Newsletter edited by Sara de la Rica, ESPE Secretary,
University of the Basque Country, Spain

ESPE-Office Professor Sara de la Rica, Department of Fundamentals of Economic Analysis II,
University of the Basque Country, Avda. Lehendakari Aguirre, 84,
48015 Bilbao, Spain. Telephone: + 34-946013783 Fax: + 34-946017123
E-mail: sara.delarica@ehu.es

It was a great honour to be elected President of ESPE for 2008 and preside over its 22nd annual conference. I have been involved in ESPE for many years, having presented papers at numerous meetings, served on the council, and currently serve as an Editor of its journal, the Journal of Population Economics.

ESPE has grown and developed into an important scholarly society over the past 22 years. I am confident that it will continue to grow in importance and influence. This is, of course, a result of the effort of past presidents and members of the council. In my time as president, I have been working very successfully with the current secretary, Sara de la Rica, and the new treasurer, Thomas Bauer. Both are examples of people who have put an incredible amount of personal time and energy into the society, and who are to be credited, together with many others, for the success of this operation. Every society depends on individuals who take on tasks, and ESPE has been particularly lucky in that respect. I am confident that this will continue to be the case in the future.

The Annual Conference of the European Society for Population Economics (ESPE) was held at the University College London on 19-22 June, 2008. The conference was a great success and showed the depth and variety of work that is going on in Population Economics. There were 292 participants to the Conference, and 260 delegates presented their work (230 oral presenters 30 posters). It was the largest ESPE conference so far. The conference attracted representatives from around 30 different countries, covering Europe, North America, and Australia/New Zealand. This was also the first time that ESPE had poster sessions, and this seemed to have been well received by participants.

The conference was spread over 62 sessions, covering topics concerning demographic processes (e.g. marriage, fertility, migration, and mortality) and their economic and political implications, and a variety of related disciplines such as household economics, labour economics, public economics, and health economics (see conference programme for details).

The keynote speakers and the presidential address provided the perfect frame to all the sessions, giving notable examples of cutting edge research in the main topics covered by the conference. The first keynote speaker Prof Daron Acemoglu from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, presented his latest research on the relationship between "Population and social conflict". He briefly sketched a theoretical model on the consequences an increase of population can have on social conflict and consequently on economic growth. He then presented convincing empirical evidence to support the theoretical predictions. In the presence of limited resources and limited technological progress, population increase is shown to be a main determinant of civil wars.

On the second day, keynote speaker, Prof Pierre-Andre Chiappori from Columbia University, presented an overview of the theoretical literature and latest advancements in the theory of "Matching Models of the Marriage Markets: Endogenous Power Within the Household". His talk gave important insights not only of the marriage market but also of fertility decisions providing important identification sources to empirical investigations of household economics.

In my presidential address, I focused on the economic impact of migration on receiving countries and how this relates to the political decision process. Voters’ perceptions and attitudes towards immigrants were shown to be driven mainly by emotional factors and to be less related to the economic benefits migrants represent.

The social events - the welcome reception in the South Cloisters, in the heart of University College London, the Conference Dinner at the Institute of Directors and the boat tour on the river Thames - greatly contributed to bringing researchers and delegates together in a relaxed and informal environment. Many delegates expressed their enthusiasm for the quality of the academic programme as well as the excellent organization and social events.

The success of the ESPE2008 meeting depended crucially on the enthusiastic activities of two committees. President-elect Jan van Ours chaired the Program Committee, consisting of 30 members, which put together the 61 sessions and the 2 poster sessions. I chaired the Local Organizing Committee, and I could count on the great support of the Administrative Staff, and of the graduate and undergraduate students of the UCL Department of Economics as well as of the whole CReAM staff. Without the support of the members of the local organising committee, Francesco Fasani, Tommaso Frattini, Josep Mestres, Michael Rauber, Claudia Trentini, Anne Usher and Snjezana Voloscuk, ESPE2008 would not have been the success it was. Not least, the success of a conference depends on the participants, and I personally would like to thank each and every participant in the 22nd Annual Conference of the European Society for Population Economics.

We are now looking forward to the 23rd ESPE Annual Meeting, to be held in Seville, 10-13th June 2009. Tim Hatton will serve as the program chair and Alfredo Ariza and Ignacio García will serve as local organizers. The keynote lectures will be delivered by Bruno Frey (University of Zurich, Switzerland) and Barbara Petrongolo (London School of Economics, UK). The presidential address will be given by my successor Jan van Ours (Univer-sity of Tilburg, The Netherlands).

The Twenty-Second General Assembly of the European Society for Population Eco-nomics 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 As-sembly. 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 stu-dents: 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 situa-tion. 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 confer-ence will be held at Meliá Hotel, at the city center. Tim Hatton (Australian National Univer-sity) 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 dur-ing the autumm of 2007. More than 181 ballots were received. Tim Hatton was elected Presi-dent-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 Web-page at www.espe.org.

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

The ESPE newsletter provides information on the society’s activities, on past, present and future events within or outside the Society’s framework. All members are kindly invited to use the ESPE Newsletter to make announcements of events in the field of population economics. Please send all contributions to the Secretary.

The Twenty Third Annual Conference will take place on June 11-13, 2009, at Hotel Meliá Sevilla, Seville, Spain. The aim of the Conference is to facilitate the exchange of research ideas and results across a range of fields, including the economics of the household, labour economics, public economics, demography, and health economics. Examples of research to-pics are: human capital investment, gender issues, intrahousehold distribution, aging and social security, taxation, population and economic growth, domestic and international migration, inco-me distribution and redistribution within and between generations, technological change and the environment.

Tim Hatton (Australian National University, Australia) will serve as the program chair and Alfredo Ariza and José Ignacio García (University Pablo de Olavide, Spain) as the local organizers. The keynote speakers at ESPE2009 will be Bruno Frey (University of Zurich, Switzerland) and Barbara Petrongolo (London School of Economics, UK). The presidential address will be given by Jan van Ours (University of Tilburg, The Netherlands).

The conference will provide the opportunity to present papers. Papers and abstracts should be submitted electronically using the on-line submission form that we will link at the conference web-page, www.upo.es/econ/espe2009. ESPE2009 will for the first time also have poster sessions.

Submissions for presentation should include an abstract and, when possible, the paper itself in pdf format (one single file, including tables and figures). Preference will be given to submissions that include a completed paper. Submissions for posters should include an abstract and if possible a paper. Please indicate on the electronic submission form whether you wish to present a paper or a poster.

The submission deadline is February 1, 2009. Acceptance decisions will be communicated in March. We particularly encourage graduate students to apply. Waivers of the conference registra-tion fee will be provided for 10 graduate students. It is necessary that students apply for the waiver in the on-line submission and that his/her supervisor confirms the student status. ESPE wants actively to increase participation from East European countries. Presenters from these countries who are within ten years of having completed their PhD can apply for a 50% reduction in the registration fee. Information on conference location, registration, and hotel reservations will be available at the conference web page, www.upo.es/econ/espe2009.

Elections in 2008 will take place in January 2009, in particular, from January 19 to January 31. The reason for this is that ESPE has a proposal for new statutes that must be aproved by at least 2/3 of ESPE members. We will carry out the on-line votations to (i) elect the new members of the Executive Committee and Council, and (ii) vote for the proposal of new stat-utes.

Professor of Labor Economics, Department of Economics, University of Linz, Austria and Research Professor at Institute for Advanced Studies, Vienna
www.econ.jku.at/winter
Born 1961, Austrian citizen, Studies in Mathematics, Business and Economics, PhD (1991) and Ha-bilitation (1996) in Economics, University of Linz.
Visiting positions or teaching positions: University of California, Berkeley 1995-96, University of Graz 1998, University of Zurich 1999, 2001, 2003, 2005, Université de Paris II 2000, University of Innsbruck 2001, University of Vienna, 2003.

Further affiliations:
Research Fellow with the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR) London, since 1992.
Research Fellow with the Institute for the Future of Labor (IZA), Bonn, since 1999.
Consultant for the World Bank in program evaluation, 1998-2000, 2004. Project coordinator for Austrian SHARE program 2000-.

Expertise and recent research:
Labour economics in general, evaluation of economic and social policy, wage determination, gender discrimination, migration, retirement, unemployment, education, unemployment benefit systems, aging.

Recent publications:
Unequal Assignment and Unequal Promotion in Job Ladders, Journal of Labor Economics, January 1997; 15(1); pp. 43-71. (with Josef Zweimüller)
Lower and Upper Bounds of Returns to Schooling, An Exercise in IV Estimation with Different In-struments, European Economic Review, April 1999; 43(4-6); pp. 889-901. (with A. Ichino)
Firm-Size Wage Differentials in Switzerland: Evidence from Job-Changers, American Economic Review Papers and Proceedings, May 1999; 89(2), pp. 89-93. (with Josef Zweimüller)
A Simple Mechanism for the Efficient Private Provision of Public Goods - Experimental Evidence, American Economic Review, March 2000 90(1); pp. 247-264. (with J. Falkinger, E. Fehr, and S. Gächter)
Firm Size, Earnings and Displacement Risk, Economic Inquiry, July 2001 39(3), pp. 474-86
Identifying the Effect of Unemployment on Crime, Journal of Law and Economics 2001, 44(1); pp. 259-83. (with Stephen Raphael), reprinted in: Ehrlich, Isaac and Zhiqiang Liu (eds.) The Economics of Crime, The International Library of Critical Writings in Economics, Edward Elgar, 2005
Benefit Duration and Unemployment Entry: Quasi-Experimental Evidence for Austria, European Economic Review, 2003, 47, pp. 259-273
The long-run Educational Cost of World War 2, Journal of Labor Economics, 2004, 22/1, 57-88. (with Andrea Ichino)
Earnings Expectations of European Students, Journal of Human Resources 39/4, 2004, 1116-1142. (with G. Brunello and C. Lucifora)
Reducing Start-up Costs for new firms: the double dividend on the labor market (with Uwe Dulleck and Paul Frijters), Scandinavian Journal of Economics, 2006
The impact of competition and equal treatment laws on the gender wage gap, Economic Policy, 2007, (with Doris Weichselbaumer).

One council members need to be renewed. E-voting system will be provided to all members for whom we have a valid e-mail address. Three candidates must be proposed. Given that 2008 ESPE elections will take in January 2009 so as vote also for the change in Statutes at the same time, candidates for the Council are not yet decided. As soon as the election period approaches, the candidates will be listed below together with their biographical details.

The 21th annual Conference will take place on September 10-12, 2009, at the Reval Hotel Olümpia conference Centre, Tallinn, Estonia. Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, University of Tartu, the Tallinn School of Economics and Business Administration, Tallinn University of Technology and the Bank of Estonia.

The aim of the conference is to facilitate the exchange of ideas and research results in the field of Labour Economics. You are invited to submit papers for this conference according to the list of themes below. A scientific committee will evaluate all submitted papers.

Instructions paper submission
The electronic submission form is now open for your paper contribution and will close after the deadline of March 1, 2009 at 23:59 Central European time. The link below will lead you automatically through the electronic process of the paper submission. To each paper an ab-stract must be added. Both your abstract and complete paper can be submitted during the electronic submission process. The abstracts of the accepted papers will be published in a Book of Abstracts. Please complete all the required fields and enclose your complete paper as one pdf file (no tables, figures, etc. as separate files).

EALE will not consider more than two papers by an individual, either as submitting author or co-author. You will receive a confirmation e-mail message after your registration has been completed.

Acceptance decisions will be communicated by the end of April, 2009. The registration site will be open from May 1, 2009. The accepted papers will be made available for downloading from the conference site. Your paper revisions can be uploaded anytime and should be sent to the EALE secretariat before 15 August 2009.

Special conference issue Labour Economics
Papers accepted for presentation can be submitted for publication in the annual Conference Volume of the journal Labour Economics. Further information concerning submission rules and deadline regarding this procedure of a ‘Special Issue submission’, will be provided in the letter of acceptance.

EALE Young Economist Award
The EALE grants an award of € 300 for an outstanding paper selected by a Scientific Com-mittee, to researchers who have completed their Ph.D. fewer than 3 years before the end of September 2009. Only single-authored papers are eligible for the award. If you meet the eli-gibility conditions and wish to be considered for the award, please tick the corresponding box on the submission form.

For questions, please contact us at eale@roa.unimaas.nl.