The Twenty-Second General Assembly of the European Society for Population Economics was held on Saturday, June 21, 2008 at the University College London. Nearly 350 participants attended the ESPE meeting. The President, Christian Dustmann, chaired the Assembly. He thanked all those involved in making the UCL meeting such a success, with special thanks going out to all the local committee for their work on the local organising committee, as well as to scientific program chairman Jan van Ours and all the members of the scientific program committee.

This year’s meeting was very successful, due both to the warmly received plenary lectures given by Daren Acemoglou (MIT) and Pierre-André Chiappori (Columbia) and to the high quality of the papers contributed. 559 papers were submitted, 325 of which were accepted. In addition and for the first time, there were 30 posters presented. There were 10 fee waivers given (according to their papers grading by the scientific committee) to the following students: Francesco Fasani (UK), Tomasso Frattini (UK), Laura Fumagalli (UK), Rita Ginja (UK), Christine Ho (UK), Katrine Loken (Norway), Monica Yanez (US), Maria Nieves Valdés (Spain), Karen van del Wiel (Netherlands), Sisi Zhang (US).

There is a proposal to convert ESPE in a registered non-profit organization. Actually ESPE is a non-registered association. Registering ESPE will benefit the Society from the fiscal and operative viewpoint. The society needs to change ESPE statutes to adequate to the new situation. The new statutes will be

available from the ESPE website and all ESPE members will be required to vote for them before registering the society. The secretary will inform all ESPE members of the required steps.

The next ESPE Annual Conference will be held on June 10-13, 2009 at Seville. The conference will be held at Meliá Hotel, at the city center. Tim Hatton (Australian National University) will serve as the program chair, Ignacio García Pérez, from Universidad Pablo de Olavide, will chair the Local Committee. The Call for Papers will announce the electronic address to which abstracts and papers must be sent. Preference will be given to submissions that include a completed paper. The submission deadline is February 1, 2009.

The secretary of the Society, Sara de la Rica, reported on the results of the elections held during the autumm of 2007. More than 181 ballots were received. Tim Hatton was elected President-elect for 2009. Sara welcomed Alison Booth, Daniela Del Boca, Rudolf Winter-Ebmer and Arthur Van Soest as the elected members of the Council. Their positions are effective as of January 2008. The accounts of the Society, kept by the Thomas Bauer, have been audited by René Böheim (University of Linz) and Mark Taylor (University of Essex). Their positive report has been approved by the Assembly. Further information about the Society is to be found on its Webpage at www.espe.org.

Christian Dustmann, ESPE President.
Sara de la Rica, ESPE secretary.