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Annual reports 2007Presidential Address Dear Friends and Colleagues, The Association continues doing well. We got 55 new members due to the great conference we had last year in Istanbul. We record about 190 participants at our International IO Meeting on Managing the Environment this year in Seville, and we are all set for our 17th International Input-Output Conference in Sao Paolo next year. After that we might well move to a yearly international conference with 200-300 participants, marking the maturity of our Association. Our Journal is also doing well thanks to the intellectual efforts of Erik Dietzenbacher, helped by Bart Los in his last editorial year 2008. Next year Manfred Lenzen and Bart Los will take over. We wish them success in keeping up and possibly even raising the standard, and Erik for his 15 year long, excellent service of editing of our Journal Economic Systems Research. Aside from a much better contract with Francis & Taylor the publisher of our Journal and a subsequent partial reduction of membership fees with room for further reductions, the other great news is the start of the IIOA Newsletter by José Rueda-Cantuche, which you all must have enjoyed like I did. Other news is the continued improvement of our website and the start of an Input-Output Working Paper Series, to be edited by Erik Dietzenbacher and Bent Thage, which will be run through our website. So, the Association is doing well, as is its Journal and its Conferences, but how about input-output analysis? The easy answer is, it is doing well too, precisely because the Association is doing well. The difficult answer is that it is definitely doing well judged by the continuous extension of its fields of application. Also it is doing well judged by the intensive use of input-output statistics, social accounting statistics and all kind of satellite accounts. However, it might do better if we could include the interaction of prices and quantities between sectors, institutions, regions and countries in CGE-type of analyses in all of our applications and thus in our conferences and our journal too, and that is my more personal wish for our future.Jan Oosterhaven Membership As of June 15, 2008 the IIOA counted 424members, 45 of whom were nominated by our 15 institutional members. This represents a significant increase in the net membership base, up 28% from 332 in 2007. 123 members joined in 2007 and 2008, of which 55 had received a two-year free membership based on their participation at the Istanbul Conference. The number of institutional members slightly decreased. Membership (as of June 15, 2008). Institutional members: 15
Work of the Management The work of the Management – Secretary and Treasurer - embraced the following usual activities: (a) Membership administration, (b) Recording of payments of Membership Fees, including dispatching reminders, (c) Responding to letters from members and others, (d) Communicating with the Council, (e) Communicating with our Publishing Company (subscription of members, address changes), (f) Communicating with the Editor of the journal Economic Systems Research, (g) Updating and enlarging the website together with the webmaster, (h) Organising the Council meetings and the General Assembly, (i) Acting on order of the Council, (j) Supporting the preparation our the Conferences. Immediately after the Istanbul conference, the Secretary sent a feedback questionnaire to all participants in order to survey the satisfaction of the participants and to collect proposals for improvements. The overall evaluation of the conference was very excellent. Areas of desirable improvements were seen in the following issues: more direct information on the conference preparations (not only via the website, but also via e-mails; e.g. reminders on deadlines; papers should be available before the conference (this should be more helpful to choose the sessions to be attended and would increase discussion); it was appreciated that the “no-shows” were considerably smaller than in past conferences, but still disturbing and should be further reduced. A stricter regime as regards full paper and registration fee may be needed. In 2007 an additional important task was performed in the designing and development of the new web-based membership administration system which was rolled out in June 2008. On 15 January 2007 an irregular session of the General Assembly took place in Vienna (based on the old statutes) in order to decide on the revised statutes. The revised statutes were drafted by the statutes review committee consisting of Thijs ten Raa (Chair), Jan Oosterhaven, the late Chris de Bresson and the Secretary. Their draft was later discussed and on approved by the Council. In the development of the revised statutes also an Austrian Lawyer was engaged in order to ensure that the draft is consistent with the Austrian law. The irregular session of the General Assembly approved the revised statutes with smaller changes, most of them for clarification purposes. The final version of the statutes was subsequently reported to the Austrian authorities. They approved the statutes with the exception of the following sentence in Article 14: “The Secretary and the Treasurer are appointed for a period of up to five years.” It was concerned that the appointment period was not fixed. Thus, this sentence was changed into “The Secretary and the Treasurer are appointed for a period of three years.” With this amendment the new statutes were approved by the Austrian authorities on 1 March 2007.
Results of the Council Activities 2007During the Istanbul Conference the Council held two meetings (1 and 3 July 2007). The usual items on the agenda are both administrative ones, such as the reports of the management, the report of the Editor, approval of the financial report and decision on the budget of the next two years, the preparation of the General Assembly, as well as strategic ones, such as the scientific activities of the IIOA, especially the organisation of the intermediate and the international input-output conferences. In between the face-to face council meetings the Council works and decides on written procedure by e-mail exchange. During the year 2007 the following main decisions were taken:
Report on the General Assembly held on 5 July 2007 in IstanbulOur new statutes intends to hold the regular sessions of the General Assemblies in connection with our International Input-Output Conferences that are taking place every two years, and also at the place where the Conferences takes place in order to ensure maximum participation of our members. The General Assembly in Istanbul on 5 July 2007, held in the Conference Hall, Macka Campus, Istanbul Technical University, 18.00 - 20.05, was thus the first one under the new conditions. 69 members participated. The Agenda items were dealt with:
According to the decisions of the Council taken at the Sendai conference in 2006 to elect Fellows of the IIOA to honour appropriate members of the IIOA for their scientific contributions to the field of input-output analysis, broadly defined, the Council nominated the first three Fellows and handed over the certificate to them:
The Annual Report 2006 was mailed to the members in June 2007. Additional explanations to the Annual Report were given by the officers. The General Assembly approved the annual Report 2006 unanimously.
The financial statement 2006 was also mailed to the members in June 2007. Further explanations were given by our Treasurer. The General Assembly approved the financial statement 2006 unanimously.
The membership fee was US $ 60.-per annum without any differentiation. The Council decided to propose to the General Assembly the following annual membership fee structure: for members resident in OCED countries the membership fee should remain at US $ 60.-, for members resident in non-OECD countries and for students there should be a reduced membership fee of US $ 15.-. The discussion at the General Assembly resulted in two more proposals suggested by members: the first one, the reduced membership fee of US $ 15.- should be valid for all members; the second one, the reduced membership fee should only be applicable for students. It was also discussed that the differentiation between OECD and non-OECD is a quite rough indicator for income size; however, an operational and easy criteria is necessary for easy and unambiguous administration. The General Assembly voted on all three proposals: The proposal of the Council received a majority and will thus be implemented from 2008 onwards.
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Number of papers | |||||
Year | 2003 | 2004 | 2005 | 2006 | 2007 |
Rejected directly by the editors | 6 | 10 | 14 | 9 | 3 |
Rejected because of referee reports | 20 | 12 | 6 | 9 | 4 |
Withdrawn by the author(s) | 1 | - | - | - | - |
Currently with the referees | - | 14 | 8 | 9 | 27 |
Currently with the author(s) for revision | 1 | 6 | 8 | 6 | 4 |
Accepted for publication | 16 | 6 | 6 | 7 | 4 |
Special issues | 8 | 7 | 6 | 7 | 13 |
Total | 52 | 55 | 48 | 47 | 54 |
Rejection rate (%)a | 61 | 46 | 48 | 45 | 17 |
Acceptance rate (%)a | 36 | 13 | 14 | 18 | 10 |
Remainder (%)a | 2 | 42 | 38 | 37 | 73 |
a Percentages are based only on the ordinary submissions, i.e. excluding the contributions to special issues. The rejection rate includes the withdrawn papers and the remainder consists of submissions with the referees or with the author(s) for revision.
Erik Dietzenbacher
Editor, Economic Systems Research
Fiscal year 2007 was characterized by two significant developments in IIOA accounting: a) start of the development of the IIOA web-based membership administration system (WEBADMIN) aimed at facilitating online membership contributions, decentralized member address data updating, real-time access to fully updated member contacts, and individual password based access to free ESR downloads; and b) introduction of IIOA online banking for the main operational accounts, which facilitates faster alignment of the IIOA financial database with wire transfers from private and institutional IIOA members.
Auditing of the IIOA accounts remained in the hands of Otto Kremser, the chartered accountant appointed in 2006, and Joachim Lamel who has served IIOA as auditor for many years.
The financial report compiled by the treasurer is stated in US dollars while the bigger part of the IIOA expenditures accrue in Euros. Therefore the sharp rise in the US$/Euro exchange rate triggered a notable increase in costs expressed in US$ after adjustment for periodicity. The financial report for 2007 indicates that projections for the fiscal year had been somewhat overly pessimistic on the revenues side but reasonably precise on the expenditures side. The surplus of US$ 17,175 must be read with caution: the payment by the IIOA to Routledge for publishing and distribution of the journal ESR to our members has been delayed to January 2008 due to belated invoicing by the publishing house. These reduced expenses artificially boost the surplus by US$ 11,730. Since IIOA applies pure revenues and expense accounting, adjustments of periodicity are not permitted in displaying of our accounts.
On the revenues side, membership contributions slightly increased from their 2006 level due to new members attracted by the IIOA Istanbul Conference. The level of membership contributions for individual members continued to amount to US$ 110 for two years or US$ 60 for one year. Interest revenue soared due to savings moved from regular savings accounts to a call-money account, and also US$ 1,648 in delayed interest obtained for 2006. Royalty revenues obtained from Routledge remained at the level of the previous year. There were no refunds paid to IIOA from the Istanbul conference organizers. However, the conference organizers refunded more than 7,000 Euros in IIOA council travel expenses, which reduced expenditures as explained in the following paragraph.
On the expenditure side, the cost of publishing the ESR journal increased notably due to the rising number of members, yet these costs are stated in the estimate for 2008 due to delayed invoicing by Routledge in January 2008. The item Banking charges and tax on interest accrued increased notably since IIOA had increased interest revenues. Expenses for mailings dropped slightly as there were no Council elections in 2007. Administration costs decreased slightly to US$ 3.3 thousand. It shall be noted that this is less than 10 percent of what other scientific organizations with a comparable membership base spend. ICT expenses increased by US$ 1,600 due to website migration expenses. These were triggered by two changes of web-hosters for the IIOA website, the first of which was an emergency migration. The appointment of IIOA fellows and reimbursement of their travel to IIOA conferences has been newly introduced in 2007. The conference costs for Istanbul exclude the direct reimbursements for IIOA council travel expenses by the conference organizers, as these reimbursements were not made via IIOA accounts. Prizes and awards doubled to $ 2,000 due to the introduction of the Sir Richard Stone Prize in 2007.
For 2008 IIOA again expects a surplus, particularly since the renewal of IIOA’s contract with its publisher Routledge led to an agreement to increase royalty revenues. Membership contributions are expected to drop since the contribution rate for non-OECD members and students was reduced to US$ 15 per year. ICT expenditure is expected to peak in 2008 due to finalization of the new web-based administration system and online members’ area. A conservative estimate of the costs for the Seville conference amounts to US$ 15,000. This includes travel grants awarded to junior researchers among the IIOA members and IIOA Council travel. As per agreement of the IIOA Council in 2007, contributions by conference organizers to the IIOA will not be made in the future. From 2008 onwards US $ 5,000 are expected to be spent annually on assistance to the chief editor of the ESR.
Christof Paparella
Treasurer, IIOA
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