Annual reports 1999


President's Report

The activities of the Association are taking on a new life for several reasons.

First, as I reported last year, we are planning for our International Input-Output Conferences to be held once every two years. This year is the 13th International Input-Output Conference in Macerata, Italy, with Maurizio Ciaschini being head of the conference arrangement committee and Michael Lahr head of the program committee. In two years (we are still determining the exact date), we will hold the 14th International Input-Output Conference in Montreal, Canada, with Chris deBresson being in charge. We are accepting requests now for holding the 15th International Input-Output Conference in 2004. If you are interested in having it in your country, please submit a brief two-page description of the location you propose, facilities you can offer (in a general sense; details will be required later); attractions of having it in your country; what agencies/organizations etc. you anticipate being able to get to help on the financing of the conference. If you need more information on the type of details we need, I suggest that you confer with our secretary who has a copy of the previous applications that he can send to you (Norbert.Rainer@oestat.gv.at). We need this information by no later than July 1.

Second, we have held two regional IIOA conferences, one in Arusha, Tanzania, Africa, for the African countries, on September 12-17, 1999, organized by one of our Vice President, Reiner Stäglin and one in Balatonfured, Hungary, for the central European countries (i.e., Baltic states, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia), on February 23-26, 2000, organized by one of our Council members, Czak Ligeti, with Andrew Brody as program chair. We are accepting invitations for future regional conferences. Please send any requests both to me (krp@mit.edu) and Norbert Rainer (Norbert.Rainer@oestat.gv.at) for hosting the international or any regional conferences by no later than July 1. The regional conferences must be self-financing.

Third, as I mentioned in my annual report for 1999, we are trying to recruit more institutional members to join the organization. In 1998 we gained three institutional members and in 1999 only one. However, we also have lost some. We will have to continue to look for additional members. Professors Shimizu and Kuroda have agreed to help locate institutional members in southeast Asia, and I am communicating with agencies and consulting firms in the United States. If any IIOA member knows of a particular organization that should be part of the IIOA, please let me know, and I can send them a letter of invitation. The annual fee for institutional members is US $1,000, and three of their group can be designated as members of IIOA, thus receiving the journal, newsletters, etc.

Fourth, the conference in Macerata, Italy, has attracted a number of young scholars and professionals who are joining the IIOA. I have talked with several of these young people at conferences and other international meetings. We are also hoping to attract some through Macerata conference web site for the 13th International Input-Output Conference.

I welcome suggestions for other ways to expand the type of activities we sponsor and to develop new ways of interchanging our ideas outside of the international conferences that are now held once every two years.

It is with great sadness that I report that Dr. Jiri Skolka, one of the founding members of the International Input-Output Association, died January 5, 2000. He and I co-edited the conference proceedings for the Innsbruck Conference and had a wonderful time communicating about input-output analyses, mushrooms, and other important matters. The September issue of the Economic Systems Research journal will contain an obituary by Josef Richter.

Two groups have held events to honor the life of Wassily Leontief, our founding father. First, five of us gave papers at the January meetings of the American Economics Association at a series "Wassily Leontief and Modern Economics" organized by Ajit Zacharias. These papers were "Wassily Leontief and Modern Economics," Faye Duchin, Chair; Harald Hagemann, "Leontief and the Kiel School;" Anwar Shaikh, "Leontief and Classical Economics;" Karen R. Polenske, "Leontief and Applied Economics;" Edward Nell, "Leontief and Sraffa;" and Ajit Zacharias, "Leontief and Mainstream Economics."

Second, the Global Development And Environment Institute (jointly affiliated with Fletcher and the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences) has founded a Leontief prize. Leontief had an association with the institute since its founding and was a member of the Advisory Board. They awarded the first prizes to John Kenneth Galbraith and Amartya Sen at an event at Fletcher on March 27, 2000. Anne P. Carter was present as a representative of the Leontief family, and I was also invited to attend. If you know of other such honorary sessions or prizes being held please let me know.

I am looking forward to seeing all of you in Macerata, Italy, August 21-25, 2000.

Karen R. Polenske
President, IIOA

Membership

In 1999 the individual membership was quite stable. The Association was able to gain one additional institutional member, on the other hand we lost four institutional members.

Membership (as of 26 March 2000)

Individual members

Individual members (including members nominated by institutional members) 335

 

Institutional members

 

Institutional members 13

Plus one contributing institutional member

 

Work of the Secretariat

The work of the Secretariat - in close co-operation with the treasurer - comprised as usual the following 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 Carfax Publishing Company (subscription of members, address changes), (e) Communicating with the Editor of the journal Economic Systems Research.

The Secretariat was also involved in the preparation and organization of the 13th International Conference on Input-Output Techniques, 21 - 25 August 2000, Macerata, Italy.

The 1999 annual business meeting of the "Gesellschaft für Input-Output-Analyse" (as requested by Austrian law) was held on 19 May 1999.

The 2000 annual business meeting will be held on 31 May 2000, 5.00 p.m., at the Institute of Econometrics and Operations Research of the Technical University of Vienna, Argentinierstraße 8, A-1040 Vienna. This meeting will be held in German language and all members of the Association can attend.

Preparation of the 13th International Conference on Input-Output Techniques, 21 - 15 August 2000, Macerata, Italy

Another task during 1999 was to proceed with the preparations of the Macerata conference. A call for papers has been distributed as well as the offer of up to five travel grants to members from non-OECD countries under the age of 40. For the first time also a Leontief Memorial Prize will be awarded. The Scientific Programme Committee under the Head of Prof. Michael Lahr has taken up its work.

The University of Macerata prepared a conference website on which all the necessary information on the conference were given (starting with the call for papers, travel grant rules, rules for the Leontief Memorial Prize, registration, booking of accommodation, information about Macerata and how to travel to Macerata, etc.). The conference website will also show the scientific programme together with the timetable.

Please note that no mailings will be made concerning any organisational issue of the Macerata conference. In case that you do not have access to the conference website, please contact the Secretary (Norbert.Rainer@oestat.gv.at, or fax +43-2244-30210) and he will be pleased to provide you with all the requested information by mail, fax or e-mail.

The address of the conference website is: http://www.unimc.it/IoConf/io_conf.htm

Norbert Rainer
Secretary, IIOA

Regional International Input-Output Conference in Tanzania, Africa

The first Regional International Input-Output Conference, which was held in Tanzania, took place in Arusha from 12 - 17 September 1999. The conference comprised 54 participants from statistical, academic and policy-oriented institutions in Japan, Europe, Tanzania and other African countries. The event was organised by the National Bureau of Statistics and was supported by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA) through Statistics Sweden and by the International Input-Output Association (IIOA).

26 papers were presented by Tanzanians and by participants from abroad covering a variety of topics. The topics included computation and use of Input-Output Tables, Social Accounting Matrices and National Accounts as well as studies on regional, sectoral, environmental and structural aspects. A Conference Proceedings Volume to be published by the National Bureau of Statistics will show the outcome of the Arusha Conference.

On the occasion of this East African Conference the new Input-Output Table of Tanzania for 1992 was also presented to the public. The Input-Output Table with 79 activities includes an import matrix and for the first time a capital formation (investment) matrix; it indicates an underestimation of gross domestic product at current prices of about 20 % in National Accounts. In the meantime the tables are published in: National Bureau of Statistics: Input Output Table for 1992, Research Papers and Reports: No. 1 (Compiled by S.M. Kapunda, J.M. Komba, R. Stäglin and the Input-Output Table Working Group), President's Office-Planning Commission, NBS, Dar es Salaam, December 1999.

Reiner Stäglin
Vice-President, IIOA

Editors Report

As far as editorial work is concerned, 1999 might be characterized by "business as usual". Volume 11 (1999) had 464 pages, which means that our page limit was exactly met. In this volume there was one special theme "In Memory of Richard Goodwin", edited by Paola Antonello. The four papers to commemorate Goodwin were devoted to the three fundamental research areas he felt were important: the global behavior of economic systems, economic interdependence and dynamics. Just before the end of the year, the final manuscripts were submitted for the special issue "Input-Output Analysis and Classical Economic Theory". This set of eight papers is edited by Heinz D. Kurz and Christian Lager and is scheduled for issue 2 in volume 12, due to appear in June 2000. I very much would like to encourage the members of the IIOA to organize a special issue. If you feel that there are topics which are not covered so well by ESR, or if you wish to bring together a coherent set of papers on a certain topic, please contact me.

A full account of the number of submissions and their current status is always made on July 1. On that date the manuscripts for issue 4 are sent to the publisher and the editorial year ends, so to speak. A detailed overview for the period July 1999 - June 2000 and a comparison with foregoing periods will be included in the last issue of volume 12 (December 2000). But already at this stage it is clear that the number of submissions will be substantially lower than the 66 that were sent in last year. As has been mentioned in previous editor's reports, the number of submissions depends strongly on the input-output conferences. The stream of papers from the New York conference has clearly dried up in the second half of 1999. So, I am looking forward to the Macerata conference. Areas that have been covered relatively well over the past years are structural decomposition analysis, energy & environmental issues and accounting. Topics which, in my view, will gain more importance in the future are on R&D, innovations, international technology and knowledge spillovers, TFP growth, and patents and citations analysis, all in an input-output framework (i.e. either the data are in an input-output format or there are methodological similarities to input-output analysis).

The work of the editorial board and the referees is extremely important for an academic journal. Typically, the reviewer's reports are of a high quality and contain relevant comments and useful suggestions for a further improvement of the submissions. Nevertheless, I am terribly sorry having to notice a tendency over the last year that troubles me. That is, referees seem to send their reports only after a considerable time. Sending out reminders seems to become common practice, while some reviewers simply do not respond at all. This behavior implies that the turnaround time of papers is increased drastically. Anyone who has ever submitted a paper to a journal, can imagine what this feels like for the authors. Yet, it is still my aim to provide authors with an editorial decision (including two referee reports) within four months. Therefore, I would like to grab this opportunity to urge all members of the IIOA who are asked to review a paper, to send me your referee's report within ten weeks upon receipt of the paper. If, for some reason, you cannot review the paper, respond to me immediately so that I can approach someone else.

Since citation patterns seem to become more and more important these days, I would like to present the so-called "intra-journal impact factors" for ESR. This factor indicates how many times a paper will be cited, on average, in ESR in the next two years after its publication in ESR. It should be stressed that such impact factors are averages, the majority of papers is not cited while just a few papers are cited more than once. The figures in the Table 1 below are obtained as follows. The 28 papers in volume 11 (1999), for example, contained 21 citations to articles published in ESR in 1997 and 1998. The number of citations per paper gives the impact factor, which yields 0.75 for 1999. High scores may indicate that there is a lot of ongoing research on the same topic and that authors closely follow the results of their colleagues. It also indicates that the journal publishes submissions without too much of a delay. As is usual for impact factors, there is a substantial amount of variation. It turns out that just one or two papers with a very extensive list of (recent) references may affect the impact factor considerably (as was the case in 1992 and 1996). It is also interesting to note that volume 9 (1997) contained two special issues on topics that are somewhat outside the area of traditional input-output analysis. The papers in these special issues contained no (or only a few) citations to ESR articles. At the same time, it should be mentioned that the figure for 1997 is somewhat biased because in this volume there were relatively many references to papers that appeared in the same volume (which are not accounted for). All in all, however, it seems that there is a slowly upward going trend (as follows from the five-year moving average).

Table 1. Intra-journal impact factors.

Year

1991

1992

1993

1994

1995

1996

1997

1998

1999

Impact Factor

0.10

0.62

0.17

0.15

0.52

0.78

0.20

0.39

0.75

Moving Average

-

-

0.31

0.45

0.36

0.41

0.53

-

-

 

Erik Dietzenbacher
Editor, Economics Systems Research

 

Report of the Treasurer

The surplus in 1999 was considerably higher than expected. There are two main reasons:

  • Again many members used to opportunity to pay their Membership Fee for two or more years. This fact increased our revenues from Membership Fees considerably and enabled us to reduce the share of banking charges. The Fee is still US $ 110.- for two years or US $ 60.- for one year.

  • The invoice for our journal did not arrive in December 1999, so that this payment was made in January 2000. Therefore, for the financial estimate for 2000 we have to consider the costs for our journal for two years (1999 and 2000).

On the expenditure side we were again able to keep the costs very low.

As regards the estimate for 2000, we are expecting a big deficit:

  • The costs for administration will be higher because of a new directory of members. We also will have to organize Council elections. The attempts to modernize our administration to make it more efficient will be continued. We will have to invest both in hardware and in software.

  • The expected expenditures related to the Macerta conference include travel grants and funds for the Leontief Award.

Josef Richter
Treasurer, IIOA

International Input-Output Association (IIOA) • Urbangasse 16/19 • A-1170, Vienna, Austria
• Fax: (+43) 1 798 93 86 • Web: www.iioa.org • Email: office@iioa.org
Copyright © 2024 IIOA.org All Right Reserved