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

ESPE-Office Professor Sara de la Rica, DFAEII, 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 serve as the President of ESPE and preside over its 23rd annual conference in Seville, June 2009, hosted by the University Pablo de Olavide.

The conference attracted about 300 participants from around 30 different countries, covering Europe, North America and Australia. The conference was a great success. The programme contained a fine collection of excellent research papers which were spread over almost 70 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. In addition to paper presentations there was also a poster session with 30 posters, which was well received by the participants.

Bruno Frey (University of Zurich) presented the first keynote lecture on the economics of happiness covering a wide range of topics that may effect individual happiness such as income and income distribution, growth, child birth, marriage and divorce Barbara Petrongolo (London School of Economics) gave the second keynote lecture on structural transformation and gender gaps. In my presidential address "Will you still need me when I'm 64?", I focused on the relationship between age and productivity, which for various reasons is a policy concern. I concluded that the productivity of older workers indeed decreases with their age. Nevertheless, this decline is limited.

The social events were superb. There was a cocktail at Reales Alcazares, build almost 1100 years ago serving as as residence for all the kings and governors who have been in Seville, from the Maghreb Empire to the Bourbon Dynasty (to which the kings of Spain belong). The Alcazar is considered to be the oldest Royal Palace in Europe. The conference dinner was in Abades Triana, a restaurant whose special large glass room results in a spectacular window to the city including the Guadalquivir River. These social events greatly contributed to bringing researchers and delegates together in a relaxed and informal environment.

As always the success of the annual meeting depended crucially on the enthusiastic activities of two committees. First and foremost the local organizing committee consisting of members of the Economics Department of the University Pablo de Olavide who have offered all the help we needed. We are grateful to the University and all our sponsors for their support. President-elect Tim Hatton chaired the Program Committee, consisting of 27 members, which put together the all the paper and poster sessions. We thank Tim and the members of the Programme Committee for their efforts in putting together the outstanding scientific programme. Last but not least I would like to thank the secretary of the society, Sara de la Rica, and the treasurer, Thomas Bauer. Both are examples of people who have put an incredible amount of personal time and energy into the society.

We are now looking forward to the 24th ESPE Annual Meeting, to be held in Essen, 10-12th June 2010. Rudolf Winter-Ebmer will serve as the program chair and Christoph Schmidt and Tomas Bauer will serve as local organizers. The presidential address will be given by my successor Tim Hatton (Australian National University, Canberra).Essen will be cultural capital of Europe in 2010. I'm sure the forthcoming ESPE conference will be great, also because the local organizers are setting up an infrastructure that will allow participants to combine scientific pleasures with the fun of watching life football games of the FIFA World Cup in South Africa.

The Twenty-Third General Assembly of the European Society for Population Economics was held on Saturday, June 20, 2009 at the Hotel Meliá, Seville. The President, Jan van Ours, chaired the Assembly. He thanked all those involved in making the Seville 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 Tim Hatton 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 Bruno Frey (University of Zurich) and Barbara Petrongolo (London School of Economics) and to the high quality of the papers contributed. 597 papers were submitted, 356 of which were accepted. In addition and for the second 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: Laura Fumagalli (University of Essex), Tarjei Havnes (ESOP and University of Oslo), Jami Husain (Keele University), Mario Mechtel (University of Tuebingen), Annemarie Nelen (Maastricht University), Peter Nilsson (Uppsala University), Stephan Russek (University of Passau), Serena Trucchi (University of Turín), Francesca Zantomio (University of Essex) and Martina Zweimüller (University of Linz).

Regarding the proposal to convert ESPE in a registered non-profit organization, the new statutes have been approved by a wide majority of the ESPE members. At present, we must sign a Foundation Protocol to register ESPE as an association. Thomas Bauer is in charge of the immediate steps to follow.

The next ESPE Annual Conference will be held on June 10-12th at Essen (Germany). Essen will be the European Culture Capital in 2010. The conference will be held at the Messe Essen Conference Centre. Rudolf Winter-Ebmer (University of Linz, Austria) will serve as the program chair, Christoph Schmidt, President of the RWI Essen, 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 2008. 206 ballots were received. Rudolf Winter-Ebmer was elected President-elect for 2010. Sara welcomed Erik Plug as the new elected member of the Council. Their positions are effective as of January 2009. 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.

Ian van Ours, 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 Fourth Annual Conference of the ESPE will take place on June 9-12, 2010, at Congress Center South Essen, Germany. Essen will be Cultural Capital of Europe 2010. 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 topics are: human capital investment, gender issues, intrahousehold distribution, aging and social security, taxation, population and economic growth, domestic and international migration, income distribution and redistribution within and between generations, technological change and the environment.

Rudolf Winter-Ebmer (University of Linz, Austria) will serve as the program chair and Christoph M. Schmidt and Thomas K. Bauer as the local organizers. The keynote speakers at ESPE2010 will be Alan Manning (London School of Economics) and Maristella Botticini (Torino and Boston University). The presidential address will be given by Tim Hatton (Australian National University and University of Essex).

The conference will provide the opportunity to present papers. Papers and abstracts should be submitted electronically using the online submission form. ESPE2010 will 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, 2010. Acceptance decisions will be communicated until March 27, 2010. We particularly encourage graduate students to apply. Waivers of the conference registration fee will be provided for 15 graduate students. It is necessary that students apply for the waiver in the online submission and that his/her supervisor confirms the student status. Information on conference location, paper submission, registration, and hotel reservations will be available at the conference web page, www.especonferences.org. .

Elections in 2009 take place in November. We will carry out the online votations to elect the new members of the Executive Committee and Council.

Sara de la Rica is a Full Professor of Economics at the University of the Basque Country (Spain). Her research interest is focused on applied microeconometrics to the Labour Market. Her current research is focused on two main issues: Gender Economics and Immigration. Her work has been published in Journal of Human Resources, Industrial and Labor Relations Review, Economica, Journal of Population Economics, Contributions to Economic Analysis from Berkeley Electronic Press Journals, among others.

Sara is the Director of a Research Grant at FEDEA (Madrid) since 2007, Associate Fellow at IZA since 2005 and Associate Fellow at CReAM since 2008.

Personal website: www.saradelarica.com

Four council members need to be renewed. E-voting system will be provided to all members for whom we have a valid e-mail address. Seven candidates are proposed and their biographical details are listed alphabetically below.

1. James Albrecht

Jim Albrecht is Professor of Economics at Georgetown University. He does both theoretical and empirical research, primarily in labor economics. His theoretical work focuses on unemployment and search; his empirical work deals mostly with gender issues. His publications include papers in the JPE, the QJE, the Review of Economic Studies, and the Journal of Labor Economics, and he is the editor of the Revista de Analisis Economico, a co-editor of the Journal of Population Economics, and an associate editor of the European Economic Review.

2. Michele Belot

Michele Belot's research covers a broad range of topics in labour and population economics, and mainly consists of empirical work, sometimes exploiting original field and experimental data sets.
Her main research interest is in the understanding of the role of social ties, more precisely how they are formed and how they affect economic decisions. First, she has been working on the processes of relationship formation (friendships, dating and marriage). The objective has been to shed light on the mechanisms driving homogamy (similarity in spouses’ traits) on the one hand, and explain striking ethnic-specific gender asymmetries in interracial marriage on the other hand. Second, she has been interested in studying various determinants of friendship-based favouritism or discriminatory behaviour. In particular, she has conducted a framed field experiment among school children to shed light on the emergence of favouritism practices in society. Third, she has been studying the implications of social and cultural ties for migration decisions and shown that these play a much larger role than economic determinants.
A second different research theme she has been actively working in over the last few years relates to the evaluation of a number of education policies and reforms in schools, such as the re-introduction of grade retention and the change in the contents of school lunches, using difference-in-differences empirical designs.

3. Sonia Bhalotra

Sonia Bhalotra is Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Bristol in the UK. She obtained an MPhil and PhD from Oxford and a BSc from Delhi.
Sonia has made significant contributions to research on child labour, labour markets under economic transition, health, fertility, education, the allocation of resources within the household, the excess vulnerability of women and girls, and population sex ratios. Many of her research papers use large household survey data combined with macroeconomic data to analyse family behaviour in response to economic shocks and policies. She has used data from Asia, Africa and Latin America.
In particular, her research contributes to identifying the causal effects of income on health, cyclicality in public spending, structural modelling of the dynamics of mortality, birth spacing and fertility within families, the importance of early life conditions for later life outcomes, the intergenerational persistence of health, the evolution of human height, informal insurance and added worker effects across developing countries, the influence of gender in politics, the political economy of health provision, sex-selective abortion, fertility and son preference, the timing of fertility in relation to shocks, inequalities in health and education by gender, ethnic and religious group, the relationship between wealth, income and child labour, the dynamics of employment, wages and productivity in developing countries undergoing economic transition, migration and unemployment in countries without unemployment insurance, malnutrition and food subsidies, and the design of public policy in developing countries.
A number of international organisations have invited her to contribute background research papers for their annual flagship reports and to give lectures or policy advice. These include UNESCO, WHO, the World Bank, ILO, UNICEF, UNU/WIDER and the Hewlett Foundation. She has considerable experience of communicating technical matter in plain English and of doing podcasts and media interviews.

4. Deborah Cobb-Clark

Deborah Cobb-Clark is a Professor of Economics in the Research School of Social Sciences, ANU and is a former co-editor of the Journal of Population Economics. She earned a PhD in economics from the University of Michigan (1990) and has held previous positions at the US Labor Department and Illinois State University. Professor Cobb-Clark is the founding director of The Social Policy Evaluation, Analysis and Research (SPEAR) Centre and has been Associate Director of the Research School of Social Sciences at the ANU. Her research agenda centres on the effect of social policy on labour market outcomes and she has published more than four dozen academic articles on immigration, sexual and racial harassment, health, old-age support, and youth outcomes in journals such as American Economic Review, Journal of Labor Economics, Journal of Human Resources, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, Industrial and Labor Relations Review, and Labour Economics.

5. Albrecht Glitz

Albrecht Glitz is currently Assistant Professor at Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona, where he joined after receiving his PhD from UCL in 2007. He is also research fellow at CReAM, the Centre of Research and Analysis of Migration. His research interests include applied econometrics and labour economics, in particular the economics of migration. He is currently working on issues related to the labour market impact of immigration, and job search networks and ethnic segregation in the workplace.

6. Michael A. Shields

Michael A. Shields is Professor of Economics in the Department of Economics at the University of Melbourne, Australia. He is an applied microeconomist working mainly on issues relating to health, labour markets and life satisfaction. Since 2003 he has been Vice-President of the Australian Health Economics Society and is an associate editor of the journal Health Economics. He has been a Research Fellow of the IZA since 1999 and holds an adjunct professor position at the Australian National University. He has published around 35 articles, including a recently co-authored review focusing on the relationship between income and happiness published in the JEL.

7. Susan Vroman

Susan Vroman does both theoretical and empirical research in labor economics. Her theoretical research focuses on the role of search frictions in explaining both unemployment and the distribution of wages. Her most recent publications in this area apply the theory to a active labor market policy in Sweden (Review of Economic Dynamics) and a developing country with an informal labor market (the Economic Journal). She has also worked on gender issues, e.g., gender wage gaps across the wage distribution, the effects of parental leave on wages. This work has come out in the Journal of Labor Economics, the Journal of Human Resources, and Labour Economics. The data for these projects are from Sweden and the Netherlands.
She is Professor of Economics at Georgetown University and a research fellow at IZA. Recently, she has been a visitor at the Tinbergen Institute in Amsterdam and at Stockholm University.

The European Association of Labour Economists (EALE) and the Society of Labor Economists (SOLE) are proud to announce their 3rd joint meeting. The event will take place during 17-19 June 2010 at University College London, which is based in the heart of London.

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.

Invited lectures:
Adam Smith lecture: John van Reenen
Albert Rees lecture: Rob Shimer
Presidential Address SOLE: Richard Blundell
Presidential Address EALE: Stephen Machin

Local organising committee:
Richard Blundell, Stephen Machin, Christian Dustmann, Jean-Marc Robin, Jeremy Lise, Sami Berlinski, Pedro Carneiro, Uta Schoenberg, Katie Canada, Nirusha Vigi, Emma Tominey, Brendon McConnell.

The electronic paper submission form is now open at www.eale.nl selecting ‘call for papers’ and will close after the deadline of January 31st, 2010 at 23:59 Central European time. SOLE members may submit their papers, by going to the JOLE manuscript submission page at
www.editorialmanager.com/jole/ and selecting "SOLE 2010" from the "article type" menu. Submissions will be closed on January 31, 2010.

You can either submit through SOLE or EALE but note that no more than one submission by the same author will be considered.

Acceptance decisions will be communicated by the 1st of March 2010. The conference registration site will be open from the 1st of March, 2010 as well. 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 May 1, 2010.

Special conference issue Labour Economics
Authors of an accepted paper for this conference will be invited shortly after the conference to submit their accepted and presented paper again for publication in the annual Conference Volume of the journal Labour Economics. This issue will be edited by David Jaeger.

EALE Young Economist Award
The EALE grants an award of Euro 500 for an outstanding paper selected by a Scientific Committee, to researchers who have completed their Ph.D. fewer than 3 years before the end of June 2010. Only single-authored papers are eligible for the award. If you meet the eligibility conditions and wish to be considered for the award, please tick the corresponding box on the EALE submission form.

For questions, please contact us at eale@maastrichtuniversity.nl.

Starting date: January 2010, or as soon as possible.

Duration of employment:
24-month position, with the possibility of extension. Shorter length is also negotiable.

Required:
-- PhD or MA degree (or equivalent experience)
-- experience with surveys or datasets from low-income and/or middle-income countries
-- substantial experience working with microdata
-- substantial experience producing or managing datasets
-- good command of programming in a major statistical package
-- proficiency in English (the working language in the LIS office)

Priority will be given to applicants with:
-- experience working with income, expenditure and/or consumption data
-- experience working with labor market data
-- experience working with data on assets/wealth and/or debt
-- knowledge of SAS

Candidates are encouraged to apply from multiple disciplines, including economics, sociology, political science, social policy, social statistics, demography and related fields. Successful candidates will be granted some time to carry out research using the LIS data.

Applicants should submit a cover letter and curriculum vitae.

By email:
Caroline de Tombeur at caroline@lisproject.org.

Or by mail:
Caroline de Tombeur
Luxembourg Income Study, asbl
17, rue des Pommiers
L-2343 Luxembourg

Please indicate required salary range in the cover letter.
Applications will be considered until the position is filled.
For more information about LIS, see our web site: www.lisproject.org.

The ACC project focuses on two major topics: human capital, skills and work performance; and beliefs and attitudes. Understanding age and cohort variation in productivity and values are paramount for ageing countries. Ageing and cohort change will alter values and belief structures, behaviors and social dynamics - all necessary components to develop and implement more targeted policies that relate to societal ageing and other sources of demographic change. It can help governments to anticipate changes in the skills and values caused by population ageing and cohort replacement. Unlike long-term projections of economic growth or energy use, demographic forecasts tend to have relatively low error margins, even for forecasts several decades ahead.

By assessing age and cohort variation in skills and beliefs, we can investigate whether later born birth cohorts have a higher productivity potential and can retire later without a decrease in work performance. We carry out population based projections of traits that change systematically along cohort lines and as a function of age. Our projections incorporate international migration flows, which affect the composition of skills and beliefs depending on the migrant’s characteristics in these dimensions. We also consider fertility differences and the degree of intergenerational transmission of the relevant traits. These projections allow us to better predict broad social and economic change that relate to ageing and other demographic shifts.

For more information, please consult http://www.iiasa.ac.at/Research/POP/ACC/index.html?sb=3.

A ‘Starting Grant’ from the European Research Council (ERC) awarded to Dr Vegard Skirbekk at IIASA funds the project.

Profile

Applicants should have:

• A master's degree in economics, statistics, sociology, demography, or another social science discipline with strong quantitative skills
• Interest in the research field of economic and social consequences of demographic change
• Ability to carry out projects independently whilst working as part of an international team
• Fluency in English (written and spoken)

• Identify and prepare data on variation in skills and productivity
• Carry out multi-state simulations
• Contribute to writing documentation and scientific publications
• Present the work at seminars and conferences around the world

The successful candidate will be offered a one-year, fixed-term contract with possibility for extension. The salary is competitive and commensurate with experience. It is exempt from taxation in Austria but subject to the principle of income aggregation. The appointment includes moving and settlement allowances.

IIASA offers both an exceptionally beautiful working environment as well as the intellectual excitement of a truly inter-disciplinary, international research organization.

Preference will be given to applicants who are nationals of IIASA member countries.

The Institute’s management and staff alike are committed to a working environment that promotes equality, diversity, and tolerance. The Institute encourages applications from all qualified candidates.

Applications

To apply, please send a cover letter, resume, two recent examples of research work, plus names of two work-related reference givers (including name and title, affiliation, e-mail address and telephone number) per e-mail (Word or PDF format) to:

Ms. Alia Harrison, Human Resources
International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA)
Schlossplatz 1, A-2361 Laxenburg, Austria
Fax: (+43) 2236/713-13
E-mail: harrison@iiasa.ac.at

Please quote the vacancy number: 19/2009 when applying.

Deadline for receipt of applications 31 January 2010.

For general information about our Institute and its research activities, please visit www.iiasa.ac.at

Maria Concetta (Etta) Chiuri 1969-2009

When a colleague dies so young we cannot be but terribly sad. But when this colleague is a wonderful and special person as was Etta, the loss becomes truly overwhelming. Etta was a serious scholar who was dedicated to applied research and had a strong tie to important current policy issues. Her research topics included, among others, housing market imperfections, illegal migration and household decision-making process.

After graduating from the University of Bari (Italy), Etta completed her Ph.D. at the University of York (UK) with a dissertation on collective models of household behaviour. After returning to Italy, she taught at the University of Bari, where she was a dedicated teacher and a key contributor to developing the Department of Economics there.

For many years, Etta collaborated in research activities and projects at CSEF (Naples) and CHILD (Turin) and more recently with the International Project on "Welfare Analysis of fiscal and social security reforms in Europe: dies the representation of family decision processes matter?" (Coordinator Francois Lainsney). In 2007 the Luxembourg Income Study awarded her the Aldy Hagenaars Memorial Award which is given for the best L.I.S. Working Paper written by an economics under the age of 40 ("Do the elerly reduce housing equity? An international Comparison").

We will miss Etta as a scholar who contributed much to the study of household economics, and as a friend

Daniela Del Boca
Tullio Jappelli