Welcome

Our wish for EEA-ESEM 2023 is to build bridges:

• across GENERATIONS - with senior scholars donating their time and experience to PhD students, Post-Doctoral Fellows, and junior faculty during the congress. 
•  across FIELDS - we want to hear economic theory research and we want to hear research in applied economics. 
•  between ACADEMIC ECONOMISTS & POLICY-MAKERS - with the firm belief that academia and policy-making generate positive externalities one for the other. 
•  across COUNTRIES - with EEA-ESEM embracing a larger and larger group of academic institutions and faculty members, especially in countries that are not much represented yet in the associations. To the colleagues in these countries we send a very warm welcome.

Dear congress participants,

I have opted for a more informal welcome message to send good vibes and make all of us contribute to a memorable congress in Barcelona.

"I have a dream".... which is my dream for 2023 Barcelona? We, the senior scholars, will lead by example and attend as many sessions as possible and give positive and constructive feedback to PhD students, Post-Docs, and junior colleagues.

"I have another dream".... which one? That everyone, starting with me in the first place, will come to Barcelona with a positive and cheerful attitude, respecting everyone else both professionally and personally. Let's smile all the time in Barcelona!!! Let's prove that the common opinion that economists are, on average, boring and sad people, is as false as saying that a Sicilian cannolo is not "sheer happiness concentrated in a tiny space"...

Jan Eeckout, EEA President in 2024, will open the congress with a special panel on Ukraine. Many thanks to Jan and the panel participants for opening the congress by bringing rigorous economic analysis on one of the most important and policy-relevant issues.

I invited Xavier Gabaix and Itzhak Gilboa to deliver the Marshall and Schumpeter lectures. Because they are true scholars. As simple as that.

Sule Alan and Francesco Decarolis, together with their Programme Committee, have built a fantastic scientific programme. The Chairs of the Standing Committees (Education, MinE, Research and WinE) have organized special sessions with a dedicated focus on helping PhD students and junior scholars. There will also be the opportunity of interacting with our colleagues and friends of the Econometric Society - our partner in the organization of the joint congress.

The academic community in Barcelona, and Spain in general, is impressive. Many of them will be active leaders and participants in the scientific and social events at the congress. Barcelona is... ok, it's Barcelona! The Barcelona School of Economics, with its Local Organizing Committee chaired by Bruno Guallar, has worked hard and generously to welcome us in the best way.

To conclude my informal welcome: do you remember when we wrote our undergraduate or Master or PhD dissertations and we list the people we want to thank? Whom we mention at the end of the acknowledgements because they are the most important? In the same spirit, I want to thank EEA Executive Vice-President, Antonio Cabrales, and EEA Executive Manager, Gemma Prunner-Thomas. They are the "towers" that silently and behind the scenes make sure that the EEA and all its many initiatives, including the congress, run smoothly and perfectly. So I have a (last) dream for Barcelona 2023: when you see Antonio and Gemma, please smile and thank them warmly.

I look forward to welcoming all of you in Barcelona in late August!!!

Maristella, 2023 EEA President (always smiling)

It is a pleasure to welcome all of you to the European Meeting of the Econometric Society, to the Barcelona School of Economics and to the city of Barcelona. I am very pleased to be holding the ESEM 2023 in person and in Barcelona. I owe many memorable moments to the students from Barcelona at the University of Minnesota, where I studied. I owe a lot to Andreu Mas-Colell, the 1993 President of the Econometric Society.  Even though he was a student at the University of Minnesota from Barcelona before my time, he has had deep influence on my research, not only through his enlightening works but also through his PhD thesis advisor, Marcel (Ket) Richter, who was also my advisor.

The Econometric Society is one of the few truly global associations for academic economists and has been over decades an important organization guiding the development of economics and econometrics. In addition to publishing its three world-class journals, the Society is deeply committed to working with its six regions – Africa, Asia, Australasia, Europe, Latin America and North America – bringing economists together through its 10 annual regional meetings and up to eight regional summer and winter schools and workshops. So successful has been the Society in its mission to promote statistics and mathematical methods that this now permeates all aspects of economics.  It is a great honor for me to be part of the Society, to serve as its President this year, and to participate in this and other meetings around the globe.

For those of you who are joining us for the first time, or just learning about the Econometric Society and the Barcelona School of Economics, we hope you remain engaged with both organizations throughout your careers.  

We are especially excited to welcome you to the beautiful city of Barcelona. We hope you discover and enjoy a bit of the Spanish allure and walk through the University’s campuses, appreciating the charm and architecture as the backdrop for our line-up of distinguished invited and contributed speakers. 

We welcome a joint EEA-ESEM audience of close to 1,450 registered participants from many countries around the World. We are excited to present to you six invited sessions featuring some of the world’s leading economists and 110 contributed sessions, one lunch session, a joint panel (with EEA-ESEM) and two joint workshops on data replicability that are all sure to be stimulating. In particular, let me draw your attention to our two keynote speakers, Whitney Newey (MIT), who will be presenting the Fischer-Schultz Lecture, and Joel Sobel (UCSD), who will be presenting the JJ Laffont Lecture. I look forward to presenting the President’s address. 

We are thrilled to be able to live-stream the keynote addresses through video conference so that those of you who were not able to attend in person will be able to enjoy some of the EEA-ESEM. We hope you enjoy this unique hybrid format and take advantage of all it has to offer. 

Finally, I want to recognize everyone who contributed to this endeavor. On behalf of the Econometric Society and the Barcelona School of Economics, I thank them all for their superb efforts.  

I especially thank the 2023 ESEM Program Chairs, Paola Manzini (University of Bristol) and Martin Weidner (University of Oxford), who have put together an exceptionally interesting program for us to enjoy in the coming days, and the Local Organizing Committee Larbi Alaoui (UPF and BSE), Enriqueta Aragonès (IAE-CSIC and BSE), Fernando Broner (CREI, UPF and BSE), and Pau Milan (UAB and BSE) who have done a wonderful job planning and executing the event.

I also thank the EEA’s Gemma Prunner-Thomas and the Society’s newest full-time employee, Ritu Johorey, who organized the details of the EEA-ESEM meeting with energy and efficiency.

This too is a good opportunity to thank my colleagues on the European Regional Standing Committee; Eliana La Ferrara, the chair of the committee and our current First Vice-President and 2024 President, Sven Rady, the Secretary to the Committee, and Olivier Scaillet, whose term as Treasurer has just come to an end, for their continued involvement with and commitment to the Society.

I am happy too that the Econometric Society once again joins forces with the WinE Committee of the European Economic Association to jointly organize the 11th Women in Economics (WinE) Mentoring Retreat following the very successful WinE mentoring retreats held annually from 2013 to 2022. I thank co-chairs Ghazala Azmat (EEA WinE Committee Chair) and Caterina Calsamiglia (ES representative). 

I wish all of you an enjoyable meeting with many stimulating interactions.    

Rosa Matzkin
President
The Econometric Society