European Trade Study Group

November 2007 (Volume 6 Number 2)

LICOS Prize

The second winner of the LICOS prize was announced at ETSG 2007 in Athens. The winner was Ragnhild Balsvik for her paper "Is Mobility of Labour a Channel for Spillovers from Multinationals to Local Domestic Firms?" 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 Trade, Institutions and Performance (submitted by the deadline) were considered for the prize. Our congratulations to Ragnhild on her success.

Late withdrawals from the conference

We continue to encounter problems with presenters not turning up at the conference, sometimes giving us a little or no notice of the changes in their plans. We understand that there can be last minute professional or personal emergencies that necessitate withdrawing from the conference at the last minute. However, sometimes registered participants simply do not turn up or withdraw without explanation very close to the conference. In such cases, we are unable to reschedule the programme, denying participants on the waiting list of the opportunity to present their work. Rest assured that we are keeping track of such occurrences! As competition for presentation slots seems to be becoming increasingly intense, in future we may have to take into account these "no shows" in deciding upon which papers to accept.

CONFERENCE NEWS

ETSG 2007 Athens

This year's conference in Athens was a great success. We are extremely grateful to the local organisers, Panos Hatzipanayotou and Konstantine Gatsios for their efforts in making the the conference run so smoothly. The conference team did a superb job and we are grateful to the Athens University of Economics and Business and to the local sponsors for their support.

ETSG 2008 Warsaw

Next year's conference will be held in Warsaw from the afternoon of Thursday, 11 September to the evening of Saturday, 13 September. This will be organised jointly by the University of Warsaw and the Warsaw School of Economics. A Call for Papers will be made early in 2008 and details will be posted soon on the ETSG website. We hope that this eastern location will attract more scholars from the geographical area. Please encourage your colleagues and correspondents to participate.

ETSG 2009 and beyond

Rome has now been confirmed as the host of ETSG in 2009 and we hope that Lausanne will be able to host the conference in 2010. The Scientific Committee met in Athens to discuss future locations. Several participants indicated that they might be willing and able to host ETSG in future years. 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:

provide at least six rooms for parallel sessions
provide one large room for plenary sessions (capacity of >300)
each room must be equipped with an overhead projector, a PC, and a data projector
provide catering for coffee breaks and lunches
provide drinks and snacks for a reception on (at least) one evening
coordinate accommodations for participants (generally working with the local tourist board or convention agency)