new procedures have now bedded in and theirvalue is more widely understood, with 132 papers submit-ted in 2018 (an 80 per cent increase compared to 2017). TheEditors work to ensure that papers are reviewed quickly,with decisions on around 95 per cent of last year’s new sub-missions taken within three months. The Society is gratefulto all on the editorial team, led by Jaap Abbring as EctJManaging Editor. John Rust stepped down as a Co-Editorfor personal reasons at the end of 2018; the Society wel-comes Petra Todd as Co-Editor from early 2019.

The 2018 RES Annual Conference was held in March at theUniversity of Sussex, a return to the excellent venue wherethe 2016 conference was also held. Simon Gaechter(Nottingham) and Ingo Borchert (Sussex) were ProgrammeChair and Deputy Chair, respectively, working with GeorgeMacKerron (Sussex) as Local organiser. Keynote lectureswere presented by Maristella Bottocini (Bocconi, HahnLecture), Dave Donaldson (MIT, Sargan lecture), BotondKoeszegi (CUE Budapest, Economic Journal Lecture) andAndrew Chesher (Past-President’s Lecture), while the pro-gramme also featured a plenary session on Brexit. In addi-tion, around 500 submitted papers were presented in paral-lel sessions during the conference and 19 special sessions(including one organised by the Women’s Committee) ofthemed papers took place.

A total of around 780 people (including local staff and RESofficers) attended the conference, making this a very largeevent. One measure of success is provided by the post-con-ference survey of delegates, in which 90 per cent of respon-dents rated their overall experience as excellent or good and9 in 10 would recommend the conference to others. Such anevent requires a great deal of background work to be aca-demically and socially successful and the Society is grate-ful to all involved in the organisation, including office staff.

The Society also operates a grant scheme which providesfinancial support for members involved in the organisa-tion of more specialist conferences and workshops.

5. Supporting postgraduate and under-graduate studentsThe Society has a long history of supporting postgraduatestudents in economics, whether they are based in the UK orelsewhere. The RES PhD Symposium, for which the aca-demic programme is organised by a committee of students,is now well-established and takes part immediately after theAnnual Conference at the same venue. A total of 105 dele-gates (mainly third- or fourth-year PhD students and aroundtwo-thirds from non-UK universities) attended the 2018symposium, which included over 60 paper presentations.Although also very positive about the papers, the post-eventdelegate survey indicated that networking was the mostvaluable aspect of the symposium. This underlines theimportance of having such an event designed for, andorganised by, PhD students in economics.

As it has done in December/January each year since2006, the Society also organised a job market meetingfor completing PhD students in December 2018. Theevent was reasonably successful, with over 150 studentsregistered and 92 presenting papers. Nevertheless, it wasdisappointing that only 9 recruiters attended. A new devel-opment which undoubtedly affected the RES event was thefirst job market meeting organised by the EuropeanEconomic Association, which was also held in December2018. This was much larger than the RES meeting, in

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terms of both representation by recruiting institutions andattendance by students on the job market. The DecemberRES meeting is likely to be the last in that format, since itwill be merged with that of the EEA and the SpanishEconomic Society from 2019 onwards; the new meetingwill be known as the European Job Market meeting. TheSociety is looking forward to participating in this impor-tant new European collaboration.

The 2018 RES Easter Training School, which was thetwenty-eighth such event, was led by Chad Syverson(Chicago) and Jan De Loecker (KU Leuven) on the topicof productivity across firms, markets and economies. Thepool of applicants (mainly advanced PhD students fromboth the UK and overseas) was strong, so that the EasterSchool Director (Eric Smith, Essex) and the lecturersfound it difficult to select among them. As with previousSchools, attendees were also welcomed from outside aca-demia (including the Office for National Statistics and theBank of England), as well as from universities.

In addition to the Symposium, Job Market Meeting andTraining School, the Society supports PhD students byallowing those presenting papers at the RES AnnualConference to reclaim conference fees and expensesfrom the RES, with other (non-presenting) students pay-ing a minimal fee to attend. Students and other earlycareer researchers are also given priority in the alloca-tion of grants to support their presentations at interna-tional conferences, whether held in the UK or overseas.

The Society’s undergraduate video competition ran for thesecond time in 2018. The competition, which is designedto encourage students to communicate what they learn,requires an individual or a small group of undergraduatestudents to make a short video to explain an economictopic of their choice to a general audience. Interest in thecompetition substantially increased from 2017, with 16entries from 13 universities in the 2018 competition com-pared with 5 entries from 5 universities in 2017. Thejudges agreed that the standard of entries was high.

Over the last year the RES has expanded support providedto undergraduate students through both the EconomicsNetwork and, in a new initiative, in conjunction withCORE. The Economics Network (EN) has a very goodrecord of support for undergraduate economics educationthrough the provision of student learning material and train-ing of early career lecturers and graduate teaching assis-tants. The RES has financially supported these activitiesover a long period, with the amount increased from 2018onwards so that EN can provide additional training events.From 2018, the RES is also providing funds to help trainthose who wish to switch from a more traditional approachto undergraduate teaching to that of CORE (CurriculumOpen-access Resources in Economics), which focuses onactive student engagement with real-world issues. ThisCORE training will be provided by EN.

6. Communication and engagementAlongside the Publications Committee mentioned above,the RES has established a new Communications andEngagement Committee, with Helen Miller (IFS) as itsfirst chair. This Committee will operate from the 2019AGM and work with Barry Watts (RES Communicationsand Engagement Manager) to enhance the Society’s com-munication and engagement activities across a wide rangeof audiences.

Perhaps the most important RES initiative on communicat-ing economics to a general audience in recent years hasbeen RES Presents, a series of early evening events held ator near the location of the RES Annual Conference. Thisseries began at Bristol in 2017 (largely on the initiative ofthe 2017 Conference Programme Chair, Sarah Smith) and,by holding these events on the evenings of the conference,the Society has been able to engage high profile speakersto talk on topical issues, often mirroring more academicsessions held during the conference. RES Presents washeld in 2018 in Brighton and at the University of Sussex,covered higher education, Brexit and the police, each withfour speakers, a chair and a lively debate with the audienceafter the presentations.

The principal engagement activities to date in relation toschools have been the RES Annual Public Lecture and theYoung Economist of the Year competition. The 2018Public Lecture, delivered by Oriana Bandiera on the topic‘What economists really do’, was enthusiasticallyreceived in London and at the University of York (the lat-ter under the first year of a three-year agreement with theSociety). In common with all other Public Lectures since2013, Oriana’s lecture can be viewed through the RESwebsite. In line with the Society’s strategic priority ofimproving diversity in economics, efforts are being madeto widen the range of schools who attend the Lecture. Asa result of these efforts, the number of comprehensiveschools attending the 2018 Lecture in London exceededprivate schools for the first time (14 comprehensives, sixgrammar schools, 13 private schools). Nearly half of thePublic Lecture attendees in York were from schools, witheight of the nine schools represented being comprehen-sives.

The Young Economist of the Year essay competition wasagain run during 2018 in conjunction with tutor2u. Withthe aim of attracting the participation of a wider range ofstudents and schools, more prizes were offered in 2018than in previous years and the number of entriesincreased (1298 In 2018 compared with 1046 in 2017).The standards were once again high and feedback fromwinners and their families at the presentation of prizesemphasised that the competition can fire the enthusiasm ofstudents studying A-level economics to think about the eco-nomic aspects of contemporary issues.

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Through a series of new grants under the banner of‘Discovering Economics’, the Society is working with anumber of university economics departments to increasethe diversity of undergraduate economics students in theUK. More specifically, £20k funding was allocated in late2018 to a total of eight departments for events to be heldduring 2019 for school students, with priority given toevents designed to increase diversity. The Society will mon-itor the success of this initiative and will continue to discusswith other stakeholders (including the GovernmentEconomic Service, the Bank of England and the ScottishEconomic Society) how best to promote the study of eco-nomics to a diverse range of school students.

As in recent years, the Society provided financial supportfor the 2018 Festival of Economics at Bristol and co-oper-ated with the British Science Association by nominating thePresident of its Economics Section. The 2018 BSAEconomics Section President was Barbara Petrongolo, whoorganised a session ‘Mind the gender gap’ at the 2018British Science Festival.

The RES Newsletter is an important channel through whichthe Society communicates with our members, includingnews, articles, obituaries and correspondence. PeterHowells continues his excellent work as Newsletter Editor,for which the Society is very grateful.

7. Women's Committee and CHUDEUnder their respective chairs, namely Sarah Smith and EricPentecost, the RES Women’s Committee and CHUDE(Conference of Heads of University Departments ofEconomics, an RES committee) have been involved in anumber of the student and other communication/engage-ment activities mentioned above.

In addition to on-going activities, Women’s Committeemembers have given talks on women in economics at anumber of external meetings. To support early careerfemale academic economists, the Women’s Committee hasrevived its mentoring retreat, with the next to take placeimmediately prior to this year’s RES Annual Conference.The 2019 retreat was substantially over-subscribed, withover 100 applications for 27 places. In recent years mem-bers of the Women’s Committee have been largely academ-ics, but membeship was widened during 2018 to includerepresentatives from the Government Economic Service,Bank of England and Society for Professional Economists.

CHUDE continues to represent UK university departmentsof economics within the RES structure. As such, it led in thedrafting of joint CHUDE/RES responses to a number ofgovernment consultations held during 2018, including onthe 2021 Research Excellence Framework, the developingTeaching Excellence Framework and the future KnowledgeExcellence Framework. CHUDE also assists the broaderRES by participating in relevant discussions and by pro-moting events, activities and grants designed for undergrad-uate and postgraduate students.

8. RES officers, Council and staffIn addition to the RES Presidents, discussed above, a num-ber of other RES officers completed their terms over the lastyear. I am personally indebted to Robin Naylor, who servedas Deputy Secretary-General from 2011 until the end of2018. In addition to leading on many activities over thisperiod, especially in relation to communications andengagement (widely defined), his help was invaluable inthe early part of my term as Secretary-General. Prior tobecoming Deputy Secretary-General, Robin served theSociety in a number of other capacities, including as RESConference Secretary.

Thanks also go to Neil Rickman, who stepped down asConference Secretary in the autumn, having overseen asubstantial growth in the RES Annual Conference over hisperiod in the role (2012-2018), and to Eric Pentecost, whowas CHUDE chair for six years (2013 to 2018). Robin, Neiland Eric were also trustees of the Society and members ofthe RES Executive Committee while serving in those roles.The new CHUDE chair is Jo Swaffield (York), whileMichael McMahon (Oxford) is now Conference Secretary.With the re-organisation of the Society’s administration, theDeputy Secretary-General’s post has been discontinued.Meanwhile, Sue Holloway continues in her role as RESHonorary Treasurer, putting considerable effort over thelast year into the re-organisation of the Society’s accounts.

The 2019 AGM marks the end of the five-years terms of sixCouncil members, James Banks, Diane Coyle, AmritaDhillon, Stephen Machin (who also served as a Councilrepresentative on the Executive Committee and a trustee ofthe Society), and John Van Reenen. All are thanked for theirservice to the RES and the Society looks forward to theircontinued active involvement in other ways.

The day-to-day operations of the Society are now run by theRES staff, under Leighton Chipperfield as Chief Executive.Leighton, who has been in post since May 2017, and wasthe driving force behind the development of the RES strat-egy 2019-2023. He is ably assisted by Marie-Luiza DeMenezes (Operations Manager) and Barry Watts(Communications and Engagement Manager). Otherstaff are Antonia Glanfield (Publications Officer),Gabriella Di Salvo (Events and Conference Co-Ordinator), Iara De Menezes (Finance Officer) and, mostrecently, Raj Chana (Executive Assistant). Staff numbershave expanded over the last year primarily due to thecentralisation into the RES office of administration pre-viously done off-site. However, beyond possible short-term posts to work on specific projects, no net additionto the staff level is envisaged for the foreseeable future.

The assistance of all who contribute to the work of theRES, including staff, journal editors and many individu-als who act in an honorary capacity, has been invaluableover the last year in helping the Society to promote andsupport economics.

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Features

HighlightsContinued growth, improved impact• In 2018, the journal received 1,770 submissions, up 6per cent from 2017. This is the highest number of sub-missions ever for the journal. Acceptance rates are nowjust below 5 per cent.• The 2017 Impact Factors (released in June 2018) sawan increase in the journal's Impact Factor, from 2.608 in2016 to 2.946 in 2017, its highest ever score.Increased turn-around times• The journal benefits from a set of dedicated refereesand Associate Editors who have continued to deliverhigh quality and timely reports: More than 90 per cent ofreferees submit their reports within three months.• Turnaround times have nevertheless increased for asecond year in a row, essentially due to the volume ofsubmissions received and slower editorial decisions.Operations• To accommodate the increase in submissions, featuresand conference papers were discontinued (the last fea-tures and conference papers were published in 2018) andan extra issue was published in 2018 to reduce the back-log of accepted papers (the journal will return to its usualfrequency of 8 issues per year in 2019).• The journal moved from Wiley to Oxford UniversityPress (OUP), with the new publishing contract startingfrom January 2019.• The new EJ webpages on the RES site were developedand launched in 2018.• The journal continues to use its Twitter profile to pro-mote news and journal content. As the MediaConsultant’s term came to completion at the end of2018, the Managing Editors and the Publications Officerwill share the responsibility of coordinating social mediaactivity from January 2019 onwards.People• Martin Cripps and Kjell Salvanes completed theirterms as Managing Editors during 2018.• Gilat Levy and Barbara Petrongolo joined the board asManaging Editors in 2018.• As of 31 December 2018, the journal had achieved fullgender parity among its editors (4 male editors, 4 female

editors), a unique position among the leading journals ineconomics.• Morten Ravn’s role as Managing Editor coordinatingthe office and RES Executive Committee member cameto completion in December 2018, though he remains onthe board as a Managing Editor handling papers until theend of May 2019. His role will be divided betweenEstelle Cantillon, who will act as the Managing Editorcoordinating the office and Barbara Petrongolo, whowill serve on the RES Executive Committee.• The Editorial Office moved to the RES office fromUCL in April 2018, following Benita Rajania’s termcompletion. Antonia Glanfield assumed the role ofPublications Officer in April 2018.

Outlook• The transition to OUP is nearly complete but will stillrequire time and attention in 2019 as processes are put inplace to ensure production quality and editors work withOUP to promote the journal.• Plan S1 is a potential game changer in academic pub-lishing. With a quarter of accepted papers funded byCoalition S members and close to 50 per cent of authorsof accepted papers coming from Plan S countries, EJ isdirectly impacted. The editors are eager to maintain thecurrent high standard of papers published in the journal,whilst ensuring viability.• Both in the context of Plan S and to bring the workloadto a more manageable level, the editors are keen to worktowards the implementation of a submission fee for thejournal in 2019 (as approved by the ExecutiveCommittee in October 2018).

1. Editorial team 1.1. Current Editorial Team Joint Managing Editors:Estelle Cantillon, Université Libre de BruxellesNezih Guner, CEMFI Madrid Rachel Kranton, Duke University Gilat Levy, London School of EconomicsBarbara Petrongolo, Queen Mary UniversityMorten Ravn, University College LondonFrederic Vermeulen, University of LeuvenHans-Joachim Voth, University of Zurich

Economic Journal —Editors’ Annual Report, 2018 This is an edited version of the full report which is available at https://www.res.org.uk/about/our-struc-ture/annual-general-meeting.html. The table numbers used below are the numbers used in the fullreport.

Publications Officer:Antonia Glanfield, Royal Economic Society([email protected])

1.2. Editorial Board ChangesIncoming and outgoing Managing Editors overlap for 6months (where possible) to allow for a smooth transi-tion.

Gilat Levy joined the board in February 2018 andMartin Cripps left the board in July 2018.Barbara Petrongolo joined the board in April 2018 andKjell Salvanes left the board in October 2018.Francesco Lippi joined the board in January 2019.

2. Journal Statistics2.1 Submissions (Tables 1 & 2)The total number of submissions for 2018 is 1770,exceeding the total for 2017 (1676).Acceptance rates are now slightly below5 per cent. The rate of desk rejection isstable at 54 per cent.

The geographic distribution (Table 2) issimilar to that of last year, with the largestshare coming from Europe (37 per cent)— which is equal to last year’s share. 24per cent of submissions came from theUSA and Canada, which is roughly thesame as in 2017 (25 per cent). UK sub-missions were equal to that of last year,with a 17 per cent share of all submis-sions.

2.2 Editorial Processing Time(Tables 3-5)Table 3 provides statistics on turnaroundtimes for submitted papers. Whilst theproportion of papers dealt with within 3and 4 months has remained constant,there has been an increase in the propor-tion of papers taking more than 6 months.

Desk rejected papers are not sent forreview, as the editors feel these papershave a low probability of getting pub-

lished, therefore the turnaround times for these papersremain low.

The bulk of the increase in turnaround times comes frompapers sent to referees. Table 4 shows that this is not dueto a deterioration of the performance of the referees andAssociate Editors, who continue to submit timelyreports, but to delayed decisions. The editors are work-ing hard to cut down on these delayed decisions.

Table 5 shows the number of new submissions handledby each Managing Editor and the number of resubmittedrevisions (as shown by the +). Each editor handlesaround 200 papers per year.

2.3 Rankings and Impact FactorsTable 6 shows the Economic Journal’s Impact Factors,compared with those of its closest competitors. The jour-


Features

201820172016*201520142013

956884614725624501

384347212370353407

9411554

135136132

322633494434

798373929358

24365819191

035

768674

176816291145137212511136

177016761215152914281301

177016291145137212511136

213114

223173156

000

Table 1: Submissions and decisionsSubmissions (All Submissions; First, Second, etc.) Of regular submissions (All Submissions; First, Second, etc.)Year Total Submitted

regularSubmittedconference

Submittedfeatures

Accepted PendingSummarilyrejected

RejectedReturnedfor

revision

ConditionallyAccepted

TotalWithdrawn/to be

removed

*Results taken from January 1, 2016 to September 30, 2016. Total number of submissions from Jan 1 to Dec 31, 2016was 1617.

UNITED KINGDOM (GB)

USA & CANADAUNITED STATES (US)CANADA (CA)

EUROPEBELGIUM (BE)FRANCE (FR)GERMANY (DE)ITALY (IT)NETHERLANDS (NL)SCANDANAVIASPAIN (ES)OTHER EUROPE

REST OF THE WORLDAUSTRALIA (AU)NEW ZEALAND (NZ)CHINA (CN)HONG KONG (HK)INDIA (IN)ISRAEL (IL)JAPAN (JP)OTHER

259 (17%)

376 (25%)31660

565 (37%)13731576343813798

312 (21 %)54362327254287

151 (15%)

255 (25%)22431

403 (40%)9361324327631776

194 (19%)37229114172470

219 (19%)

296 (25%)26036

450 (38%)12431136436702785

211 (18%)426271514221966

Regions 2018 2017 2016* 2015

*Results taken from January 1, 2016 to September 30, 2016.

Table 2: Geographical Distribution of First Regular Submissions

278 (17%)

380 (24%)33644

600 (37%)125816884407732129

345 (22%)5367928171337112

nal’s 2017 Impact Factor increased (these numbers werereleased in June 2018), going from 2.608 to 2.946, itshighest ever score. This compares with an Impact Factorof 3.510 for the Review of Economics and Statistics, 2.975for JEEA and 4.455 for the Review of Economic Studies(Table 6).

In 2018, the EJ ranked 42/353 in the Economics ISI sub-ject category, compared with last year’s ranking of42/347.

The journal also performs well on alternative measuresof impact. Altmetric scores measure the online attention

published articles receive through various mediasources. Table 7 shows 370 EJ articles receivedonline mentions in 2018, compared with 349 arti-cles in 2017. The table details the sources of thesementions. A large proportion comes from Twitterand Mendeley (Elsevier). EJ articles were men-tioned in 800 policy papers, published by NationalBureau of Economic Research, World Bank, UKGovernment, Analysis & Policy Observatory(APO), The Inter-American Development Bank,International Labour Organization, Bruegel and theBrookings Institute. News outlets contributed 338mentions in total. Both national outlets such as theNew York Times, CNN, Forbes and The Economist,and local press have mentioned EJ articles. Blogs,such as the Environmental Economics, LSEBusiness Review, LSE Management, World BankBlogs, and BREXIT have mentioned EJ articles inthe past year.

The article with the highest Altmetric score in 2018is the paper ‘Is Legal Pot Crippling Mexican DrugTrafficking Organisations? The Effect of MedicalMarijuana Laws on US Crime’ by E Gavrilova etal., published in the Economic Journal inNovember 2017. This paper has an Altmetric scoreof 979 which places it in the top 5 per cent of allresearch outputs scored by Altmetric. The list of EJarticles with an Altmetric score of 100 and higher in2018 is listed in the appendix of the Report.

3. Operations 3.1. Transition from Wiley to OxfordUniversity Press (OUP)Both Wiley and OUP follow the TRANSFER Codeof Practice, a set of standards that apply when ajournal transitions from one publisher to another.Wiley were cooperative in transferring the journal

subscription lists, files and technical information neededby OUP.

The transition was nevertheless time-consuming asmany new processes had to be put in place and checked.This resulted in delays for the Editorial Office to be ableto send accepted papers through to OUP production,with knock-on effects to authors. Eventually however,we are hoping that our contract with OUP will providebetter services to authors and readers. One such serviceis the provision of a better proofing tool.


Features

All papers0-14 days15 days - 1 month1-2 months2-3 months3-4 months4-5 months5-6 monthsmore than 6 months

Summarily rejected0-14 days15 days - 1 month1-2 months2-3 months3-4 months4-5 months5-6 monthsmore than 6 months

Papers sent to referees0-14 days15 days - 1 month1-2 months2-3 months3-4 months4-5 months5-6 monthsmore than 6 months

Sent to referees, rejected0-14 days15 days - 1 month1-2 months2-3 months3-4 months4-5 months5-6 monthsmore than 6 months

Sent to referees, returnedfor revision0-14 days15 days - 1 month1-2 months2-3 months3-4 months4-5 months5-6 monthsmore than 6 months

201851%9%5%11%11%6%4%4%

83%13%3%1%1%0%0%0%

2%2%7%26%28%15%9%10%

2%2%8%27%29%13%9%9%

0%0%2%21%28%22%12%15%100%

201553%7%5%12%13%7%2%1%

84%10%1%1%2%2%0%0%

2%3%11%30%30%15%5%3%

3%4%13%33%28%13%4%3%

1%0%7%18%39%21%9%4%

100%

2016*62%9%8%9%9%3%1%0%

92%8%0%0%0%0%0%0%

14%10%20%22%22%9%2%1%

5%5%19%26%30%10%3%1%

0%3%12%30%42%9%3%0%

100%

201753%9%7%11%11%6%2%1%

88%11%1%0%0%0%0%0%

3%4%9%22%34%20%6%2%

2%4%8%30%32%19%4%1%

0%0%4%22%35%21%11%7%

100%

Table 3: Time Taken from Submission for Editor to Respond to Author with Decision (for First Regular Submissions)

*Results taken from January 1, 2016 to September 30, 2016.

Year

201520162017

Review ofEconomic

Studies

4.0774.034.455

Journalof theEEA

3.4612.7582.975

Review of Economics

and Statistics

2.9792.9263.510

EconomicJournal

2.372.6082.946

Table 6: Journal Impact Factor

A backlog of 60 papers, which had been fully produced,but not compiled into Wiley issues was transferred to thejournal’s future publisher, OUP. These 60 papers will fillthe first 4 issues of 2019 with OUP.

Two additional benefits came with the transition to OUP.First, OUP recruited the British Library to digitise theEconomic History supplement, which will form part ofthe journal’s online archive. Second, the complete archiveof EJ will be available online from February 2019.

3.2. RES website transitionAn audit of the EJ content on the RES website was per-formed in the Spring. The Managing Editors alongsidethe Publications Officer decided which content should betransferred to the society’s new website and agreed a lay-out for the EJ pages. The new EJ webpages were devel-oped in consultation with the RES Communications andEngagement Manager, Barry Watts.

3.3. Social MediaThe journal’s Twitter page currently has over 7,000+ fol-lowers (7,043 as of 24.1.19). The Media Consultant,Romesh Vaitlingam, who also produced Media Briefingsfor journal articles, stepped down at the end of 2018. TheManaging Editors alongside the Publications Officerhave been coordinating social media activity fromJanuary 2019.

3.4. Committee of Publication Ethics (COPE)The journal is a member of COPE through its associationwith its publisher and through the journal’s publicationethics policies. The Managing Editors have access to amembers-only portal on the COPE website. The portalprovides practical advice and enables editors to submitindividual cases to the Committee’s forum.

In 2018, the editors have dealt with several cases of(self-) plagiarism and used the COPE guidelines indoing so. In addition, all accepted papers continue to bechecked with anti-plagiarism software, before papers aretransferred to production.

4. Prizes4.1 Austin Robinson Memorial Prize The Austin Robinson Memorial Prize is awarded to thebest paper published in the journal in a given year by anauthor (or multiple authors) who is within 5 years ofreceiving his or her PhD. The winning paper is selectedby the Managing Editors.

The 2017 Austin Robinson Memorial Prize was awardedto Josephine Duh and Dean Spears for their article‘Health and Hunger: Disease, Energy Needs, and theIndian Calorie Consumption Puzzle.’ The 2018 winnerwill be announced at the annual RES conference in April.

4.2 RES Prize The Royal Economic Society Prize is awarded to the bestpaper published in the journal in a given year. It is select-

ed by a committee consisting of the RES President, aManaging Editor of the journal and another member ofthe RES council.

The 2017 RES prize was awarded to Robert WarrenAnderson, Noel Johnson and Mark Koyama of GeorgeMason University for their paper ‘Jewish Persecutionsand Weather Shocks 1100 -1800.’ The 2018 winner willbe announced at the annual RES conference in April.

4.3 Referee Prizes The 2018 winners of the referee prizes were announcedin January 2019. These are:

Vittorio Bassi, University of Southern CaliforniaWei Cui, University College LondonJames Best, University of OxfordKerem Cosar, University of VirginiaPatricio Dalton, Tilburg UniversityJonathan de Quidt, Stockholm University Alexander Frankel, University of Chicago

Note:1. Plan S is an initiative for Open Access publishing thatwas launched in September 2018. The plan is supported bycOAlition S, an international consortium of research fun-ders. Plan S requires that, from 2020, scientific publicationsthat result from research funded by public grants must bepublished in compliant Open Access journals or platforms.Further information is available on its website:https://www.coalition-s.org/. See also p.25 below.


Features

ESRC RecruitmentESRC are now recruiting for new Grant AssessmentPanel. The role of the Grant Assessment Panels is toappraise proposals submitted under the responsive modeschemes and classify them by grade according to proce-dures and criteria approved and overseen by Council,which has responsibility for the schemes.

The GAPs are multi-disciplinary bodies comprising 55to 65 members in total. There are three GAPs organisedaround clusters of disciplines, and a fourth for theSecondary Data Analysis Initiative (SDAI). The panelsmeet three times a year in March, July and November.

The deadline for applications is 10 May 2019. Furtherinformation is available at:

https://esrc.ukri.org/about-us/governance-and-struc-ture/esrc-council/responsive-mode-grant-assessment-process/

www.res.org.uk/membership/newsletter.html

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Microeconomic Insights — distilling research for public debateReaders will know that in the past few years, the Society and the economics profession at large hasbecome increasingly concerned about the perception of economics by policymakers and the generalpublic. In this article Siobhán Miller describes a new website aiming to make academic research,particularly in microeconomics, available to a wide audience.

WHY IS POLLUTION from US manufacturingdeclining, even as US manufacturers continueto produce more? How much does consuming

news with a strong political stance influence Americans’voting behaviour? How can marital choices contribute towidening economic inequality?

Despite the output of valuable and high quality micro-economic research answering questions such as these, itsometimes struggles to find to find readership and inter-est beyond the pages of academic journals.Microeconomic Insights is a website that seeks to bridgethis gap, making high-quality innovative academicresearch available to wider audience. We aim to shareleading new ideas by soliciting articles published in topjournals and producing clearer, more accessible sum-maries. We select articles, which improve the founda-tions of economic policymaking and further our under-standing of how economics interacts with the environ-ment in which we live. Our content is curated by an edi-torial committee of leading academics, each an expert intheir own field. All editors are full professors at top insti-tutions such as Yale, Harvard, LSE, University College,London. (A full list appears at the end of this article).

A wide breadth of researchSince starting in 2015, our goal has always been to pub-licise the insights from high quality research in general,with particular emphasis placed on showcasing youngand less well connected researchers working at theresearch frontier. We consider articles that address rele-vant issues worldwide, irrespective of geographical loca-tion. Papers are selected for inclusion based on a numberof criteria, including policy relevance, robustness andgenerality of findings, topicality and in order to achievecoverage of a broad range of issues.

Since launching three years ago, Microeconomic Insightshas built up a library of articles covering development,environment, health, international trade, labour markets,organisation of markets, and public finance. All new arti-cles are disseminated through our mailing list which youcan sign up to via our website, and we also regularlycommunicate over Twitter and Facebook. We have growna solid following mainly in the US and Europe but alsowith significant readership in countries such as India,

Australia and Kenya. Other the past years, as well asexpanding our reach more broadly, we have also beenable to reach younger, and more female audiences.

Going into 2019, we hope to remain a home for cutting-edge research which informs public knowledge andshapes the conversation around microeconomic issues.

Below, are summaries of two of our more recent articles,written in collaboration between the authors and our spe-cialist journalists.

The impact of China's hidden shipbuilding subsidiesMyrto Kalouptsidi (Original article published in theReview of Economic Studies).

Over the past two decades, Chinese firms have rapidlycome to dominate a number of capital-intensive indus-tries, such as steel, auto parts, solar panels, and ship-building. In 2006, for example, China identified ship-building as a ‘strategic industry’ and introduced a planfor its development. In a short time, China's marketshare had doubled from 25 per cent to 50 per cent, leav-ing Japan, South Korea and Europe trailing behind.

Industrial policy, notably in the form of government sub-sidies, is often invoked as a possible contributing factorto this expansion. Some observers have asserted thatChina's rapid rise was driven by hidden subsidies thatreduced shipyard production costs, as well as by a num-ber of new shipyards constructed as part of the plan.

This research is designed to assess the relative contribu-tion of these interventions. The author first develops amethodology for detecting the presence of subsidies andgauging their magnitude. This strategy is then applied tothe world shipbuilding industry, a long-time target ofindustrial policy.

The analysis reveals strong evidence that governmentsubsidies decreased the cost of production in Chineseshipyards by 13-20 per cent, corresponding to a total ofUS$1.5-4.5 billion between 2006 and 2012. There is alsoevidence that Chinese shipyards are less efficient thantheir Japanese and South Korean counterparts.

The policy interventions led to substantial misallocationof production across countries -— with Japan, in partic-ular, losing significant market share — and no signifi-

cant gains for consumers. In the absence of the subsidies,China's market share would be cut to less than half,while Japan's share would increase by 70 per cent. Ifonly new shipyards are removed, China’s share wouldfall from 50 per cent to 40 per cent, suggesting that newshipyards played an important role though not the pre-dominant part in China’s expansion.

The prices of ships and the cost of freight are moderate-ly lower as a consequence of the subsidies, according tothe analysis. But in general, the benefits of subsidies toshipping are minimal, which implies that a frequentassertion that China developed shipbuilding to benefitfrom low freight rates for its trade is unsubstantiated.

Overall, the results of this study suggest that Chinesesubsidies dramatically altered the geography of produc-tion and countries' market shares. Although price (andthus consumer) gains are small in the short run, they maygrow in the long run as the operating fleet becomes larg-er. But it is doubtful that such gains will justify theextent of the estimated subsidies.

Patronage in the British Empire: the high costs ofdiscretionary public appointmentsGuo Xu (original article in American Economic Review)

Civil servants constitute a key element of state capacity,with the responsibility for raising government revenues,providing public services and implementing reforms. Butwhat happens to the performance of bureaucrats whenthey are appointed to office less on the basis of their tal-ents than on their social connections to powerful patrons?

A new study reports evidence on the costs of patronagethrough the lens of a historical bureaucracy that spannedthe globe: the administration that ran the British Empire.The research combines newly digitized personnel andpublic finance data into a single dataset covering theentire period of the Colonial Office (1854-1966), theuniverse of all colonial governors and the 70 colonialterritories under the control of the ministry.

To measure governor’s social connections, the studyuses information on shared ancestry and membership inthe British aristocracy, and attendance at the same eliteschools and universities. Governors’ performance ismeasured by revenue generation, which was a key per-formance dimension of the Colonial Office.

Analysis of these data reveals that governors with socialconnections to the Secretary of State at the ColonialOffice received 10 per cent higher salaries during theperiod of patronage (up to 1930). This increase was driv-en by allocation to better paid and more desirable posi-tions in colonies that were larger and closer to Londonand which had lower rates of settler mortality.

What about the performance of governors whoseappointments were the result of patronage? Once allo-cated to a colony for a fixed six-year term, they provid-

ed more tax exemptions, raised less revenue and invest-ed less. These promotion and performance gaps disap-peared after the abolition of patronage appointments in a1930 civil service reform. Patronage therefore distortsthe allocation of public sector positions and reduces theincentives of favored bureaucrats to perform.

The large negative effects of patronage raise the intriguingquestion of whether it has had ‘scarring’ effects beyondthe days of the British Empire. In a follow-up study, theresearcher finds that countries exposed for longer to con-nected governors during the period of patronage havelower fiscal capacity today. Consistent with policy persist-ence and the tax exemptions granted in the colonial peri-od, these countries have lower quality tax systems.

Taken together, these results provide evidence that therewere large costs of patronage, both for the British Empirebut also for the independent countries that emerged fromthe Empire following decolonization. What’s more, whilethe research provides evidence from a historical ministry,the organization of the Colonial Office — with its hierar-chy and multi-divisional form — offers a striking resem-blance to modern-day bureaucracies.

The key implication for organizations now is that incre-mental reforms aimed at curtailing discretion in theappointment of civil servants may improve governmenteffectiveness and economic performance. This could beparticularly important in the cases of senior appointmentswith strong influence over decisions that have potentiallywide and long-term consequences. It is precisely thesesenior positions that are still under patronage today.

Our supportersMicroeconomic Insights’ website is hosted and run bythe Institute for Fiscal Studies, while our work is fundedby the Economic and Social Research Council, theAlfred P Sloan Foundation, the Suntory and ToyotaInternational Centres for Economics and RelatedDisciplines (STICERD), USC Dornsife Center forEconomic and Social Research, the Woodrow WilsonSchool of Public and International Affairs and theCowles Foundation.

To read our articles or for more information about ourwork and our editorial board, please visit our website:https://microeconomicinsights.org/

The current editorial committee consists of JosephAltonji (Thomas DeWitt Cuyler Professor of Economics atYale University), Alan Auerbach (director of the Robert D.Burch Center for Tax Policy and Public Finance at theUniversity of California at Berkeley), Oriana Bandiera(Professor of Economics at the London School ofEconomics), Richard Blundell (David Ricardo Professor ofPolitical Economy at University College London and theDirector of the ESRC Centre for the MicroeconomicAnalysis of Public Policy at the Institute for Fiscal Studies),Rachel Griffith (professor of economics at the University of


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Manchester and a research director at the Institute for FiscalStudies), Marc Melitz (David A. Wells Professor ofPolitical Economy at Harvard University), Ariel Pakes(Thomas Professor of Economics at Harvard University),Robert Porter (William R. Kenan Professor of Economics

at Northwestern), and John Van Reenen (Gordon Y BillardProfessor of Management and Economics at theMassachusetts Institute for Technology). Former editorsinclude Orazio Attanasio, Roger Gordon, Stephen Reddingand Penny Goldberg.

‘Now you see it, now you don’t’ —Is the university pension fund really in deficit?It is well-known that small changes in the discount rate cause large variations in the present value oflong-term liabilities.1 In this article, Woon Wong2 argues that the discount rate currently used tovalue the liabilities of the Universities’ Superannuation Scheme is too low, and that the largest highereducation strike in British history followed by the forming of the Joint Expert Panel help to revealthat the claim of a deficit is fallacious.3

IT HAS LONG BEEN SUSPECTED that falling gilt yieldsoverstate the liability of defined benefit (DB)schemes. It is thus surprising to find that, based on

projected benefit payments data available from theUniversity Superannuation Scheme (USS), ‘gilt-plus’ (giltyields plus a fixed margin) discount rates actually reducethe reported 2017 deficit of the USS from £7.5bn to£3.4bn. This finding makes the reason behind the 2017deficit ever more puzzling since the valuation assumedthat gilt yields would revert back to their higher (2014)level in ten years’ time (thereby implying a deficit lowereven than that obtained by a gilt-plus method). Regulatoryguidelines require assumptions be evidence-based. If evi-dence-based discount rates are used, the scheme is foundto be in a surplus that can be as large as £7.5bn.

Debating the discount rateThe problem with the USS’s valuations is related to thediscount rate debate that was published by the PensionsRegulator (tPR) in the 2017 Annual Funding Statementfor Defined Benefit Schemes.4 In that debate, proponentsof gilt-plus valuations argued that low gilt yields meanlow returns on other asset classes. Recent research, how-ever, shows that gilt yields are driven by inflation where-as returns on equities (the most important asset class forpension funds) are determined by firms’ productivity inthe real economy.5 The fall in gilt yields since the 1970sare the result of successful monetary policy to targetinflation in order to ensure optimal economic growth,which in turn makes businesses profitable and hencehealthy returns on equities.

Furthermore, Lord Paul Myners CBE (who was the UK’sfinancial services secretary during the 2008 financial cri-sis) questions the wisdom of discounting pension liabilitiesat the current low interest rates, which have been manipu-lated through quantitative easing.6 Such a view is sharedby economists who regard long term interest rates as inap-propriate discount rates after they have been used as mon-etary policy tools.7 Also, gilt yields may have been

depressed relative to economic fundamentals by thePensions Act 2004, since this requires pension managers topurchase gilts regardless of price.8 An investment bankestimates the potential demand for index-linked gilts asfive times the size of the current market.9

The need for transparencyThe USS has refused repeated requests by scheme mem-bers for information such as the projected benefit pay-ments data. It is only after a member of the JointNegotiation Committee (representing University andCollege Union) obtained the required information fromUSS that the findings reported in this article are madepossible. It turns out that the reported discount rates areactually investment returns, not discount rates in theusual sense. Since the 2017 reported discount rates(investment returns) begin and remain at a very low levelfor ten years, the resulting actual discount rates are sig-nificantly lower; as shown in Figure1.

The above revelation raises the issue of frankness in thegovernance of USS. Letters have been written in the past

Figure 1: Discount rates and inflation forecasts

regulatory guidelines of evidenced-based assumptionsfor valuation. While the report of Joint Experts Panel(JEP) has vindicated the industry action, the recommen-dations of JEP remain merely advisory.15 Therefore, it isvital for economists (and other academics) to scrutinizethe assumptions that underpin the valuations of USS.


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Notes:1. See, for example, D Evans, ‘Climate change, the SternReview and discounting the future’, Newsletter no. 141,April 2008, pp.8-9. 2. Reader in Finance, Cardiff Business School. The authoracknowledges help from the Newsletter editor.3. See a letter to the PensionsRegulator for details of variouscalculations and discussions. (https://cf-my.sharepoint.com/:b:/g/personal/wongwk3_cardiff_ac_uk/Eewf6h5i7kJPtm2JOA_YrfMBurEZU9OWqJixiYzwQA3miA?e=Em56Pi) 4. See page 6 of https://www.thepensionsregulator.gov.uk/en/document-library/statements5. See W K Wong, ‘The Discount Rate Debate and ItsImplications for Defined Benefit Schemes’, CardiffEconomics Working Papers E2018/12, 2018 and R JCaballero, E Farhi, P Gourinchas, ‘Rents, technical change,and risk premia. Accounting for secular trends in interestrates, returns on capital, earning yields, and factor shares’,American Economic Review 107, 2017, pp.614-620.6. See http://www.theactuary.com/features/2019/02/interview-challenging-convention/ 7. L Booth, ‘Estimating Discount Rates’, The School ofPublic Policy Publications 8, 2015.8. R Greenword, D Vayanos, ‘Price pressure in the gov-ernment bond market’, American Economic Review 100,2010, pp.585-590.9. Schroders, ‘Pension funds and index-linked gilts: Asupply/demand mismatch made in hell’, 2016. Availableat: http://www.schroders.com/en/sysglobalassets/schroders/sites/ukpensions/pdfs/2016-06-pension-schemes-and-index-linked-gilts.pdf10. See letter by Professors Hutton and Sacka of WarwickUniversity. Available at:https://people.maths.bris.ac.uk/~sw15190/USSTrusteesDeficit21Nov2014.pdf 11. See https://www.thepensionsregulator.gov.uk/en/docu-ment-library/Regulatory-guidance/Trustee-guidance#7cf911ca0e2d4e469fa34eb92a0a22f9 12. For a critique of Test 1 in 2017 valuation, seehttps://medium.com/ussbriefs/why-test-1-must-be-dropped-a-critique-of-its-design-and-implementation-1358c612a2a413. J Comprix, K A Muller III, ‘Pension plan accountingestimates and the freezing of defined benefit pension plans’,Journal of Accounting and Economics 51, 2011, pp.115-133.14. See SeminarUSS27Mar2019.pdf (https://cf-my.share-point.com/:b:/g/personal/wongwk3_cardiff_ac_uk/EV4AX8RPs1tKsBhtlrywgd8BiVYy4Sce_IrrmT9S4JOoqA?e=9Ws0UZ) 15. See https://www.ucu.org.uk/uss-jep-report

pointing out to USS that the scheme’s deficits are the out-come of falling gilt yields rather than any true fundingshortfall.10 While the USS denies the use of gilt-plusmethods in the 2017 valuation, it fails to mention that thenew approach actually produces a deficit that is higherthan that obtained by gilt-plus discount rates. As Figure 1illustrates, the 2017 reported discount rates being decep-tively close to those of 2014 does not help convince itsscheme members that USS is acting openly (in spite of thefiduciary duty of trustees to act honestly).11

Evidence-free assumptions The USS attributes the initial low investment returns tohigh asset prices buoyed by low interest rates and a pos-sible market down rating. However, the first ten years ofinvestment returns average only 0.93 per cent, which issignificantly lower than the gilt yield of 1.727 per cent asat the valuation date. A simulation study can show that thelow return assumption is equivalent to using a rate with aless than 10 per cent probability to value a DB scheme.

Also, the 2017 discount rates and inflation forecasts havevaried like a rollercoaster for 50 years. It turns out that thediscount rates are required to fall from year 11 to less than2.8 per cent at year 34 in order to ensure the failure of Test1 in the 2017 valuation.12 Needless to say, the rollercoast-er variation of discount rates and inflation forecasts isinconsistent with the inflation targeting policy of the Bankof England.

Finally, both gilt yields and US interest rates were atsimilar levels at the time of 2014 valuation. SinceBrexit, the spread of US interest rates over gilt yields haswidened to around 1.3 per cent, which further confirmsthe assertion that gilt-plus valuation inflates pensioncosts. This is because (a) the assets of USS are interna-tionally diversified, and hence (b) if the level of intere-strates were to determine returns on other asset classes,it would be the US interest rate that calls the shots.

Role of academicsEarlier research has shown that managers have beenknown opportunistically to use downward-biased dis-count rates to inflate pension costs in order to obtainlabour concessions.13 What happened to USS is worse:opaque valuation method based on un-evidencedassumptions provided the 2017 deficit which led to adecision to close the USS DB scheme? — an outcomethat only the largest strike in British higher educationhistory has been able to prevent. Note that as a result ofcontinuing closure of DB schemes in the UK, the pen-sion industry is anticipating an estimated additional £1trillion annuities business in the next 20 years.14

The economic truth is that DB schemes enjoy intergener-ational risk-sharing and time-diversification of risk thatno other pension designs can match. Moreover, regula-tions require trustees to always act in the best interestsof scheme beneficiaries, which means implementing the


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The Econometrics Journal —Managing Editor’s Annual Report, 2018This is an edited version of the full report which is available at https://www.res.org.uk/about/our-struc-ture/annual-general-meeting.html. The table numbers used below are the numbers used in the full report.

1. OverviewImportant drivers of The Econometrics Journal’s activi-ties in 2018 were the new editorial policy that it devel-oped in 2016, for all new submissions from 1 January2017, and its move, on 1 January 2019, from Wiley toOxford University Press (OUP). Against this back-ground, this document reports the following on the peri-od 1 January 2018 to 31 December 2018.

2. Editorial Board and OfficeThe editorial process of The Econometrics Journal isoverseen by its Managing Editor and Co-Editors. ADeputy Managing Editor generally supports theManaging Editor and the Co-Editors in the managementof the Journal and its strategy and, more specifically,takes the lead in screening new submissions, editingbook reviews, checking replication packages, and turn-ing accepted into published papers. An Editorial Officeprovides administrative support. The Editorial Board iscomplemented with a large number of first-rate econo-metricians from around the world who, as AssociateEditors, act as ambassadors, advisors, and senior refer-ees of The Econometrics Journal.

2.1. Managing Editor, Co-Editors, and DeputyManaging EditorThere were no changes to the Journal’s main Editors in2018. Jaap Abbring (Tilburg University) continued as itsManaging Editor; Victor Chernozhukov (MassachusettsInstitute of Technology), Dennis Kristensen (UniversityCollege London), Michael Jansson (University ofCalifornia, Berkeley), and John Rust (GeorgetownUniversity) as its Co-editors; and Tobias Klein (TilburgUniversity) as its Deputy Managing Editor.

The Editors met at the January 2018 ASSA Meeting inPhiladelphia and held a Skype meeting in September2018. They managed to conduct most editorial businessby email.

In November 2018, John Rust announced his resignationas Co-Editor from 1 January 2019. We are very sorry tosee John leave, but are thankful for his service to theJournal. This service will extend into 2019, as John willcontinue to handle the submissions that were alreadyassigned to him, edit the Special Issue on Methodologyand Applications of Structural Dynamic Models andMachine Learning (see 4.5), and liaise with the organiz-

ers of a possible sponsored conference on NonstandardMethods in Econometrics at Georgetown University inthe Fall of 2019.

The Managing Editor and remaining Co-Editors haveidentified an excellent candidate to replace John. Thiscandidate has agreed to join the Journal as a Co-Editorand the Society’s Appointments Committee hasapproved the appointment. We expect to formallyappoint the new Co-Editor from 1 March 2019.1

2.2. Associate EditorsRenewals and Resignations in 2018We are happy to report that Pedro Carneiro (UniversityCollege London) and Alfred Galichon (New YorkUniversity) have agreed to join The EconometricsJournal as Associate Editors and that 28 AssociateEditors have accepted renewed appointments from 1January 2018. Serena Ng (Columbia University)resigned from that same date and Chris Hansen(University of Chicago) resigned from 1 July 2018; wethank them warmly for their services to the Journal.

New Appointments, Renewals, and Resignations from 1January 2019

For completeness, we also report the Associate Editorturnover on 1 January 2019. We are happy to report thatDenis Chetverikov (University of California, LosAngeles) has agreed to join The Econometrics Journalas an Associate Editor and that 13 Associate Editors haveaccepted renewed appointments from 1 January 2019.Finally, Elie Tamer (Harvard University) and XiaohongChen (Yale University) resigned from 1 January 2019;we thank them warmly for their service to the Journal.

The current (February 2019) members of the EditorialBoard are listed in Appendix A (of the full report).

2.3 Editorial OfficeThe Editorial Office is managed by the Research SupportTeam of Tilburg University’s School of Economics andManagement. Janneke Schrama-Scheepens continued toserve as the main Editorial Assistant and primary Officecontact, usually with the help of a student assistant. Othermembers of the Research Support Team took care of theEditorial Office in her absence.

The Editorial Office continued to use Slack for organiz-ing the workflow and the corresponding internal com-

munications between the Editorial Assistant, theManaging Editor, the Deputy Managing Editor, and theresearch assistants charged with checking replicationpackages; and to use Dropbox for storing and exchang-ing files. To ensure that the Slack history is kept after achange of personnel, the Editorial Office has moved tousing functional email accounts in the res.org.uk domainfor all assistants.

In the Editorial Office’s second year at Tilburg, many ofits operations followed established procedures, so that itcould move from weekly to fortnightly meetings withthe Managing and Deputy Managing Editors.

The Editorial Office continued to send monthly reportson the flow of papers at the Journal to all AssociateEditors and Co-Editors, often including some news fromthe Managing Editor.

3. Editorial Policy3.1. Submission Guidelines and Review ProcessThe current editorial policy, which was developed in2016 for all new submissions from January 2017, aimsat the rapid and early dissemination of research in econo-metrics that is of substantive applied value. We pursuethis goal by inviting submissions of shorter and morefocused papers that demonstrate their applied value withan empirical illustration and striving to have these sub-missions

• assigned to an Editor or screen rejected within oneweek; • peer reviewed within three months; • revised quickly, by avoiding multiple and major revi-sions; and • published online immediately after acceptance.

To facilitate such quick review and online publication,we require that all submissions follow strict guidelines.In particular, they need to be typeset in the Journal styleusing its LaTeX template.

In 2018, we continued to work hard on making this (rel-atively new) policy a success, so that The EconometricsJournal will be the outlet of choice for econometricresearch that matters. Section 4’s statistics show that,after an initial fall in 2017, the number of submissions isnow increasing rapidly. Moreover, the Editors continueto deliver the fast review that we have promised. Finally,we expect, but cannot yet know from data, that theJournal’s focus on econometrics that matters willincrease its impact.

3.2. Replication PolicyThe Econometrics Journal systematically checks all repli-cation packages of newly accepted papers for complete-ness, proper documentation, and functionality. Thesechecks will limit the publication of glaring mistakes byforcing authors to double check their data, code andresults before publication. They will also ensure that

empirical and computational results are replicable and thatproposed methods can easily be used, thus increasing thecredibility and usefulness of The Econometrics Journal.

The Editors do not intend to check for robustness,whether methods are appropriate, etcetera. Rather, theywill simply check whether the submitted software anddata are consistent with the results reported in thepapers.

The Deputy Managing Editor manages the replicationpackage checks at The Econometrics Journal, aided by apool of expert research assistants, who are all PhD stu-dents at Tilburg University. In 2018, we have furtherincreased the efficiency of the replication packagechecks, which now run smoothly (see 4.3).

3.3. COPE GuidelinesIn preparing the move from Wiley to OUP on 1 January2019, the Journal has embraced the guidelines(https://publicationethics.org/resources/guidelines) ofthe Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) andapplied for COPE membership. In 2019, we will reviewthe Journal’s compliance with its guidelines.

4. Papers4.1. SubmissionsSubmission data for 2018 can directly be compared todata for 2017, because both years were covered by thenew editorial policy. However, some care needs to betaken in comparing submissions in 2017 and 2018 withsubmissions in earlier years. The new policy requiresthat submissions are typeset in the Journal style usingour LaTeX template (with exceptions for papers writtenin Word, etcetera). Submissions in 2017 that were nottypeset in the Journal style were desk rejected by theEditorial Assistant before being entered into EditorialExpress® and reviewed by the Editors. As a result, theyare not counted as submissions in Editorial Express®.However, many, but not all, of these would have count-ed as summary rejections by an Editor in previous years(in which they would have trivially complied with thestyle requirements). Therefore, in comparisons with ear-lier years, it is appropriate to include many, but not all,of the submissions in 2017 and 2018 that were deskrejected by the Editorial Office. To keep this practical,we simply report the extremes in which either all or noneof these submissions are included.

Table 1 reports the number of new submissions andresubmissions in 2018, 2017, 2016, and 2015. The statis-tics for 2016 and 2015 cannot be found in AnnualReports on those years, because these covered July-Juneperiods. To allow comparison with these earlier AnnualReports and the tables in Appendix B (which are updat-ed tables from the previous Annual Report), we havealso included statistics for the earlier July 2015 June-2016 and July 2014-June 2015 reporting periods.


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The Editors handled 80.8 per cent more new submissionsin 2018 (132) than in 2017 (73). At the same time, theOffice rejected fewer new submissions (for not being type-set in the Journal style) in 2018 (106) than in 2017 (109).Consequently, the share of new submissions rejected onformal grounds by the Office has decreased substantially.This suggests that, in 2018, authors were both better appre-ciating the Journal’s new editorial policy and more keenlyaware of the corresponding submission guidelines.

To compare with the years before 2017, note that 21 of the106 papers formally rejected by the Office in 2018 werelater submitted correctly and counted among the 132proper submissions. Thus, a reasonable upper bound on acomparable number of submissions in 2018 is 238 - 21 =217; a lower bound is the number of submissions handledby the Editors, 132. For 2017, these bounds were 182-25=157 and 73. Robustly, after a fall in 2017, new submis-sions have rebounded in 2018 to historical levels, eventhough they now need to comply with the much toughersubmission guidelines of the new editorial policy.

Our radical editorial change has likely reduced submis-sions in the short term.2 After all, thecost of meeting the new submissionguidelines presented itself immediately,but the benefits, such as faster review(see 4.2), only revealed themselves latein 2017. Once we had presented the firstevidence of much faster review and fur-ther communicated the new editorialpolicy, both the number of submissionsand the share of those submissions thatcomplied with the new guidelinesincreased substantially.

As in the previous Annual Report, TablesB.1 and B.2 record the geographical distri-butions of the submitted and acceptedpapers by year. Because these data aredrawn from Editorial Express®, Table B.1only considers the 132 proper submissionsfor 2018 and the 73 proper submissionsfor 2017. Most remarkable about thesetables are not the geographical distribu-tions themselves (the distributions for

2018 are within reasonable historical bounds), but the lownumber of accepted papers in 2018. Despite the strongincrease in new submissions, and the fast review, fewerpapers (13) were accepted in 2018 than are needed to fill avolume of the Journal (around 21) or than were acceptedin 2017 (24). As a consequence, the Journal has nowalmost depleted its backlog of unpublished acceptedpapers. Fortunately, the prospects for 2019 are good: Until23 February 2019, 3 papers were accepted and 7 morewere conditionally accepted. To speed up the conversion ofconditionally accepted into accepted papers, we have madethe one-month deadline for returning final revisions moresalient in the conditional acceptance email and instructedthe Office to kindly remind authors who do not meet thesedeadlines.

4.2. Review We continued to use Editorial Express® for the reviewprocess, to our full satisfaction. In 2018, 55.3 per cent(73) of the 132 new submissions that conformed to theguidelines were summarily rejected.3 In 2017, a slight-ly larger share (61.6 per cent) of conforming submis-sions was summarily rejected.

If we include the submissions that were desk rejected bythe Editorial Office, then 75.2 per cent (73+106=179) ofall (132+106=238) new submissions in 2018 and 84.6per cent of all new submissions in 2017 were summarilyrejected. These numbers are broadly comparable to thepercentages of summary rejections in 2016 (77.8 percent) and 2015 (78.6 per cent).

Figure 1 plots the cumulative distributions of the timefrom new submission to a first editorial decision in 2018and 2017 (with and without submissions desk rejected bythe Editorial Office), 2016, and 2015.4 As some, but not


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2018201720162015

2015/162014/15

19313818

2240

106109

--

--

132 73

176168

211157

238182176168

211157

Year

New submissionsAll of which handled by

Editors Office

Resubmissions

Table 1. Number of Submissions

all, submissions desk rejected by the Editorial Office in2018 and 2017 would have counted as summary rejec-tions in 2016 and 2015, we would expect the distributionsfor those earlier years to lie between the two distributionsfor 2017 if review times were stable. This is not the case.Robustly, decisions were delivered faster under the neweditorial policy in 2018 and 2017 than in earlier years.

In 2018, between 93.9 per cent and 96.6 per cent of newsubmissions were handled within three months. In 2017,this was true for 94.5 per cent to 97.8 per cent of submis-sions. This is a major improvement over the correspon-ding 82.4 per cent and 82.7 per cent in 2016 and 2015.

The difference between 2018 and 2017 isdue to the smaller percentage of (invari-ably quick) summary rejections in 2018.Figure 2 plots the cumulative decisiontime distributions for only those submis-sions that were sent to referees (and thusexcluding summarily rejected papers).These are very similar between 2018 and2017, despite the differences in Figure 1.Moreover, times to decision have dramati-cally improved since the period before theintroduction of the new editorial policy(2015 and 2016). About 86 per cent ofdecisions that were based on referee inputwere taken within three months in 2017and 2018, against only 20 per cent in theearlier years. Figure 3 confirms this mes-sage for those new submissions that weresummarily rejected. Again, times to deci-sion in 2018 and 2017 (around 80 per centof decisions within a week) are similar and

way better than in 2016 and 2015 (around 9 per cent with-in a week).

It is worth noting that all regular new submissions in2018 were handled within 99 days. The four decisionsthat took longer all concerned submissions to the SpecialIssue on Methodology and Applications of StructuralDynamic Models and Machine Learning (see 4.5).

Preliminary evidence on resubmissionssuggests we mostly avoided major andmultiple revisions. We will more system-atically investigate this next year, whenmore data under the new policy will beavailable.

All in all, the review performance in2017 and 2018 has been in line with thenew editorial policy, which strives toscreen within 7 days, review within threemonths, and avoid major and multiplerevisions. In 2019, we will continue towork towards minimizing unnecessarydelays in editorial decisions.

4.3. Replication package checks In 2018, we have made the need to providewell documented and functioning replica-tion packages more salient during thereview process. As a result, authors nowsubmit substantially better replicationpackages, which can be reviewed more

quickly. This has resulted in a downward adjustment inthe budgeted research assistant input needed, from 10 to4.5 hours per article from 1 January 2019.


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21

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www.res.org.uk/membership/newsletter.html

4.4. ProductionThe Journal’s freelance copyeditor, Rachel Lumpkin,resigned late in 2017, but has kindly agreed to finishwork on all papers published in the first two issues of2018. Mattson Publishing Services in Baltimore,Maryland, handled all papers for the third (and last)issue of 2018 and three papers from the first issue of2019. The Journal’s new publisher, OUP, took over allaspects of production from there, as agreed earlier.

We were satisfied with the work of all parties involved inthe transition from Wiley to OUP. The first issue of 2019was published with a small delay relative to the newschedule agreed with OUP (the first issue was rescheduledfrom February to January), but this was a consciouschoice for quality and fully coordinated with the Editors.OUP addressed all challenges that came up very well. Weused the transition to review and improve the template,style guide, and typesetting. From 2019, we report the han-dling Co-Editor with each article published.

4.5 PublicationMost downloaded papersThe most frequently downloaded paper (by far) in 2018was Victor Chernozhukov, Denis Chetverikov, MertDemirer, Esther Duflo, Christian Hansen, WhitneyNewey and James Robins (June 2017): ‘Double/debi-ased machine learning for treatment and structuralparameters’ https://www.doi.org/10.1111/ectj.12097

Special issues

The Journal published the following special issues in2018/2019:

‘Model Selection and Inference’, February 2018;‘Econometrics of Games’, January 2019

The Special Issue on ‘Recent Developments inNonlinear Econometric Modelling’ was cancelled owingto a lack of suitable submissions.

Commissioned articlesThe Editors annually commission one larger article thatreviews important new developments in econometrics andguides empirical researchers in their application. In 2018,the Editors commissioned an article on the use of structur-al models and machine learning for firm policy making bySanjog Misra (University of Chicago), which will be pub-lished in a Special Issue on ‘Methodology and Applicationsof Structural Dynamic Models and Machine Learning’.

4.6. Impact The 2017 Journal Citation Reports® (Clarivate Analytics,2018) for The Econometrics Journal show that its (two-year) Journal Impact Factor has increased to an all-timehigh of 1.152, while its five-year Impact Factor dropped to1.163 in 2017. The Journal was cited 844 times in 2017, a6.7 per cent increase over 2016. One explanation for the

recent fall in the five-year Impact Factor is that the 25 arti-cles in the Journal’s 2011 volume were cited 100 times in2016, but no longer contribute to the 2017 five-year IF. The Journal’s new editorial policy aims to promoteeconometrics that matters and increasing its influence onthe profession. However, it will take some time for thiseffect to be measured by the Impact Factors. The ImpactFactors reported here cover citations of articles published in2016 and before. Therefore, they do not reflect the impactof the new editorial policy which only affected submissionsfrom 2017 onwards (which will result in publications from2018). The 2019 Impact Factors, which will become avail-able halfway 2020, will be the first that cover publicationsunder the new policy. The two-year Journal Impact Factor,in particular, is volatile because it depends heavily on refer-ences to a small number of papers. In the longer run, if thecurrent increase in submissions persists, we can likelyaddress this by publishing more papers.

5. PrizesThe Society’s Past President, Andrew Chesher, present-ed the 2016 Denis Sargan Econometrics Prize toBezirgen Veliyev (Aarhus University) and K. UlrichHounyo (SUNY Albany) at its 2018 Annual Conference.Bezirgen and Ulrich were awarded the Prize for theirpaper ‘Validity of Edgeworth expansions for realizedvolatility estimators’ in the Journal’s February 2016issue (https://doi.org/10.1111/ectj.12058).

The Editors of The Econometrics Journal decided thatthe 2017 Denis Sargan Econometrics Prize will beshared equally between Vincent Boucher (UniversitéLaval) and Ismael Mourifié (University of Toronto) fortheir article ‘My friend far, far away: a random fieldapproach to exponential random graph models’ inthe October 2017 issue of The Econometrics Journal(https://doi.org/10.1111/ectj.12096).

6. EventsFrom 2019, The Econometrics Journal will sponsor andpublish the Sargan Lecture at the Society’s AnnualConference. James Heckman (University of Chicago) willdeliver the 2019 Lecture. At the 2018 Annual Conference,the Editors organized a Special Session on StructuralMacroeconometrics, with presentations by Barbara Rossi(UPF/BGSE) and Marco del Negro (NY Fed). They alsoprepared a Special Session on Econometrics of Panel Dataat the 2019 Annual Conference, with presentations by IvanFernandez-Val (Boston University) and Bo Honoré(Princeton University). Finally, the Journal supported theSecond Conference on Structural Dynamic models, whichfocused on the use of machine learning and artificial intel-ligence to facilitate solution and estimation of dynamicstructural models and was was hosted by the Centre forComputational Economics at the University ofCopenhagen on 31 May and 1 June 2018(http://www.econ.ku.dk/cce/events/Dynamics2018/).

7. External communicationWith the development of the Society’s new web site, theJournal’s web pages at ectj.org have been rebuilt andredesigned. The Journal also has a new web page atOUP’s web site. The Journal maintains a database of over1750 email addresses on a mail list server, with theoptions to subscribe and unsubscribe. We sent Newsletters8 and 9 to the Journal’s mailing list in, respectively,February and September 2018. Newsletter 10 is scheduledfor March 2019.

8. AcknowledgementsWe are grateful for the support of the Royal EconomicSociety and its officers. We particularly recognize the workof the Editors and the anonymous referees, whose effortsensure that the quality of The Econometrics Journal ismaintained and improved. We are also grateful for theassistance offered by our publishers at Wiley (until 2018)and OUP (from 2019), in particular in the Journal’s transi-tion from one to the other. Finally, we thank RachelLumpkin and Geri Mattson for their flexibility and help inproducing the Journal in 2018.

Sir James MirrleesJames Alexander Mirrlees was born in 1936 inMinnigaff, Kirkcudbrightshire, in Galloway. His math-ematical excellence led to undergraduate study first inEdinburgh and then in Cambridge. He began to attendeconomics lectures, motivated by an interest in philoso-phy and social science and a desire to apply mathemati-cal skills to questions of ethical significance.

He went on to graduate study in the subject under DavidChampernowne and Richard Stone and became involvedin various economic projects on growth in Cambridge,working for example as research assistant to NicholasKaldor. Academic visits abroad reinforced his academ-ic and practical economic interests. In 1963 he becamea teaching fellow at Trinity College Cambridge andcompleted a doctoral thesis on optimal accumulationunder uncertainty, examined by Kenneth Arrow. In 1968he moved to Nuffield College, Oxford, where he becamethe Edgeworth Professor and remained until movingback to Trinity in 1995. In 1996 he was awarded theNobel Prize, jointly with William Vickrey. After retire-ment in 2003 he became Distinguished Professor-at-Large at the Chinese University of Hong Kong andMaster of Morningside College. His period as RoyalEconomic Society President from 1989 to 1992 was oneof several positions at the head of learned societiesincluding President of the Econometric Society in 1982and President of the European Economic Association in2000.

His earliest work in economics was the work withNicholas Kaldor exploring technical change, investmentand growth. Interest in growth questions, particularlythose concerned with the optimum level of saving, con-tinued throughout his career. His engagement with eco-nomics had been driven by a conviction that the reduc-tion of poverty in the underdeveloped world was ‘whatreally mattered in the world’ and he wrote also on devel-opment.

His work with Ian Little on the appraisal of public proj-ects was of particular practical significance. Here theysought to bridge the gap between the abstract concepts ofcost-benefit analysis and the practicalities of socialinvestment decision-making in developing countriesthrough extended and meticulous practical advice onperforming project evaluations in settings of pervasivemarket failures and weaknesses of policy. Their workadvocated use of shadow prices based on border pricesfor traded goods and outlined practical methods for con-sistent social costing based on shadow wages and pricesof traded inputs for nontraded goods. The influence oftheir work on methodologies adopted widely in donor


Obituaries

Notes:1. We are very happy to add now that Petra Todd has indeedjoined The Econometrics Journal as a Co-Editor from 1 March2019. See p.25 below.2. This is not evident though, as new submissions were alreadydown before we implemented the new editorial policy: Only 60of the 176 new submissions in 2016 were submitted in the sec-ond half of that year.3.Two new submissions in 2018 were (quickly) withdrawn bythe authors. Both papers seemed good quality, but poor fits toThe Econometrics Journal. Throughout this section, we includethem with the summarily rejected papers. The results are robustto other reasonable ways of handling these cases. 4. For 2018, we used Kaplan-Meier estimators to correct forone submission that was still under review when the data wereextracted on 21 February 2019. Moreover, we imputed thetimes it took for the Editorial Office to desk reject the 106(2018) and 109 (2017) submissions that did not conform to theguidelines to be uniformly distributed over 1, 2, and 3 days.These durations are not available from Editorial Express® andthere is little point in hand collecting them, because the Officechecked the submission holding tank on a daily basis (withsome delays on weekends). Finally, we have completed thedata of two submissions in 2017 that were still under reviewwhen the Annual Report over 2017 was prepared. This impliesvery small revisions of the review time estimates for 2017.

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agencies in the 1970s, particularly by the World Bank,was welcome and the decline in interest since is a sourceof regret.

The work for which he is best known is on taxation andincentives that began in the 1960s. His work with PeterDiamond on optimum design of commodity taxes led tothe deeply significant two-part paper of 1971 generalisingthe results of Ramsey and Samuelson. Firstly, they showedthat in a wide variety of circumstances there is no argu-ment for distorting production. Distortion to consumptionand labour supply decisions may be an unavoidable featureof the optimal tax policy, but there is no case for the econ-omy to produce inefficiently. The undesirability of taxingtransaction between firms that follows from this makes thecase, for example, for collection through a value-addedtax. Secondly, they showed how Ramsey’s arguments forsetting tax rates so as to discourage consumption of allcommodities equally need to be adapted to incorporate theproblem of income redistribution together with that of rais-ing revenue when consumers are heterogeneous.

The problem of designing an optimal non-linear taxschedule for labour income raises conceptual challengesthat required a breakthrough made by Mirrlees at aroundthe same time. How should formulation of the questioncapture taxpayer responses to the potentially highlyirregular schedule under design? Mirrlees showed howto pose it as an information question. Governments canmonitor only how much people do earn and not knowhow much they could earn unless they design taxes sothat people’s decisions will voluntarily reveal it.Whatever combination of work hours and after-taxincome the government decides it wants someone tochoose, it needs to make that combination more attrac-tive to them than what such a person could get by posingas anyone of lower earnings capacity. Tax design there-fore has an incentive compatibility constraint which,under reasonable assumptions on preferences, can berepresented as a constraint on the rate at which taxpayerwell-being needs to increase with unknown earningscapacity in a suitably formulated optimum control prob-lem. The Mirrleesian framework remains the acceptedstarting point for serious treatment of direct tax designand shapes much ongoing analysis.

His original paper reported simulations based on partic-ular preferences and ability distributions which suggest-ed optimal schedules might be close to linear and atlower rates than he had anticipated. For a time he was ledto question his prior belief in the case for graduation inmarginal tax rates and the effectiveness of the incometax as a tool for reducing inequality but the later work ofothers restored his belief ‘that marginal rates of taxshould ... be greater than they were in these first calcula-tions’ and graduated so that they ‘were highest in themiddle of the range of incomes, and fell towards higherincomes and lower’. The ‘notorious’ result that the mar-ginal tax rate on the topmost income should be zero —

not a feature of his work, which assumed no knownhighest ability, but discovered by later authors extendinghis findings — was one that he regarded as ‘practicallyirrelevant’.

In later years he chaired the Mirrlees Review of theentire UK tax system convened by the Institute of FiscalStudies. It called for ‘a systematic conceptual approachthat joins together our thinking across the whole range oftaxes ... rooted in economic theory that models the con-straints people face and the way they behave when taxeschange.’ It proposed, for example, better integration indirect taxation, better justification for departures fromneutrality in indirect taxation and replacement of ill-designed taxes on asset transfers with VAT on servicesyielded. Its approach and findings have been widelycited as a model for reviews of this kind.

His modelling of the optimum income tax problem asone of informational asymmetry between governmentand taxpayers began a continuing engagement withinformational economics over following years whicheventually led to the award of the Nobel prize, jointlywith William Vickrey, in 1996. Just as his optimum taxwork produced ideas of wide applicability to the analy-sis of adverse selection problems, so his work on moralhazard delivered findings of fundamental and far-reach-ing importance to a wide body of later work. In manyfields, economists find themselves analysing problemswhere a principal needs to set incentives so as to opti-mally motivate an agent despite the agent knowing morethan the principal either about their type or their actions.It is from Mirrlees’ investigation of such problems thatmuch understanding of the general principles of contracttheory has emerged.

His contributions have enriched and informed multiplefields of economics. His specific investigations into taxand public policy changed the way that questions inthose fields are discussed. His ability to simplify com-plex problems in ways which revealed their tractableessence deepened knowledge in widely different fieldsof microeconomics. In practical terms his work yieldedradical and relevant insights that left the whole disciplinewiser and more able to see how things fit together.

His work was motivated throughout by a commitment toeconomic inquiry as a way of doing good in the world.Besides his scholarly contribution to the improvement ofpublic policy, his personal generosity is warmly spokenof by all those who knew him.

Richard Blundell and Ian PrestonUniversity College London


Obituaries

Mardi DungeyI first met Mardi when she came to ANU to do a PhD.She and her husband Ross were then into rock climbing.I wondered if that was a good choice for an academiccareer. However, when you realize that it makes youwork with fellow climbers, learn new things, be adapt-able, want to finish the climb, and to set your eyes on thenext one you haven’t climbed, one sees that it is goodtraining for academic life. Mardi used all these featuresin her career. Her central focus was always on the use ofdata to address what was going on so as to provide inputinto solving important policy issues.

She was the sort of student you always want. Her thesishad two major components — one on a factor structurefor bilateral exchange rates and one on SVARs for smallopen economies like Australia. The latter paper wasawarded the best paper prize in the Economic Record in2000.

In those days it wasn’t easy to get a job in Australia witha local doctorate and Mardi went to La Trobe Universityin 1998. She was given a tough teaching and supervisionload but she excelled in these tasks. The Asian crisishappened at that point and she responded to it by askinghow to model the contagion that came with. Her workon that continued for the remainder of her career and isher best cited work.

In 2000 there was a ‘second coming’ to ANU. This timeto the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies.Warwick McKibbin says in his ANU obituary that ‘ ..shewas a dynamo’ and was immersed in everything —administration, supervision, teaching. What showed upwas ‘an unusual balance of common sense, outstandingacademic ability and an entrepreneurial flare’. This wasthe Mardi always in evidence, no matter where she was.

It was not surprising when she moved on to Cambridgewhere she was deputy director of the then CambridgeEndowment for Research in Finance. Cambridge reallycemented her international reputation. She started towork with people like Charles Goodhart of the LSE andalso developed an interest in the modelling of high fre-quency financial times series with their quirks like‘jumps’.

2008 saw a return to her alma mater of the University ofTasmania where she remained until her death. Duringthis decade she attracted many staff and visitors. A con-tinuing theme was her workshops on macroeconometricmodels that were being used in Australia. There was onein December 2018. She couldn’t attend but all the mod-ellers attested to her impact on them through both herwritten and oral communication.

During the decade back in Tasmania she started to thinkabout networks and how to use those ideas to look atcontagion and crises. As ever, this showed an impressive


Obituariesability to move on to the next peak to scale.

During 2018 she was heavily involved in the construc-tion of a new model at the Commonwealth Treasury. Formany years she had been advising them on these issues. 2018 was meant to be a year’s leave. She had a greattime despite worsening health and, in many communica-tions, she said how much she was enjoying meeting peo-ple and hearing about new ideas. Coming back from theleave early the back problems she had had for manyyears were now found to be a symptom of cancer andher decline was shockingly fast.

At her death Mardi had published almost 100 papers. In2018 she published nine papers and in many years shepublished six. In recognition, she had been elected aFellow of the Academy of Social Sciences and theSociety of Financial Econometrics. More honours wouldhave come.

Mardi gave extensive service to the profession. She hadbeen an Editor of the Economic Record, an AssociateEditor of the Journal of Applied Econometrics, theJournal of Asian Economics and the Journal of Bankingand Finance as well as acting on numerous committees.There was a constant demand for her as a referee, dis-cussant and speaker. She was to be the keynote speakerat the INFINITI conference on International Finance.That day she was in the Hospice.

Despite all those activities she still found time to be agreat mentor to both female and male junior scholarsand to be an educator in the widest sense — not just touniversity students and other colleagues but to primaryschool students and to many business groups.

Those of you who knew her will be aware that she wasalways interested in people. At her memorial, studentsnoted that in her regular meetings with them she wouldalways ask about their family, and celebrate theirachievements, before even getting to critically analysewhat they had done.

In the Baptism service it is said ‘Shine as a Light in theworld’. Mardi shone brightly. She is greatly missed.

Adrian PaganUniversity of Sydney


RES news

RES statement on ‘Plan S’ In 2018, a coalition of mainly European funding bodiesproduced a plan - known as ‘Plan S’ — that will requireresearch funded by those bodies to be published in com-pliant Open Access (OA) Journals or on compliant OAPlatforms. A consultation recently took place on Plan Sand the Royal Economic Society responded. You can readthe full response on the RES website —https://www.res.org.uk/resources-page/royal-economic-society-response-to-plan-s-consultation.html.The Societyis also liaising with the British Academy, the Academy ofSocial Sciences, and with other learned societies.Whilst the RES is supportive of efforts to increaseaccess, the medium and long-run consequences for alldisciplines need to be considered carefully before fullOA is implemented. The Society is also concerned withthe possible unintended consequences of the plan,including the restriction on academic freedom, and theimpact on early-career researchers.

Important changes to access thejournalsFrom Tuesday 5 March there are important changes tohow you access the Economic Journal and theEconometrics Journal. As a RES member you have freeaccess to the journals but to do so you will have to loginto the RES website to view them.You can do this by visiting the RES website and then log-ging in with your username and password. Then pleaseselect the Journals from MY RES in the top right-hand cor-ner. There you can click on the link which will take you tothe journals on the Oxford University Press website.

Petra Todd joins theEconometrics Journal as Co-EditorWe are very happy to report that Petra Todd has joined theEconometrics Journal as a Co-Editor from 1 March 2019.Petra is the Edmund J and Louise W Kahn Term Professorof Economics at the University of Pennsylvania. She hasmade key contributions to microeconometrics, in particu-lar microeconometric policy evaluation, and empiricalmicroeconomics, with a focus on problems in labour, edu-cation, and development economics.

Petra fills a vacancy left by John Rust, who resignedfrom 1 January 2019. We are very sorry to see Johnleave, but are thankful for his service to the Journal.This service will extend into 2019, as John will continueto handle the submissions that were already assigned tohim and edit a Special Issue on Methodology andApplications of Structural Dynamic Models andMachine Learning related to the Second Conference on

Structural Dynamic Models.

Sign up for regular updates onthe journalsYou can sign up to receive regular updates on theSociety’s two journals by registering with OxfordUniversity Press (OUP).

In January 2019, OUP became the publisher for theEconomic Journal and the Econometrics Journal. By reg-istering with OUP you can receive the e-table of journalcontents for the two journals when they are released. Tosign up please visit the OUP website and register for anOUP account -—https://academic.oup.com/my-account/register

New RES staff memberThe Society welcomes Raj Chana, who joined theSociety in January 2019. She has previous experience inOffice Management for various types of companies,including roles within logistics, media and aviation. Herresponsibilities are to support the team across communi-cations, events, and finance.

Raj is based in our central officer in Westminster and canbe contacted via email at: [email protected]

may

2 May LeedsResearch Applications and Methods for Economicsand Transport Studies (RAMETS) invites you to takepart in a discussion on how we can utilise big data inresearch and better inform policy. Big data is high-vol-ume and high-velocity such that conventional data-pro-cessing cannot be used so new forms of processing arecreated. The keynote will be followed by short presen-tations from our panellists and finished with a discussionbetween the audience and our panel. There will beserved lunch and refreshments.

For catering purposes, email David Pierce([email protected]) by Wednesday 24th April.

8-10 May LondonThe Economic Statistics Centre of Excellence(ESCoE) will hold its annual conference, organised inpartnership with the UK Office for National Statistics(ONS), at King’s College London.

Keynote speakers include:Vasco Carvalho, University of CambridgeAlberto F. Cavallo, Harvard UniversityJohn Fernald, INSEAD

RES news

Conference diary

We have invited papers on all aspects of the measure-ment and use of economic statistics, including: the pro-ductivity puzzle, the digital economy, National Accountsand ‘Beyond GDP’, regional statistics, measurementusing big data and administrative data, internationaltrade flows and the location of economic activity.

Further information:www.escoe.ac.uk/escoe-conference-economic-measure-ment-2019/

20 -21 May Nuremberg, Germany

A workshop on The Gender Wage Gap in Europe: WhatCan We Learn Using Linked Employer-EmployeeData? will be held at the German Federal EmploymentAgency, Nuremberg. The purpose of the workshop is to:Promote understanding of the role employers play inaccounting for the GWG; Establish the size of the GWGacross countries and how the gap varies when accounting forthe identity of the employer; Identify mechanisms, whichhelp explain the size of the GWG, e.g. discrimination, work-er sorting, worker segmentation, monopsony employerpower, rent-sharing, compensating wage differentials;Discuss methodological challenges and avenues for futureresearch for academics using LEED to investigate the GWG.

june

3-5 June Brighton11th European Meeting on Applied EvolutionaryEconomics (EMAEE19) theme is the economics, gover-nance and management of artificial intelligence (AI),robotisation and digital transformations. The conferenceaims to bring together frontier research on the opportu-nities and challenges arising from AI and digital trans-formations, particularly to achieve the SustainableDevelopment Goals (SDGs) and deal with related socie-tal challenges.

Further information:http://www.sussex.ac.uk/spru/newsandevents/events/emaee2019

3-8 June Venice, ItalyThe CESifo Venice Summer Institute institute willfocus on themes of current interest in European andglobal economic policy. The 20th CESifo VeniceSummer Institute will take place from 3-8 June 2019 andwill bring together international economists working oneconomic policy topics for workshops, panel meetingsand discussion. The conference venue is VeniceInternational University on San Servolo, a tiny islandacross the water from San Marco in the bay of Venice.

Further information: http://www.cesifo-group.de/de/ifoHome/events/academic-conferences/Venice-Summer-Institute.html

10-13 June LondonThe European Workshop on Efficiency andProductivity Analysis (EWEPA) XVI will mark 30years since the first EWEPA conference, which was heldin Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium, in 1989. Since that firstevent EWEPA has become the leading biennial confer-ence devoted to the methodology and application of pro-ductivity, efficiency and performance analysis. A featureof EWEPA XVI will be two consecutive special sessionson the ‘UK Productivity Puzzle’, which have been kind-ly supported by the Royal Economic Society.

Further information: Dr Karligash [email protected]

11-12 June Loughborough4th Annual Macroeconomics and DevelopingEconomies Workshop organised by the MaDE researchgroup at Loughborough University. Key note speakerswill include Professor David Fielding (University ofOtago) and Professor Chris Milner (University ofNottingham). Papers are still welcome, especially fromearly career researchers, and are to be sent to Dr SimeonColeman at [email protected]. Overnight accom-modation available at own expense.

Registration is free. Contact Ruth Cufflin [email protected].

12-14 June Besançon, FranceThe 36th International Symposium on Money,Banking and Finance, annual meeting of the EuropeanResearch Group (GdRE) on Money Banking andFinance will be held in Besançon, at Franche-ComtéUniversity. The conference is locally organized by theresearch department CRESE.

Further information:https://gdrbesancon2019.sciencesconf.org/

14 June LondonThe East Asia Forum: Economic (Dis)integrationworkshop will provide a forum to explore the economicissues, challenges and responses to conflicting trends ofgreater interconnection and isolation, which are shapingthe world economy. Keynote Speaker: Professor Kerry Brown — King’sCollege, University of London.

There is no charge to attend the workshop. The work-shop organizers will cover meals and refreshments.Participants will be required to pay for their own traveland accommodation. Further details will be included inletter of acceptance.

Further information:https://www.westminster.ac.uk/events/east-asia-forum-economic-disintegration


Conference diary

16-22 June New York

The 10th Hyman P. Minsky Summer Seminar will beheld at the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College. TheSeminar provides a rigorous discussion of both the theoret-ical and applied aspects of Minsky’s economics, with anexamination of meaningful prescriptive policies relevant tothe current economic and financial outlook. It will alsoprovide an introduction to Wynne Godley’s stock-flowconsistent modeling methods via hands-on workshops.

The Summer Seminar is of particular interest to graduatestudents, recent graduates, and those at the beginning oftheir academic or professional careers. The teaching staffwill include well-known economists working in the theoryand policy tradition of Hyman Minsky and Wynne Godley.

Further information:www.levyinstitute.org/news/minsky-summer-seminar-2019

17-19 June LincolnThe 3rd DEC 2019 on Social Institutions and theEconomic Performance of Nations. The broad themeof DEC 2019 is framed along the lines of the lateDouglas North’s seminal contributions of the late lastcentury to address issues arising out of the social andpolitical turbulence affecting the global community inthe 21st century. The conference will primarily aim toexamine how these issues have been affecting the eco-nomic performance of nations at micro and macro levels.

Further information: http://declincoln.blogs.lincoln.ac.uk/

24-25 June CanterburyThe Microeconomic Approaches to DevelopmentEconomics workshop will bring together internationallyleading and junior academics from the fields of PoliticalEconomy, Organisational Economics and DevelopmentEconomics working on questions relating to identity,norms, motivation, belief formation and their effect onthe functioning of institutions and organisations.

Further information: https://www.kent.ac.uk/econom-ics/research/micro-group/events/workshop-24-25-jun-19.html

4-5 July LeicesterIAESV workshop on Economics for the Social Good.This two day workshop will highlight some of the posi-tive things that economics can contribute to society. It isthe inaugural workshop of the newly formed Institute forApplied Economics and Social Value at Leicester CastleBusiness School, De Montfort University.

We invite submissions from people interested to presenttheir work at the workshop. Relevant topics include (butare not limited to): pro-social behaviour, tackling povertyand inequality, sustainable economic growth, environmen-

tal economics, development economics, charitable giving.

14 July - 3 August London The University of Warwick offers a range of Economics,Social Sciences and Humanities courses aimed at under-graduate and postgraduate students. All courses are taughtby staff who are experts in their field and each course isequivalent to one module from an undergraduate degree.Students in the past have successfully transferred 3 UScredits or 7.5 ECTS upon completion of our courses.

Further information: https://warwick.ac.uk/about/lon-don/study/warwick-summer-school/experience/

september

11-13 September Warwick

CALL FOR PAPERSThe tenth Developments in Economics EducationConference will take place at the University of Warwick.Proposals should focus on research or practice in eco-nomics education and can be a paper or interactive work-shop. The deadline for proposals is 22nd February 2019.

Further information:https://www.economicsnetwork.ac.uk/dee2019

20-22 September Nottingham

CALL FOR PAPERS6th InsTED Workshop: Advances in the theory andempirics of institutions, trade and economic develop-ment Submissions are invited at the intersection orunion of institutions, international trade and economicdevelopment. Keynote speakers:

Robin Burgess (London School of Economics)Giovanni Maggi (Yale University)Submission deadline for paper or 3 page abstract: May31st 2019. Please send your submission to [email protected]

Further information: http://blogs.exeter.ac.uk/insted/

7-8 November StockholmCALL FOR PAPERS15th Annual Central Bank Conference on theMicrostructure of Financial Markets, sponsored bythe Sveriges Riksbank.. This annual central bank work-shop invites researchers, policy-makers and practitionersto discuss theoretical work, empirical findings and poli-cy implications related to the microstructure of financialmarkets. Drafts of completed papers should be submittedin PDF format by May 1, 2019 to [email protected] will be notified by June 19, 2019.

Further information: www.riksbank.se/en/research/con-ferences


Conference diary


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Membership subscriptions 2019

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