February 2011 (Volume 8 Number 1)
Apologies for the long “silence” since the last newsletters. We (i.e., the Managing Board) have been busy, also on the ETSG’s behalf! In fact, the annual ETSG Conference has been growing a lot (i.e., almost 400 people in Rome and Lausanne in 2009 and 2010, respectively).
UCL and LICOS Prize
The competition for the winner of the UCL prize was intense both in Rome (2009) and Lausanne (2010)! In the end, the prize of 1000€, donated by the Chair Jacquemin of the Université Catholique de Louvain (Belgium), was awarded to Emanuel Ornelas, Facundo Albornoz, Héctor F. Calvo Pardo and Gregory Corcos for their paper on “Sequential exporting” at ETSG2009 and to Ben Li for his paper “Firm heterogeneity, technology transfer, and incompatibility: on the choice of production regime across borders” at ETSG2010. Our congratulations to Ben, Emanuel, Facundo, Héctor and Gregory on their success.
WTO Prize
The first WTO Essay Award for Young Economists has been announced at the ETSG 2009 in Rome. Patrick Low, WTO Chief Economist, conferred the prize of 5000CHF to Ralph Ossa for his paper on “A new trade theory of GATT/WTO negotiations”. The selection panel, comprised of Jagdish Bhagwati (Columbia University), Robert Staiger (Stanford University), Alberto Trejos (INCAE Business School) and Patrick Low, further decided to extend special mention to the runner up in the context, Mostafa Beshkar for his paper on “Trade Skirmishes and Safeguards: A Theory of the WTO Dispute Settlement Process.” Our congratulations to Ralph and Mostafa on their success.
The Second WTO Essay Award for Young Economists was awarded at the WTO, which hosted the first plenary session of the ETSG2010 Conference, which took place in Lausanne. The same selection panel as in the previous year gave the award to two papers on an equal basis. Dave Donaldson with his paper “Railroads of the Raj: Estimating the impact of transportation infrastructure” and Olena Ivus with her paper “Do stronger patent rights raise high-tech exports to the developing world?” shared the prize of 5000CHF. Our congratulations to David and Olena on their success.
CONFERENCE NEWS
ETSG 2009 Rome
The conference in Rome was another great success, which raised once more the number of people attending the conference: just 5 short of 400! We are extremely grateful to the local organisers, Luca De Benedictis, Beniamino Quintieri, Lucia Tajoli and all their colleagues for their efforts in making the conference run so smoothly. The conference team did a superb job and we are grateful to the University of Tor Vergata and to the local sponsors for their support.
ETSG 2010 Lausanne
Also last year’s conference in Lausanne (Switzerland) was a great success. And once more, this would not have been possible without the effort of the local organizers: Marius Brülhart and Jacqueline Montrone. Thanks to Marius and Jacqueline for their work in making sure that everything run smoothly – they also assured that the sun would shine for the entire duration of the conference!
ETSG 2011 and beyond
We would like to thank all the people that expressed an interest in hosting a future ETSG conference. ETSG 2011 will take place in Copenhagen from Thursday September 8 until Saturday September 20, 2001. And we are happy to confirm that ETSG2012 will take place in Leuven (Belgium). The Scientific Committee met in Lausanne to discuss future locations and plans will be announced as soon as they will be finalized. In case you are interested, we invite you to contact us to discuss the possibility of holding the conference. Our basic requirements are that the host institution be able to:
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provide at least six rooms for parallel sessions
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provide one large room for plenary sessions (capacity of >300)
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each room must be equipped with an overhead projector, a PC, and a data projector
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provide catering for coffee breaks and lunches
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provide drinks and snacks for a reception on (at least) one evening
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coordinate accommodations for participants (generally working with the local tourist board or convention agency)
If you are interested in hosting the conference please contact Ian Wooton in the first instance.
WEB NEWS
After the technical problems that marred abstract submissions last year, we are happy to announce that we switched to a new server. We also “refreshed” our website, which now includes a page with the list of the winners of the awards presented at the various ETSG Conferences. Instead, we decided to eliminate the working papers page since our virtual programme is already working as a large collection of studies.