The 55th annual meeting of the IEA will be held on Friday, October 23, 2026 at the Lewis University Oak Brook Campus. We welcome topics from all areas of economics. The submission deadline is September 23, 2026, and all proposals for organized sessions and individual paper abstracts should be emailed to Oguzhan Batmaz (President-Elect). 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. Batmaz as well.
We are pleased to share Dr. José R. Guardado will be this year's luncheon speaker. José has been an economist at the American Medical Association (AMA) Department of Economic and Health Policy Research since 2007, where he is currently an Economics Director. José provides economic analyses, advice, data, and analytic support to the AMA. His work focuses on competition in health care markets, including health insurance, pharmacy benefit manager and hospital markets. He is an integral member of the AMA's antitrust workgroup. He has published peer-reviewed research in the International Economic Review, Journal of Health Economics and Health Management, Policy and Innovation. José obtained his BA, MA, and PhD degrees in economics at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He is a member of the American Economic Association, the American Society of Health Economists, the Industrial Organization Society and the American Society of Hispanic Economists.
Interested in building your skillset in research and teaching? The IEA will be launching a set of trainings in topics that are highly relevant for educators and practitioners, including R software, GIS, pedagogical practices, Python and ML, and more!
The IEA will also continue to hold its annual competition for Ph.D. students. Interested students should submit their completed papers to the IEA by email by September 23. Papers co-authored with faculty are not eligible for the student paper competition but are welcome in the regular conference sessions. Three to four submitted papers will be chosen as finalists and be presented by the students in one of the sessions on October 23rd, so please plan on attending if you submit your paper to the competition. Submissions should be sent to illinoisea@gmail.com
The regular membership of $75 ($30 for students) includes access to all sessions and the keynote address (which will be on October 23). Membership fees are due with the submission of your abstract and can be made via PayPal at the IEA website by entering your name and affiliation at the bottom of the webpage and clicking the ''Donate'' button after selecting Regular or Student membership. If you must pay by check, please contact Jin Man Lee, Ph.D. for instructions. If you have any questions, please contact Tamkeen Khan, Ph.D. (President) or Oguzhan Batmaz, Ph.D. (President-Elect).