February 2007 (Volume 6 Number 1)
Our apologies for the gap between Newsletters. It is our intention to publish at least two Newsletter each year, but we have not been able to honour this commitment recently. We promise to do better in the future!
Riccardo Faini 1951-2007
We were very saddened by the news that Riccardo Faini passed away very unexpectedly on 20 January 2007.
Riccardo was Professor of Political Economy at the University of Rome Tor Vergata. He was previously Director General at the Italian Treasury, on leave from the University of Brescia. Between 1998 and 2001, he held the post of Executive Director at the International Monetary Fund. He was Research Fellow and Programme Director in International Trade at CEPR. He also taught at the University of Essex, at the University of Venezia and at the Bologna Center of the Johns Hopkins University. Between 1985 and 1988, he worked in the Research Department at the World Bank.
Riccardo was a great friend to many of us in the international trade community and was an enthusiastic supporter of ETSG. At ETSG 2006 in Vienna, Riccardo presented his paper on "Export Performance and Corporate Ownership" in a plenary session. He will be greatly missed.
LICOS Prize
A new prize for the Best Paper on Emerging Economies was inaugurated at ETSG 2006. The prize was donated by the research center LICOS, of the Catholic University of Leuven, and amounted to 1000€. All papers focusing on issues regarding transition economies in Eastern Europe or China were considered for the prize. At a special session of the conference, the prize was awarded to Gianfranco De Simone for his paper, "Trade in Parts and Components and Central Eastern European Countries’ Industrial Geography." Our congratulations to Gianfranco for his success.
We are very pleased to announce that there will be another LICOS Prize awarded at ETSG 2007 in Athens. All papers within the area of Trade, Institutions and Economic Performance (and submitted before the deadline of 01 September 2007) will be eligible for the prize of 1000€. The winning paper and its author(s) will be announced at a special session of the conference.
CONFERENCE NEWS
ETSG 2006 Vienna
This was our largest conference yet and was a great success, in no small part due to the superb organisation by Julia Wörz, Veronika Janyrova, Michael Landesmann, Neil Foster and Peter Rosner. We would like to give them our thanks once again for all of their efforts.
ETSG 2007 Athens
Preparations are well in hand for the next conference. The dates of the conference had to be moved a week from those announced in Vienna. This was because of the scheduling conflict with a conference for 15000 cardiologists, resulting in a shortage of available hotel rooms. The conference will now be held from the afternoon of Thursday, 13 September to the evening of Saturday, 15 September. A Call for Papers has just been published with a deadline of 20 April 2007 for the submission of abstracts. We aim for a quick turnaround, with successful authors being notified by 04 May 2007. As has now become established practice, all participants of ETSG (regardless of whether they are presenting papers) must make a separate registration. The deadline for this is 27 July 2007. If you miss this deadline, your paper will be withdrawn from the conference. Further details are available on the conference webpage.
ETSG 2008 and beyond
ETSG will meet in Warsaw in 2008, while we hope to be able confirm in the near future agreements on Rome for 2009 and Lausanne for 2010. If you and your institution are interested in hosting a meeting of ETSG in 2011, please contact us. We will present any suggestions to the Scientific Committee when it next meets in Athens in September.
APTS Shanghai 2007
Our sister conference, the Asia Pacific Trade Seminars (APTS) holds its third meeting in Shanghai on 07-08 July at Shanghai University of Finance and Economics.
The conference is open to researchers and graduate students worldwide who work on theoretical and empirical aspects of international trade and investment. Submissions (in PDF format) of titles and abstracts of papers should be made to apts@econ.hit-u.ac.jp by 31 March 2007. Successful authors will be notified by 30 April with the deadline for submission of the full papers by 23 June 2007.
Further information can be obtained from their website.