The conference consists of (a) sessions with themes selected in advance by the IARIW Council (see below), and (b) other contributed paper sessions. Accepted papers submitted via route (a) are organised by named session organisers into Plenary sessions, and ‘A’ and ‘B’ Parallel sessions. Papers accepted from submission route (b) are organised by the Programme Committee into the ‘C’ and ‘D’ Parallel sessions, and Poster sessions. (This organisational structure is illustrated by the programme for the previous General Conference: see http://www.iariw.org/c2008.php.)

Submissions of abstracts are now invited for papers to be presented in both (a) and (b) sessions. Submissions may consist of a conventional abstract, or of a longer paper outline. All submissions should contain the following information:

• (i) type of submission – the name of the thematic session if submission by route (a) or ‘Contributed’ if by route (b);
• (ii) title of paper;
• (iii) name of corresponding author;
• (iv) email address and affiliation of the corresponding author;
• (v) names of any co-authors (if any); and
• (vi) text of the abstract.

Submissions should be in plain text (ASCII) and not contain any mathematical symbols or equations. The deadline for receipt of proposals is August 31, 2009.

The topics and organisers of the main thematic sessions are given below. Persons interested in submitting a paper to be considered for any of these sessions should send an abstract or outline of the proposed paper, by email to both (a) the appropriate session organiser(s), and (b) the conference programme committee at iariw2010@bancaditalia.it.

Authors who wish to contribute papers with content that does not fit into one of the thematic session topics listed below should email their outline or abstract of the proposed paper to the conference programme committee at iariw2010@bancaditalia.it. Papers are sought in all fields of interest to the IARIW, i.e. all papers that advance knowledge about income and wealth, from both a macro and micro perspective. The conference programme committee will aim to group papers into coherent subject topics.

The Plenary, ‘A’, ‘B’, ‘C’ and ‘D’ sessions will have the same format: a formal session chair will be appointed, the paper will be presented by a discussant nominated in advance and, after discussion from the floor, the author(s) will be able to respond to comments. Other papers deemed appropriate for IARIW conference presentation will be organised into one or more poster sessions. Poster sessions are an integral part of the IARIW conference, and a Poster paper prize (US$200) was instituted in 2008.

Financial support to cover travel and accommodation expenses will be available on a needs basis for a number of paper givers (for all session types). Information on this financial assistance program is available at http://www.iariw.org/finstandorders.php. The formal method and deadline for applications will be announced later. Potential applicants should indicate informally when submitting their abstracts whether they are likely to apply for support.

For general information about IARIW conferences, please see http://www.iariw.org/FAQforconference.php.

Plenary Session 1: Innovation – Key Factor for Economic Growth
Organiser:
Ruth Meier, Federal Statistical Office, Switzerland. ruth.meier@bfs.admin.ch

It is widely agreed that innovation activities constitute a key factor for economic growth in most countries. In fact, the ability of an economy to keep its “cutting edge” increasingly depends on its capacity to generate competitive advantages, as these tend to lead to productivity increases. The shift from industry to services in modern economies implies that these advantages increasingly rely on the knowledge economy. Therefore education, R&D expenditure, the development of human capital and know-how, and the creation of competence centres are key elements in the design of government policies. In this context, it is difficult to set up an innovation system based mainly on a macroeconomic framework. It is not really surprising that analyses based on macroeconomic aggregates and branches show only a limited impact of innovation on productivity, which is frustrating considering the amount of resources spent by government, enterprises and teaching institutions. Macroeconomic studies need to account for developments taking place in the area of organizational and process innovation. A much more disaggregated view is necessary. The session aims not only to present and discuss new statistical experiences in this area but also to further clarify informational needs and user perspectives. The session being the opening session of the Conference will have invited papers as well as papers submitted through the call for papers.

Parallel Session 2A: House Price Movements and the Economy
Organiser:
Robert J. Hill, University of Graz, Austria. robert.hill@uni-graz.at

Housing is probably the most important asset in an economy. Movements in house prices can significantly affect the rest of the economy, as has been demonstrated by recent events in the US and some other countries. The long boom that preceded the recent bust seems also to have contributed to an increase in inequality in the distribution of wealth in some countries. Measuring exactly what is happening to house prices, however, is made difficult by the fact that every house is different. Housing is also a major component of household expenditure and hence exerts considerable influence on the CPI and national accounts. There is disagreement, however, regarding exactly how housing should be included. Owner-occupied housing is currently excluded from the HICP, while it is imputed and lumped together with actual rents in the national accounts, although the economic situation of an owner is quite different from that of a renting tenant. The transmission mechanisms from the housing market to the rest of the economy, and the other way round, also are not well understood. This session seeks papers on the measurement of movements in house prices and the implications of such movements for the economy. Possible topics include the construction of quality-adjusted price indexes for housing (particularly using hedonic methods), ways of including housing in the CPI or national accounts, measurement and analysis of trends in housing affordability, and analysis of the implications of booms and/or busts in the housing market on growth, the distribution of wealth, and monetary policy.

Parallel Session 2B: Surveys and Data Combination
Organiser:
Stephen P. Jenkins, University of Essex, UK. stephenj@essex.ac.uk

Statistical agencies, data producers, and researchers are increasingly interested in the linkage of sample survey records with other data sources such as administrative records, other surveys, or geo-coded data. Data combination provides substantial opportunities for improved measurement and modelling using additional information, and/or reduction of survey burden via data substitution. However, data combination also raises challenges related to, for example, confidentiality and disclosure risk, how to secure informed consent from representative samples of respondents, how to link records without error, and also how to undertake statistical analysis and inference using the combined data sources. This session seeks papers that demonstrate the opportunities and address the challenges provided by data combination.

Plenary Session 3: The Impact of Globalisation
Organiser:
Peter van de Ven, Statistics Netherlands, Den Haag, Netherlands. pven@cbs.nl

Globalisation poses great challenges to statistical measurement and socio-economic analysis. First, how globalisation itself is to be measured, and monitored in its evolution, is a matter of debate. Which indicators better capture the growing interdependencies of national economies? Second, globalisation impinges on the compilation of economic and social statistics in many different ways: the increasing share of enterprises running affairs on an international scale, the growth of cross-national flows of goods and services, the higher mobility of labour and people all raise new specific problems for the compilation of national statistics. These questions lie at the heart of the manual that the UNECE-OECD-Eurostat Working Group on the Impact of Globalisation on National Accounts and related statistics (WGGNA) has planned to finalise by 2010. Third, multinational enterprises (MNEs) represent an important driving force behind globalisation, but little is known about how they behave, allocate their activities across countries, and evaluate comparative advantages of national economies. Fourth, and more generally, the question is how globalisation affects the progress of societies, and fundamental aspects such as economic growth and productivity, the generation and distribution of income and wealth, the working of labour market, the environmental equilibrium. The session seeks papers on all these questions, although priority will be given to papers dealing with measurement issues and papers dealing with the analysis of the impact of globalisation on societal progress.

Parallel Session 4A: Financial Services: Measurement and Impact
Organisers:
Adriaan Bloem, adriaan@bloeming.com
Marshall Reinsdorf, Bureau of Economic Analysis, USA. marshall.reinsdorf@bea.gov

New instruments and ways of doing business continue to emerge in the financial services sector, and globalization has brought new or expanded cross-border flows of financial services. In addition to measurement questions these developments raise, recent innovations in measuring financial services also raise research questions. For example, the 2008 System of National Accounts (SNA) recognizes that anticipated holding gains should play a role in estimating output of pension funds, so it is logical to ask whether such gains can also cover costs of providing other kinds of financial services. In particular, this may apply to services from institutions such as investment banks, hedge funds, and life insurers. Other measurement topics are: innovative or neglected types of financial services; treatment of tax-induced international flows of financial services; treatment of risk in the measurement of financial services; volume and prices of financial services. A second set of questions relates to the distributional impact of financial services. Micro financing, which has improved credit access for the poor, is a well-known topic in this area, but there are others. For example, goals of mortgage accessibility for disadvantaged groups were among the impetuses for the lending practices and instruments behind the sub-prime crisis. Yet these same groups may be suffering disproportionately from the aftermath of this crisis. Distributional topics include: the differential impact of financial crises; effects of legal, institutional or technological changes on the availability of financial services across the income distribution; implications of differential patterns of use of financial services across the income distribution; the impact on cyclical or long-term dynamics of income or consumption (for example, broader access to credit for consumption-smoothing has been suggested as a cause of observed declines in the cyclicality of consumption); effects of incomplete or unaffordable access to insurance. The session seeks papers addressing these issues from both micro and macro perspectives.

Parallel Session 4B: Intergenerational Disadvantage
Organisers:
Markus Jäntti, Åbo Akademi University, Finland. markus.jantti@iki.fi
John Micklewright, University of Southampton, UK. j.micklewright@soton.ac.uk

Cross-national research has found that intergenerational persistence of economic status, measured for instance on incomes, is quite substantial and that it differs significantly across different countries. Although there is a growing literature on what accounts for the persistence of incomes within countries, not much is known on a comparative basis. Important examples include how variations in early childhood test scores or the likelihood of completing secondary education varies across measures of parental economic disadvantage such as low long-run income or low educational achievement. Data requirements are very demanding and have probably limited cross-national research in this area. Yet comparative evidence on the alternative mechanisms that transmit economic disadvantage would help to relate the diverse patterns of intergenerational persistence to institutional and economic settings, even where such comparable quantitative evidence were not causal but largely correlational. This session invites submissions that examine from a comparative perspective differences in socio-economic gradients across particular stages in the life cycle, including papers focusing on methodological aspects and data requirements. Examples of life cycle stages that are of interest here include early childhood education, higher education, and labour market entry.

Plenary Session 5: Human Capital
Organiser:
Barbara Fraumeni, University of Southern Maine, USA. bfraumeni@usm.maine.edu

Human capital is an important asset for any country and is the foundation for economic growth. In recent years, increasing attention is being paid to intangibles. Although human capital is explicitly excluded from accounting for intangibles in the System of National Accounts (SNA), its measurement contributes to our understanding of both the market and nonmarket sector of the economy. Human capital increases from births, the care and nurturing of children, education (both formal and informal), experience, and migration. It decreases due to deaths, aging (at some point), and emigration. Human capital formation can occur through market and nonmarket activities. Human capital accounts typically require significant data collection efforts. In accounting for human capital, one of the most difficult problems, as is true with other types of intangible assets, is valuation. This session invites paper proposals which deal with methodological problems, or discuss and present possible approaches to measuring human capital. Papers are welcome which use micro and/or macro data for individual or multiple countries.

Parallel Session 6A: Greening and Economic Growth
Organisers:
Steivan Defilla, State Secretariat for Economic Affairs, Switzerland. steivan.defilla@seco.admin.ch
Thesia Garner, Bureau of Labor Statistics, USA. garner.thesia@bls.gov

All of us face long-term environmental challenges, with a growing demand for scarcer supplies, disruptive climate change, poor have-nots falling behind, and an accelerating loss of bio-diversity. The World Energy Outlook of the International Energy Agency forecasts a 50 percent global energy demand increase through 2030, much of which will be based upon fossil fuels. Proposals have been made nationally and internationally regarding how to internalize, mitigate, and adapt the costs associated with these changes. The level of internalization and the burden share among countries are relevant for economic growth. Today’s mitigation may diminish the need for tomorrow’s adaptation. The global energy investment need has grown dramatically as the energy infrastructure of developed countries is aging and the energy infrastructure of developing countries is nonexistent or is being developed. Energy market reforms are steadily being implemented, but may fail to provide sufficient incentive for long term investments, savings, and conservation. High energy consuming countries face the difficult choice between either watching an increasing part of their wealth leave their countries or enacting costly energy efficiency and renewable energy policies in a volatile energy price environment. This session addresses two topics: accounting for environmental degradation and resource depletion in national accounts; and the response of individuals, households, firms and governments to these environmental challenges. Papers in this session will focus on topics such as environmental and resource accounting, integration between the System of National Accounts (SNA) and the System of Integrated Environmental and Economic Accounting (SEEA), market failure vs. state or regulatory failure in environmental and resource economics, the acceptance or rejection of “greening” (for example, using renewable energy sources and purchasing more energy efficient appliances and vehicles), and the relationship between environmental degradation, and present and future intergenerational economic well-being.

Parallel Session 6B: Well-Being across Time and Space
Organisers:
Joachim R. Frick, DIW Berlin, Germany. jfrick@diw.de
Stephan Klasen, Göttingen University, Germany. sklasen@uni-goettingen.de

Empirical analysis of economically relevant outcomes from international and intertemporal perspectives is often hampered by various sorts of inconsistencies and discontinuities. It may be difficult to find consistent measures of poverty and inequality both calculated using income or wealth and based on broader measures of well-being, such as those augmenting cash income for the value of non-cash government benefits or public consumption. Similar problems characterise many qualitative indicators now currently used to study human well-being (e.g., are “happiness” measures really comparable across countries?), but they also emerge for more basic statistics such as employment and unemployment rates. These problem arise in OECD countries as well as in developing countries, possibly to an even greater extent. Among factors accounting for such measurement inconsistencies are: breaks in time series induced by changes in data collection methods or in the source of information (e.g., survey vs. register vs. process produced data, changes in survey design, sampling, follow-up success, questionnaire, field procedures); differences in data treatment after their collection (e.g., cleaning, “expert judgment”, editing, weighting and imputation); differences in concepts and their operationalization between countries and over time (e.g. the incorporation of social pension entitlements into a wealth measure; the treatment of informal labour or family workers in labour force and employment statistics). Unless such inconsistencies are made explicit and accounted for, there is a concrete risk that empirical analysis is severely biased. This session invites conceptual and empirical papers that investigate the biases caused by such inconsistencies, and suggest strategies to cope with them.

Parallel Session 7A: Micro-Macro Integration
Organiser:
Philippe Stauffer, Federal Statistical Office, Switzerland. philippe.stauffer@bfs.admin.ch

Households are often at the forefront of public concern, with an emphasis on the development of real income by household groups. Differences in income dynamics between household groups is often used as a rationale for specific policy measures. Yet, the picture provided by statistics in terms of real income is incomplete. For example, income or expenditure composition for various household groups or its responsiveness to business cycles is not known in aggregate statistics. Thus, it is difficult to answer questions about the differential effect on various population groups of price rises of specific products, or about the policy implications of consumption pattern changes. In the same vein, it would be important to have separate information for the different segments of the business sector, by grouping firms by size, property structure, or sector of activity. Both sets of questions can only be answered by building on a better integration of micro and macro sources. Integrating micro and macro data in a coherent way, for household as well as firms, would significantly widen the potential range of analysis, including more policy-oriented analysis, but efforts to reconcile them are still tentative. Initiatives such as vertical and horizontal coherence between surveys and national accounts should thus be encouraged. This session invites papers covering the broad issue of the integration of micro and macro sources, in particular the ways to further improve their reconciliation. Papers could focus on either household or firms, could be both methodological and empirical, and could consider a single country or a comparison of countries.

Parallel Session 7B: Economic Insecurity, Demography, and Well-Being
Organisers:
Gordon Anderson, University of Toronto, Canada. anderson@chass.utoronto.ca
Conchita D’Ambrosio, University of Milan Bicocca, Italy. conchita.dambrosio@unibocconi.it

The literature on individual well-being has recently started to consider uncertainty and insecurity as essential dimensions of poverty, often referring to them as “vulnerability”. However, if individuals are risk-averse and face the probability of uninsurable losses within their own lifetimes, economic security will be a valued aspect of well-being for all individuals, not just the poor. Indeed, most of the expenditures of modern welfare states have not redistributed resources from the rich to the poor, considered in an ex ante lifetime sense. Rather, “social insurance” programmes have redistributed between lifetime contingencies by providing benefits, in cash or in services, to all eligible beneficiaries who experience a specific loss – unemployment insurance and old age pensions being just two examples of large expenditure programmes whose objective is the smoothing of income flows over the life cycle and whose beneficiaries are typically non poor. Risk pooling occurs within households, through private insurance markets, and through social policy interventions, but it is to some extent bounded by the scale and nature of the household. With significant differences in patterns of family formation and dissolution across societies and changes over time of those patterns, the level of economic security, and the costs to individuals of economic insecurity, varies across societies and has changed over time. Understanding the economic factors underlying these patterns is important for assessing individual well-being and economic insecurity. The session invites submissions of papers on measuring economic insecurity and its determinants, in particular, but not exclusively, considering the implications of differences in family formation and dissolution. The contributions could be both theoretical and empirical, focused on a single country or a comparison of countries.

Parallel Session 8A: Price Comparisons
Organiser:
D. S. Prasada Rao, University of Queensland, Australia. p.rao@economics.uq.edu.au

International comparisons of purchasing power parities of currencies; inter-area and inter-regional price comparisons within countries; and temporal price comparisons are critical elements in comparing real incomes and standards of living, and in assessing the levels and trends in inequality in the distribution of income. Purchasing power parities (PPPs) are also currently used in the estimation of regional and global poverty using $1/day and $2/day international poverty lines. The recent release of the results from the 2005 International Comparison Program (ICP) covering 146 countries and the gross domestic product (GDP) and its components from the expenditure side has generated a lot of discussion and debate on the final results as well as on the methodology employed in international price comparisons. Similarly, there has been considerable interest in inter-area price comparisons within the USA, European Union and among large countries like China and India. The regularly published consumer price index within the context of recent rises in food and fuel prices have also sparked renewed interest in the monitoring and compilation of price indexes for temporal price comparisons. The main objective of the session is to provide a forum to discuss the latest methodological developments and empirical research in this important area of economic measurement. It is hoped that the discussions of this session will help refine the current practice in spatial and temporal price comparisons. Papers are invited on all three topics mentioned above: international, inter-area/inter-regional and temporal price comparisons.

Parallel Session 8B: Immigration and Well-Being
Organiser:
Miles Corak, University of Ottawa and Statistics Canada, Canada. mcorak@uottawa.ca

This session intends to examine the impact of immigration on individual well-being both in receiving and sending countries. The particular issues of interest are related to the various aspects of social inclusion, from the structures and policies of host countries leading to successful integration of immigrants to the individual characteristics and social capital of immigrants that enhance individual well-being. These include the following: descriptions and determinants of the social and economic success of immigrants in different host countries including the well-being of North-North, South-North, and South-South immigrants; the impact of population flows on immigrant sending countries, including remittances, return migration, and the resulting changes in labour markets, families, and society as a result of emigration; the impact of immigration on children, both those left behind and those migrating; the outcomes of second generation citizens of different origins and in different host countries, highlighting their role as markers of social integration and exclusion. Authors are encouraged to undertake comparative studies investigating the joint role of host country institutions and immigrant characteristics in determining social inclusion and individual well-being. Papers will be chosen so as to best illustrate the combination of policies in host countries and the characteristics of immigrants that are most likely to enhance social and economic development in host and sending countries, and promote individual well-being of migrants and those left behind.

Albert Braakmann, Andrea Brandolini (Chair), Barbara Fraumeni, Stephen Jenkins, Andrew Sharpe (ex officio).