• Migrants' transnational practices and families in Europe
• Remittances, the skill composition of migration, and social networks
• International trade flows, foreign direct investment (FDI) and migration
• Migrants' integration, regional mobility, social and business networks, and trade
• Gender and the intra-household effects of migration

The meeting will be preceeded by the project's Mid Term Review with the European Commission project officer. This meeting will be held in the afternoon of the 22nd of January, and should be attended by all Steering Committee members and all TOM ESRs and ERs. For all other participants, the meeting starts with a dinner on the evening of the 22nd.

Contract reference MRTN - CT - 2006 - 035873

The meeting will discuss two urgent global challenges - to do with the international financial system and the global trade regime. It will consider the implications of these challenges for global institutions and for global governance, and it will examine the role for emerging market economies in developing the appropriate global governance responses. It will also assess the role which Europe might play in promoting the necessary changes in governance.

• Monetary unions: theory and historical experience;
• Current account and international portfolio dynamics;
• International risk sharing; theory and evidence;
• Financial and currency crisis;
• Commodity markets and the macroeconomy;
• International dimensions of monetary and fiscal policy;
• Vehicle currencies and import pricing.

This is the fourth annual workshop of the CEPR Working Group on Macroeconomics of Global Interdependence (MGI). MGI aims to encourage academic research on macroeconomic aspects of global integration (broadly defined). Further information on MGI can be found at http://www.cepr.org/mgi.

The contributed papers should shed light on aspects of how such reforms operate in practice, how they interact with each other as well as with macroeconomic policies and political institutions. The conference aims to advance our understanding of these issues, especially in relation to the following topics:

· New datasets for measuring financial, labor, product, trade, and public sector reforms
· Political institutions and structural reforms
· Impact of structural reforms on economic growth and welfare
· Timing and sequencing of structural reforms
· Interactions between structural reforms and macroeconomic policies

Examples of specific research areas are: 1. Education and Inequality 2. Pupil Performance and School Resources 3. The Labour Market for Teachers 4. Gender Differences in Educational Attainment 5. International Differences in Education Systems

Supported by: FP6 Marie Curie RTN (Contract no. MRTN-CT-2004-504796)

· How do we date business cycles and where currently is the European economy?
· Is this the end of the Great Moderation and if so what does the increase in volatility imply for consumption, investment and financial markets?
· How much uncertainty is there over the impact of monetary and fiscal policy in downturns?
· The role of learning and model uncertainty in business cycle models.

The HI-POD Collaborative Project is funded by the European Commission's Framework Programme for Research FP7. Grant agreement no. 225342.

A special issue of the Journal of Financial Intermediation (JFI) will be devoted to the conference. Papers that are selected for presentation will be candidates for a special issue of the JFI, although authors do not necessarily have to commit their papers to the journal. A paper's acceptance at the conference does not guarantee publication in the JFI: all papers must pass the journal's regular refereeing process.

Up to twelve papers will be selected. Suitable topics may include, but are not limited to:
1) Bank capital accumulation and banking crises
2) Banking regulation and crises
3) Gatekeepers, regulation and financial stability
4) Complex securities, securitization, risk and liquidity
5) Competition in financial markets, financial spreads and financial crises
6) News, media, and propagation of financial crises
7) Financial crises and growth. Is there a cleansing effect?

The HI-POD Collaborative Project is funded by the European Commission's Framework Programme for Research FP7. Grant agreement no. 225342.

The conference hopes to provide a unique opportunity for researchers from different universities and countries to discuss their work in a relaxed atmosphere and to develop long-term collaborative relationships. It also aspires to provide young researchers with the opportunity to meet and discuss their work with senior economists.

The organizers will bring together around 30 economists for a period of two days (Friday, June 19 and Saturday, June 20). To foster the desired interaction we ask that participants stay for the entire duration of the Symposium.

Friday morning (9am-12:30pm) will be devoted to three keynote presentations on recent developments in public economics research by Richard Blundell (UCL), Raj Chetty (University of California Berkeley), and Thomas Piketty (Paris School of Economics). We plan to include 10 presentations on Friday afternoon and Saturday. The symposium will end at 5pm on Saturday.

Keynote speakers are: Pat Bajari (University of Minnesota) Chad Syverson (University of Chicago) Michael Whinston (Northwestern University)

The series aims to contribute to an analytical understanding of the issues raised by competition, develop empirical protocols and tests of economic models, promote the exchange and the dissemination of results at the forefront of research, and finally, evaluate current competition and regulation policies. It will cover the state of the art in applied and empirical industrial organization.

The conference will be preceded by the Sixth CEPR School in Applied Industrial Organisation, which will take place on 13th May 2009.

The combined programme will run for 3 days (from the morning of Monday June 1st until the afternoon of Wednesday 3rd, with arrival on Sunday May 31st). Sessions on Wednesday will focus on firm-level studies of trade issues and will constitute the First EFIGE Scientific Workshop and Policy Conference. The rest of the programme will combine workshop sessions on any trade-related issue with time for collaboration and consultation.

The programme will be assembled by a scientific committee composed of Robin Burgess, Greg Fischer, Rocco Macchiavello, and Imran Rasul.

Sponsored by the European Science Foundation (ESF).
Co-organised by the Centre for Economic Policy Research CEPR and Oxford University.

For more information and preliminary program please visit the summer school website: www.fundp.ac.be/eco/recherche/cred/SUMMERSCHOOL/index.html

Presentations from Ernest Aryeetey (University of Ghana and Brookings Institution, Accra), Surjit Bhalla (Oxus Research and Investments, New Delhi), Richard Portes (London Business School, CEPR and Chair, Global Crisis Group), and Yu Yongding (Director, Institute of World Economics and Politics, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing), will be followed by a roundtable discussion chaired by Gobind Nankani (Executive Director, International Growth Centre).

The presentations will be followed by the launch of the International Growth Centre's website and by a question and answer period.

Registration begins at 17.00. The event will run from 17.30 to 19.30. Places are limited, so please register your interest in attending the event at www.cepr.org/meets/ltm/2408 as soon as possible.

The conference hopes to provide a unique opportunity for researchers from different universities and countries to discuss their work in a relaxed atmosphere and to develop long-term collaborative relationships. It also aspires to provide young researchers with the opportunity to meet and discuss their work with senior economists.

The organizers will bring together around 30 economists for a period of two days (Friday, June 19 and Saturday, June 20). To foster the desired interaction we ask that participants stay for the entire duration of the Symposium.

Friday morning (9am-12:30pm) will be devoted to three keynote presentations on recent developments in public economics research by Richard Blundell (UCL), Raj Chetty (University of California Berkeley), and Thomas Piketty (Paris School of Economics). We plan to include 10 presentations on Friday afternoon and Saturday. The symposium will end at 5pm on Saturday.

The GIST network invites the submission of papers on various topics in the field of research on the service sector. Papers can come from various research disciplines, and can focus on empirical, theoretical and policy-oriented topics. These include, but are not limited to:

- Internationalization of services and competition in Europe
- International trade flows, foreign direct investment (FDI) and services
- Cross-country banking, competition and regulation
- Effects of financial services on growth

The Globalization, Investment and Services Trade (GIST) Marie Curie Initial Training Networks (ITN) is funded under the EU’s Seventh Framework Programme, Contract no. FP7-PEOPLE-ITN-2008-211429.

In addition to the workshops there will be a number of small seminars. Typically, when no workshop is scheduled for the day, a ‘compulsory’ seminar in the morning and an ‘optional’ evening seminar will be held. Note that there are no seminars over the middle weekend. This should give participants plenty of spare time to interact and collaborate with one another, and to pursue their own research. Although most invitees have been selected on the basis of his/her interest in or contribution to this year's themes, the smaller seminars need not fall under one of the four headings.

Professor Mark Gertler will teach the course. It is primarily aimed at participants in the Euro Area Business Cycle Network, but applications will also be considered from doctoral students, post-doctoral researchers and economists working for commercial organisations (for which a fee will be charged).

The meeting will include daily seminars in the morning, in which participants present their work, as well as less formal evening seminars scheduled at the beginning of the Symposium. A substantial amount of time is reserved for independent work and collaborative research, which provides participants with a unique opportunity to interact and discuss each other's research.

In addition, four mornings will be devoted to 'focus sessions', each of which concentrates on some recent developments in asset pricing (week one) and corporate finance (week two). Focus sessions in the asset pricing week will be organized by Stan Zin (Carnegie Mellon University) and Viral V. Acharya (New York University, Stern School of Business and CEPR). Focus sessions for the corporate finance week will be organized by Bernard S. Black (University of Texas) and Patrick Bolton (Columbia University and CEPR).

In this presentation, the author considers the hypothesis that autonomous universities that need to compete more for resources are more productive. Evidence from Europe and the US is considered in light of the concepts of autonomy and competition in order to determine whether this hypothesis can answer the question of how to improve universities' output.

IThe meeting will include a 30-minute presentation from Mathias Dewatripont (ECARES, Universite Libre de Bruxelles and CEPR) followed by 30 minutes of discussion. Registration will be from 12:00 and the meeting will be preceded by a buffet reception.

The school is open to 40 students from all countries. Students are expected to attend the school full time. The lecturers are Giovanni Peri of the University of California, Davis and James E. Rauch of the University of California, San Diego, two of the leading experts working in this field.

For further information and teaching material, please refer to Centro Studi Luca d’Agliano’s web site: www.dagliano.unimi.it

Dynamic stochastic general equilibrium models (DSGE) command wide support among macroeconomists as a modeling methodology. In addition, they are widely used by policy institutions for both policy assessments and forecasting exercises. Nevertheless, there is much less agreement about the details of implementing DSGEs, such as the structural nature of shocks necessary to fit the data, the introduction of frictions, and the choice of approximation techniques for solving DSGEs. The recent financial turmoil has also highlighted the need for incorporating a meaningful financial sector both as a source of shocks and as a propagation mechanism. The goal of the conference is to bring together researchers working on various aspects of these issues.

Previous meetings focused on productivity, trade and development (2008), labor markets and inflation dynamics (2007), micro behavior and monetary policy (2006), the connections between nominal exchange rates and the real economy (2005), the monetary transmission mechanism in the new and old members of the EU (2004), on the effect of real exchange rates on macroeconomic stability (2003) and on theoretical and empirical approaches to the question of inflation targeting (2002).

Topics of the 2009 meeting include:

1) Summarizing the state of the art in macroeconomic modeling tools:
· their use in theoretical work
· estimation and calibration issues
· policy and welfare evaluations
· forecasting

2) Existing criticisms and new directions:
· a role of financial markets, financial imperfections, informational frictions and sovereign risk
· alternative models of pricing, labor market frictions and their interaction
· heterogeneity
· incorporating portfolio choice aspects
· exact nonlinear solutions

Keynote Speakers:

· Larry Christiano (Northwestern University)
· Mark Gertler (New York University)

ESSLE is designed to bring together economists in the field from across Europe and key researchers from outside the region. It provides a unique opportunity for researchers from different universities and countries to discuss their work in a relaxed atmosphere and to develop long-term collaborative relationships. Another important aim of ESSLE is to provide young researchers with the opportunity to meet and discuss their work with senior economists. Paper proposals are invited in any area of labour economics.

ESSLE 2009 will bring together around 40 economists for a period of three days (arriving in the evening of 16th September and departing on the morning of 20th September). To foster the desired interaction we request that participants stay for the entire duration of the Symposium. The programme combines focus and contributed sessions with time for collaboration and consultation. Some researchers will be asked to present their work in a poster session.

Whilst we expect that a number of submissions will focus on the crisis itself we are particularly interested in likely research themes going forward in business cycle study including but not limited to monetary and banking systems, labour markets, monetary and fiscal policy and market imperfections.

We already have participation from Paul Beaudry, Tom Cooley, Martin Ellison, Pat Kehoe, Andy Levin, Albert Marcet, Athanasios Orphanides, Roberto Perotti, Morten Ravn, Ricardo Reis and Volker Wieland and welcome further relevant submissions.

Further details can be found on the conference website: www.cepr.org/meets/wkcn/7/778

The topic of the 13th CEPR/ESI Annual Conference will be ‘Financial Supervision in an Uncertain World’. The recent turmoil on global financial markets and the following recession have raised concerns that the current financial supervisory system does not suffice anymore. This can mainly be inferred from banks that are facing major problems in terms of liquidity shortages and many bad loans. Additionally, the large bancassurance groups and multinational insurers (i.e. AIG) are facing major write-offs. Many have considered the opaqueness of the financial markets and the excessive risk-taking by banks and other market participants, along with disproportionate executive compensation packages, as the main causes of the crisis. Supervisory arrangements have not been able to keep up with the fast pace of financial innovation and the associated risk-taking and information asymmetries.

Therefore, it is wise to look forward and reflect upon a new structure of (global) financial supervision. Several aspects of supervision deserve deeper academic research. For instance, liquidity and solvency problems have become intertwined and often indistinguishable, so that the traditional instruments wielded by supervisors now have less effect. A new structure for financial supervision will have to address this problem, along with the lack of liquidity due to a locked interbank market, the disturbed system of deposit insurance and the problems with current capital requirements (such as the highly debated procyclicality). Additionally, it has become clear that the present crisis management procedures need to become more effective and efficient. A final point of concern in an uncertain, but increasingly integrated world is the creation of EU-wide or even global supervisory arrangements, as has for instance been suggested in the recent report by the De Larosière group.

In addition to the submissions selected from a call for papers, the programme will include policy lectures by senior central bankers, papers by reputed academics and a high-level discussion panel.

This conference aims at investigating the relation between financial structure, corporate governance and firm performance in highly competitive and integrated markets. Examples of questions of interest are (but not limited to):

· What are the determinants of the ownership modes across countries?
· What are the effects of different ownership modes on firm performance?
· To what extent can market dimension and the degree of competition influence ownership modes?
· What are the obstacles to an efficient market for corporate control?
· What is the role of innovative financial intermediaries in promoting firm growth?
· What are the consequences of financial integration and changes in regulation on the availability of credit to firms, particularly SMEs?

Scientific Committee: Rainer Münz (Hamburg Institute of International Economics), Thomas Straubhaar (Hamburg Institute of International Economics), Giovanni Facchini (Università degli Studi di Milano, Erasmus University Rotterdam and CEPR), Antonio Spilimbergo (International Monetary Fund and CEPR).

The conference is organised as part of the Marie Curie Research Training Network on ‘Transnationality of Migrants’ TOM, which is funded by the European Commission through the Human Resources and Mobility action of its Sixth Framework Programme (EC Contract No. MRTN-CT-2006-035873)

·Interlinkages between a credit crunch and the macroeconomy

·Modelling credit crunches and financial crises

·Historical episodes of credit crunch

·Policy options: mitigating the effects of a credit crunch; preventing the emergence of a credit crunch

This course reviews the implications of relaxing the rational expectations assumption in dynamic models. We focus on applications to macroeconomics and asset pricing. We study the implications of replacing the rational expectations hypothesis by the view that agents are learning and constantly trying to improve their forecasts. The course reviews the basic theoretical results of the learning literature, applications of learning models to explain empirical phenomena and to inform the design of fiscal and monetary policy.

Examples of areas that could be addressed include:

· Pro-social behaviour and incentives
· Mechanisms of regulation
· Public-private partnerships
· Procurement of public services
· Competition law and public services/privatised companies
· Effects of privatisation (on product and financial markets)
· Employee and organisation incentives and quality of education
· Matching models in public services
· Auctions for public service franchises

Marie Curie actions focus on developing young researchers, enabling them to present research and benefit from the inputs of senior colleagues and policy-makers. Hence, we are keen to receive submissions from young researchers, who have recently defended their PhD, as well as established academics. In addition, some of the funding is also earmarked for citizens of the EU currently working in the US and we are also keen to receive submissions from academics in this category.

The programme will be assembled by a scientific committee composed of Mathias Dewatripont (ECARES and CEPR), Antonio Estache (ECARES), Paul Grout (CMPO), and Patrick Legros (ECARES and CEPR).