The 52nd annual meeting of the IEA will be held on Friday, September 22 and Saturday, September 23, 2023 at the DePaul University Loop Campus in downtown Chicago. We welcome topics from all areas of economics. The (extended!) submission deadline is September 4, 2023, and all proposals for organized sessions and individual paper abstracts should be emailed to Scott Hegerty, Ph.D. (President-Elect, IEA). Submission should include a general JEL classification. Proposals for panel discussions and/or complete sessions (3 to 4 papers with discussants) are encouraged. If you are not presenting a paper, please let us know if you are willing to serve as a discussant or session chair by contacting Dr. Hegerty as well.
The IEA 48th Annual Meetings were held on October 12-13, 2018 and were hosted by the Department of Economics at DePaul University in Chicago. This was our largest conference ever, with 21 sessions and 67 papers and workshops.
The Luncheon speaker this year was James Robinson, Director of The Pearson Institute for the Resolution and Study of Global Conflicts at the University of Chicago and co-author of the best-selling book Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty. Robinson gave an engaging and entertaining talk on “The Narrow Corridor to Liberty” which is the topic of his forthcoming book.
The conference also featured a wine, beer, and hors d’oeuvres reception on Friday evening sponsored by Pearson Higher Ed. This was a great opportunity for attendees to interact and review the day’s activities. Thank you to Pearson for sponsoring this event!
The winner of the Chicago region College Fed Challenge competition was the team from University of Wisconsin-Madison. Congratulations to all of the teams that competed, and a big thanks to Helen Roberts (University of Illinois at Chicago) for organizing and coordinating this event.
The winner of the Graduate Paper Competition was Chia Jung Chang (University of Illinois at Chicago) with “Impact of the Telework Enhancement Act on Turnover Rates.” The two runners-up were Huseyin Cagri Akkoyun (Northwestern University) with “How Does Government Debt Impact Corporate Financing? Evidence from War Finance” and Naveen Kumar (University of Illinois at Chicago) with “Private Schools' Entry Decision: Evidence from a Public Policy in India.” Congratulations to the three finalists – all of whom received cash prizes – and thank you to all the graduate students who entered papers in this competition. Also, thank you to Richard Peck (University of Illinois at Chicago) for coordinating the review process.
A two-day event like this requires a lot of behind-the-scenes work and support. In addition to those mentioned above, we would like to recognize the following:
- DePaul University, and especially the Department of Economics and Department Chair Tony Krautmann, for their generous support and outstanding meeting facilities;
- Steve Carlton (DePaul University) for organizational and administrative assistance;
- Carol Martell (University of Illinois at Chicago) for assistance with registration and answers to countless questions before and during the conference;
- Kent Grote (Lake Forest College), IEA Past President, who helped out at several key times before and during the conference; and
- Everyone who presented papers, chaired sessions, attended presentations, participated in discussions, and contributed in any way to the success of these Meetings.
On behalf of the Illinois Economics Association, thank you very much!
Each session in the conference requires a chair – someone to start and end the session (and each presentation) on time, introduce each speaker, and moderate the Q&A. Chairing a session is an important but relatively easy task, so it is somewhat of a mystery why more IEA attendees don’t participate.
The 21 sessions in the 2018 conference required 21 people to serve as chairs. Unfortunately, we did not have 21 individual volunteers, so a relatively small number of people were “volunteered” to chair multiple sessions, often on short notice. Please help your Association – and perhaps also fulfill the annual “professional service” requirements at your institution − by offering to chair a session at the 2019 Annual Meetings. Contact Stacey Brook, IEA President-Elect at sbrook@depaul.edu.
Thank you to Jin Man Lee (DePaul University) for serving as IEA President for 2017-2018 and officiating at the 2018 Annual Meetings. He will continue to serve the Association as Immediate Past President and webmaster for IEA’s website. In addition, he will be assuming the duties of IEA Executive Director.
Jin Choi (DePaul University) will be stepping down as IEA Executive Director at mid-year. We are grateful for Jin’s many years of dedicated service to the Association, dating back to his time as IEA President in 2010-2011.
Michael Wenz (Northeastern University) continues his service as IEA Treasurer for 2018-2019.
Paul Peterson (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) was President-Elect for 2017-2018, and becomes President for 2018-2019.
Stacey Brook (DePaul University) was named President-Elect for 2018-2019, and will serve as Conference Chair for the upcoming 2019 Annual Meetings in November.
Any member wishing to serve as an IEA Officer should contact Paul Peterson, IEA President at pepeters@illinois.edu