| Notes From the CEA |
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James Brander's term as Editor of the CJE expires on July 1, 2001, so we must find a suitable replacement. The closing date for nominations is September 15. To nominate a candidate, send the name of the candidate and a brief statement in support of your nomination to Curtis Eaton (eaton@ucalgary.ca). Other members of the committee are James Brander (brander@commerce.ubc.ca), Emanuela Cardia (cardia@crde.umontreal.ca), and Marc Van Audenrode (mvand@ecn.ulaval.ca). We welcome your advice regarding any aspect of this search, so please don't hesitate to contact us.
In recent years, there has been a renewed interest among economists in the impact of inequality on economic growth, and in the effect of economic growth on income distribution, in part due to the development of new growth theories (see Aghion, Caroli, and Garcia-Penalosa, JEL, December,1999; Benabou, AEA, March, 2000). To shed light on these relationships in a Canadian context, the Centre for the Study of Living Standards (CSLS) and the Institute for Research on Public Policy (IRPP) are organizing a research project on inequality and economic growth in Canada. A preconference will be held in the fall of 2000 and a major conference in early 2001. A refereed volume based on the papers presented at the conference, to be edited by project coordinators Pierre Fortin of UQAM, Andrew Sharpe of CSLS, and France St-Hilaire of IRPP, will be published.
Proposals for papers are being sought in the following specific areas:
Proposals may focus exclusively on Canada, on Canada in a comparative context, or on foreign experience of relevance to Canada. Proposals should consist of a 1-2 page description of the proposed research, including a clear statement of purpose, methodology, and possible policy implications. Funds for honouria for papergivers are available. Travel and accommodation expenses for the preconference and conference will also be covered. The deadline for receipt of proposals is September 30, 2000. Please submit proposals to
Andrew Sharpe, Executive Director
Chuck Blackorby, UBC has organized an excellent set of sessions for the Meeting at the University of British Columbia and we thank him for his hard work. There were a record number of registrants. Don Paterson of UBC handled local arrangements. The CEA thanks the Dean of Arts and the Dean of Commerce at UBC for their support. Pearson Education is a new company that includes the former Addison-Wesley-Longman and Prentice Hall. We thank them for their financial assistance with the Meetings.
In 2001, The CEA Meetings will be at McGill. James MacKinnon, Queens is organizing the sessions and Chris Ragan and Chris Green of McGill are providing local organization. A site for 2002 will be chosen this Fall if we continue on our own. The Congress will be in Toronto in 2002 at a combination of UofT and Ryerson. The CEA will be surveying members in the early Fall of 2000 to determine if we continue to meet outside of the Congress. My impression is that most members favour remaining on our own. They also favour meeting in major cities.
Jim Brander The major CJE event over the past year has been the move to Blackwell. The CEA Executive decided that the publishing industry has changed enough to make a large publisher like Blackwell very attractive. The strategy at Blackwell is to acquire strong established journals. They now publish Econometrica, the Review of Economic Studies, the Economic Journal, the Journal of Finance and a variety of other impressive titles in Economics, including the CJE. Our assessment is that they are the strongest publisher of economics and business journals. To their credit they like to pursue a low price/high circulation strategy, which has always been the CJE strategy, and they are willing to cooperate with academic organizations, like the Canadian Economics Association, the Econometric Society and the American Finance Association.
One of the key reasons for going with Blackwell has to do with Internet presence. For example, Blackwell has good connections with the JSTOR project, which makes archives of published papers available on the Internet. The CJE is now in JSTOR and back issues are currently being converted to electronic format. By the end of 2000 the full set of back issues (back to Volume 1, which appeared in 1968), should be available on the JSTOR website. JSTOR will have a three year window between the most recently published issue and the most recent issue they provide. For current issues Blackwell maintains a website through Ingenta. The Ingenta site will be accessible to anyone at a university with an institutional subscription to the CJE and to any other subscribers.
The actual transition to Blackwell has had its share of frictions and things have not moved as quickly as I would have liked. We were slower than we hoped in handling renewals and in getting material on the Ingenta website, along with several other things. We expected frictions in such a transition, of course, and we are very optimistic about the future. Actual physical production of the journal (which is sub-contracted by Blackwell to a Canadian printer) has gone very well.
The decision to move to Blackwell has affected several other decisions. In particular, it has slowed down the development of a Viewpoints segment dealing with policy issues, reviews of major developments in economics, etc. We still plan to do this in the near future but we do not want to allow the backlog of accepted papers to build up excessively.
The three co-editors: John Burbidge, Michel Poitevin, and Gregor Smith, have all been doing an excellent job. As a result, basic journal operations are running very smoothly, and lags in all phases of the process are down to reasonable levels. My assistant, Kathryn Coholan, also does an outstanding job with the Journal. Submissions continue to be strong and we appear to be headed for a particularly good year. Most importantly the CJE is publishing interesting and high quality papers and is generating impressive circulation and readership.
Despite some costly mistakes by the Treasurer, the 1999 CEA Meetings had a small surplus of $4 thousand. We now understand the details of the costs of running meetings through learning by doing. We did raise the fee in 2000 in order to offer more services. However, we will remain below the fees at the Congress.
The CEA remains in very good general financial health. The move to Blackwell may change this. Costs at Blackwell are substantially higher but we are buying more services. We raised the institutional rates in 2000 and may have to raise them again in 2001. There is no intention to raise the membership rate which has not changed since 1995. A longer report on our experience with Blackwell will be included next year.
Final registration for the 1999 meetings was 609. There were 142 sessions, and 113 people responded to the program evaluation questionnaire distributed at the meetings. Respondents were generally satisfied with the 1999 CEA meetings and their organization -- the only deviation from a median response of 3 (= okay now) was a generalized preference for more state of the art addresses . Many respondents included extensive written comments and suggestions.
The CEA has to consider is where to hold the annual meetings - and the survey evidence is clear. Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa, and Vancouver received the highest ratings in terms of where respondents are most likely to attend CEA meetings in future. All other options were well behind.
Attendees at the CEA tend to be in their 30's (36%) or 40's (30%). Relatively few are in their 50's -- the CEA may still be a boys' club, but it is not an old boys' club.
Almost 30% of 1999 respondents had been to 10 or more previous CEA meetings. Nearly a quarter of the people attending the 1999 CEA were first attendees. Since over 80% of 1999 attendees state that they are either somewhat likely or very likely to attend the 2000 meetings, the combination of high recruitment and high expressed willingness to return is a hopeful note for the future. As well, the age group 30 to 39 have the highest average intention of any age group of attending the year 2000 meetings of the CEA in Vancouver. Among respondents, there was no statistically significant difference in likelihood of 2000 attendance by the number of times a person has previously attended a CEA meeting. . Most respondents preferred the current fee structure and current level of services for the CEA meetings and 80% favoured continuing to meet separately from the Learned Societies. Most participated in the meetings in some manner, either by presenting, discussing or chairing - 95% attended at least three sessions in one day.
There have often been comments, over the years, on the supposed differences in attitudes and preferences between younger and older CEA members and between those who have attended many times previously, or rarely. However, although the questionnaire asked for attitudes on a variety of dimensions - policy/theory preferences, subject area emphasis, preferred format, etc. - it is difficult to detect statistically significant differences in responses by age of respondent or by number of times they previously attended CEA Meetings.
The Royal Bank has been sponsoring the Past-Presidents= Dinner for the last few years. We would like to thank the Bank and John MacCallum, Chief Economist for their support. John has been a member of the CEA for many years and has numerous friends amongst our membership.
Craig Riddell, UBC will be leaving the CEA Executive this year. Craig organized the 1998 Meetings at Ottawa. He has helped the CEA over many years.
Werner Antweiler, UBC continues to oversee the CEA website. He has made numerous improvements to the CEA Meetings section this year. Thanks Werner.
Charles Beach, Queens is completing the first year of his second term as Editor of the CPP. The CEA thanks Charles for the efforts he has made to improve the journal.
Jean-Marie Dufour, Montreal is the new CEA Vice-President. He is joined on the Council by Jane Friesen, SFU, Tony Wirjanto, Waterloo, Pierre Lasserre, UQAM and Brian Maclean, Laurentian.
Paul Beaudry, UBC, Diane Dupont, Brock, Marc Van Audenrode, Laval and Michel Poitevin, Montreal will leave the Executive Council this year. On behalf of the CEA, we thank them for their help.
The Executive welcomes any suggestions about what the CEA should or should not be doing. In addition to those mentioned above, current members of the Executive are Lucy Samson, Laval, Frances Woolley, Carleton, Peter Townley, Acadia and Garnett Picot, Statistics Canada. If you have suggestions, criticisms or areas in which you would like to help, please contact us.
CWEN/RF is an independent network of economists whose activities include: * organisation of sessions and a Luncheon at the Canadian Economics Association annual meetings * maintenance of a web page for publication of news of Network activities, opportunities (including job opportunities) and resources of interest to women economists * maintenance of an electronic mail network to provide easy and low-cost communication among subscribes interested in issues concerning Canadian women economists * pursuit and maintenance of active connections with like organisations internationally * advising and offering recommendations to the CEA on matters relating to the status of women in economics
While this text must be written before the CEA Annual Meetings, judging from early interest, CWEN/RFÉ activities promise to be informative and well attended. At the time of writing, the Luncheon is close to being sold out. Our gust speaker Nancy Folbre (Umass-Amherst) intends to discuss her forthcoming book The Invisible Heart: Economics and Family Values. Thanks to Nancy Folbre, to Human Resources Development Canada-Women's Bureau for its generous support and to Caroline Weber in particular, to the CEA for its contribution, and to Lori Curtis, Don Patterson and the UBC staff for their efforts in planning and organizing the Luncheon.
The session on "Economics in the Family" organised by Linda Welling includes papers by Nancy Folbre, Frances Woolley and Linda. The panellists in the Roundtable session on the Status of Women Economists in Canada will address such issues as the ways in which equity enhances teaching and research, special challenges facing women, and ways to promote equity. For their contributions to the promise of a successful CWEN/RFÉ presence at the CEA meetings, I thank in addition to all those named above, Chuck Blackorby, Mike Denny, Martin Dooley, Cristina Echevarria, Nicole Fortin, Nancy Olewiler, and Roberta Robb.
To become a member of CWEN/RFÉ, to add your name to the CWEN/RFÉ list serve, or to find out more about CWEN/RFÉ - including updates on the Status of Women Economists in Canada Project, Profiles of Canadian Women Economists, minutes of the 2000 Annual General Meeting and employment opportunities - please visit our website.
If you have any suggestions or comments for the CWEN/RFÉ Executive, or are interested in becoming active in CWEN/RFÉ, please contact me by e-mail at spotton@yorku.ca.
Brenda Spotton Visano, President,
Canadian Women Economists Network/Réseau de Femmes écon.
May 25, 2000
In the fall of 1999, CWEN and the CEA struck a joint Special Committee to examine the Status of Women Economists in Canada. Its principal activities have been the design, construction, and administration of two surveys: one of university economics, the other of university economists. To date we have received responses from 19 departments and 63 individuals. Preliminary results for 1999 - based on these responses - suggest the following.
The Committee anticipates submission of a full report to the respective Executives by the end of the year.
For their contributions to the exercise, the Committee thanks the following: The Chairs and Administrative Assistants of the following University Economics Departments: Augustana, Concordia, Dalhousie, École des Hautes Études Commerciales, Laurentian, Laval, McGill, McMaster, Mount Allison, Ryerson, St. Thomas, British Columbia/Strategy and Business, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Toronto, Victoria, Wilfrid Laurier, York-Arts, York-Atkinson.
For their input and assistance with the surveys, the Committee thanks: Werner Antweiler (British Columbia), Kevin Clinton (Bank of Canada), Mike Denny (Toronto), Cristina Echevarria (Saskatchewan), Morley Gunderson (Toronto, Karen Mumford (Royal Economics Society - Status of Women), Lars Osberg (Dalhousie), Roberta Robb (Brock, Penni Stewart (York), Linda Welling (Victoria).
Finally, we thank the anonymous individuals who contributed to this exercise by completing the Survey of Individuals.
CWEN/CEA Special Committee to examine the Status of Women Economists in Canada. Martin Dooley (McMaster), Nicole Fortin (British Columbia), Nancy Gallini (Toronto), Frances Woolley (Carleton), Brenda Spotton Visano (York).
May 26,2000
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