The Twentieth General Assembly of the European Society for Population Economics was held on Saturday, June 24, 2006 in Verona, at the Gran Guardia Palace. More than 100 members attended the meeting. The President, Patricia Apps, led the Assembly. She thanked those involved with making the Verona meeting a success, especially the local organiser committee led by Federico Peralli as well as the scientific program chairman, Barry Chiswick, who was assisted by Heather Antecol, Holger Bonin, Amelie Constant, Christian Dustmann, Sherrie Kossoudji, Jin Man LEE, Mariola Pytlikova, Paul Miller, Karen Mumford, Dan-Olof Rooth and Shoshana Grossbard.

This years’ meeting was very successful, which can be seen by the highly acclaimed plenary lectures of Steve Machin and Thomas Lemieux, but also by a very high quality of the contributed papers. 533 papers were submitted, 211 of them were accepted. Attendance at the meeting reached close to 230 participants.

The next conference of ESPE will be held in Chicago, June 15-17, 2007 at the University of Illinois. Christian Dustmann (University City College, London) will serve as the program chair, Barry Chiswick, from the University of Illinois at Chicago will be the President of the Local Committee. The Call for Papers will announce the precise electronic address where abstracts and papers must be sent to. Preference will be given to submissions that include a complete paper, other things equal. The submission deadline is February 1, 2007.

The secretary of the Society, Sara de la Rica, reported on the results of the elections that took place over the autumm of 2005. In total, more than 230 ballots were received. Barry Chiswick was elected President for 2006. Sara thanked the outgoing Council Member Stephen Jenkins for his service to the Society. She welcomed Jan Van Ours as the new member of the Council. The positions are effective from January 2006. Further information about the Society is to be found on the Web-page of the Society (www.espe.org). The books of the Society (kept by the Treasurer Regina Riphahn) have been audited by René Böheim (University of Linz) and Mark Taylor (University of Essex), their positive report has been approved by the Assembly.

Finally, ESPE gave 10 fee waivers to the following PhD Students: Astrid Wurth, Anna Batyra, Berndhard Ganglmair, Sara Borelli, Josep Mestres, Laura Crespo, Martin Halla, Patrizio Piraino, Xiaoyang Li and Yergou, S. Besides, 50% waivers were given to the following participants from Eastern Europe: Jiri Vecernik, Ioana Albu, Ivan Kitov and Paligorova Teodora.

Patricia Apps, ESPE President.
Sara de la Rica, ESPE secretary.