President's Report (2015)

Econometrica, Vol. 84, No. 6 (November, 2016), 2283–2287

THE ECONOMETRIC SOCIETY 2015 ANNUAL REPORT
OF THE PRESIDENT

1. THE SOCIETY

THE ECONOMETRIC SOCIETY IS AN INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION that promotes
research in economics using quantitative approaches, both theoretical
and empirical. In pursuit of these objectives, the Society organizes meetings
and publishes three journals, Econometrica, Quantitative Economics, and
Theoretical Economics. Regional meetings take place annually and a World
Congress meets every five years. The Econometric Society operates as a purely
scientific organization, without any political, financial or national allegiance or
bias, and is a self-supporting non-profit organization.

2. WORLD CONGRESS

The most important event during my term was the EleventhWorld Congress
in Montreal, August 17–21, 2015. The location of the 2015 World Congress
was decided in an Executive Committee meeting in 2012. The local arrangements
were capably handled by the Local Organizing Committee, consisting of
Jean-Marie Dufour (McGill University, chair), Marine Carrasco (Université
de Montréal), Rui Castro (Université deMontréal), Russell Davidson (McGill
University), George Dionne (HEC Montréal), Prosper Donovon (Concordia
University), Alain Guay (Université du QuébecMontréal), Lynda Khalaf (Carleton
University and CIREQ), Ngo van Long (McGill University), and Marc
Henry (Penn State University and Université de Montréal). Jean-Marie and
his committee did a wonderful job.

I appointed four Program Chairs for the Congress, Bo Honoré (Princeton),
Benny Moldovanu (Bonn), Ariel Pakes (Harvard), and Monika Piazzesi (Stanford).
Unfortunately, Benny had to withdraw for health reasons early in 2014.
Larry Samuelson (Yale) graciously agreed to step in as Benny’s replacement.
The Program Chairs selected the Program Committee, consisting of 140 members,
who evaluated the submitted papers and from them selected the accepted
papers for the contributed paper sessions. The Program Chairs also selected 20
speakers for the ten invited paper sessions, and 10 speakers for five lunchtime
policy discussion sessions. There were also five named lectures: the Cowles
Lecture by Elie Tamer, the Frisch Memorial Lecture by AlvinRoth, theWalras-
Bowley Lecture by Per Krusell, the Fisher-Schulz Lecture by Darrell Duffie,
and my Presidential Address. Further details of the program can be found on
the Econometric Society web page.

I thank all the invited speakers and their discussants for their excellent presentations.
I am deeply grateful to the members of the Program Committee,
and especially to the Program Chairs, for their hard work and excellent judgement.
The Program Chairs in turn are deeply grateful to Rose Rita Riccitelli
for her help in creating and managing the program.

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