Since 1970, the Conference on Econometrics and Mathematical Economics (CEME) has received support from the National Science Foundation to hold a series of meetings on research issues in economic theory and methodology. Currently, CEME is supported by NSF grant SES-0617783 to the NBER (Paul Ruud and Jose Scheinkman, Principal Investigators.) In nearly three decades of operation, CEME has been successful in promoting communication between scholars in academics, business, and government, as well as students, in a series of ongoing seminars on particular topics in economics.

CEME’s purpose is to stimulate discussion and research on the frontiers of econometric and economic theory, and to investigate the application of mathematical, statistical, and computational techniques to empirical economics studies. It is intended to both encourage research on new topics and speed the dissemination of the latest findings by leading scholars. To this end, these meetings have been exceptionally successful, providing forums for the exchange of ideas in economic theory and methods that are not constrained by the more formal frameworks of journal publication. The channels of communication are informal and regular, allowing specialists in selected topic areas to meet regularly, at widely dispersed institutions and for longer periods than is generally possible at meetings of professional societies. Priority is often given to the presentation of work by younger scholars, who have fewer opportunities to speak to larger audiences at meetings of professional societies.

Since CEME’s inception, seminar groups have produced hundreds of working papers, books, and articles in professional journals, which have been broadly circulated, making the contents of the seminars more broadly available. In addition, over the last few years all seminars have set up web sites that contain programs and links to papers. A number of collections of papers presented at CEME meetings have been published in special issues of professional journals, including the American Economic Review, Bell Journal of Economics, International Economic Review, Journal of Applied Econometrics, Journal of Political Economy, and the Review of Economic Studies (to appear). Over the years, the various seminars have published several volumes of collected papers; royalties from some of those volumes (on Bayesian techniques and applications) have been used to create the Savage Memorial Trust Fund, which provides annual awards for the best doctoral dissertation using Bayesian methods.

Since November 1970, sixteen different seminar groups have been formed. Currently, there are six active seminars (four in econometrics, two in mathematical economics). These seminars, and their leaders, are:

ECONOMETRICS

MATHEMATICAL ECONOMICS