Report on the Activities of the Australasian Standing Committee

Presented to the Executive Committee of the Econometric Society, Istanbul, 25 August 1996 by Alan Woodland, Chair of the Australasian Standing Committee

Historical Background
Administration and Organization of Australasian Activities
Initiatives
The Australasian Meetings
Financial Arrangements
Membership
Concluding Remarks

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Historical Background

The Australasian Standing Committee and the Australasian Region of the Econometric Society came into being in the early 1980s following an approach to the Executive Committee by a group of Australians. In 1982, Max King and his colleagues in the Department of Econometrics at Monash University organized a conference of some 73 Australian econometricians called the Australian Econometrics Study Group which met on 26-28 August. This meeting was established as a result of some dissatisfaction with conference arrangements for econometricians in the region and a desire to meet on a regular basis. At about the same time, economic theorists also started an Economic Theory Workshop for similar reasons. The time therefore seemed right for the creation of a new set of meetings in the Australasian region.

At a general meeting, the participants at the Monash conference agreed that the Australian Econometrics Study Group meeting had been very successful, discussed the possibility of organizing future meetings, and then debated a proposal put forward by Max King that future meetings be organized through the Econometric Society. There were two main outcomes. First, it was decided to hold another meeting in 1983 with the organisational responsibility to be taken by Ray Byron at the Australian National University. Second, the participants of this meeting then elected a committee consisting of Ray Byron, David Giles, Adrian Pagan, Alan Powell and Alan Woodland, with Max King as secretary and Ted Hannan as chair. The committee was charged with the responsibility of approaching the Econometric Society to formally set up an Australasian region, or, alternatively, of forming an Australasian Econometric Society with the purpose of conducting future meetings in the region. Fortunately, the suggestion from this committee that future meetings be arranged under the auspices of the Econometric Society received considerable support and enthusiasm from the members of the Executive Committee which met in Dublin in September 1982.

The President of the Society, James Mirrlees, responded very positively to the committee and outlined possible ways of proceeding. With details to be worked out before formal recognition could be given, the Interim Standing Committee set up suggestions for the composition of the standing committee and its future membership evolution and forwarded these to the President. The interim committee was provided with a loan of USD$2,000 to help the initial funding of meetings and arrangements proceeded for the holding of the Canberra meeting in September 1983. The formal establishment of the Australasian Standing Committee of the Econometric Society was subsequently undertaken at the Pisa meeting of the Executive Committee in September 1983. Professor E J Hannan was appointed by the incoming President, Herbert Scarf, as Chair of the Australasian Standing Committee, a post he held until he resigned in 1986.

At that stage, however, no decision had been made to establish Australasia as a separate operational region of the Society. Following a formal request from the Australasian Standing Committee and the demonstrated success of the Canberra meeting held in September 1983 and of the subsequent Sydney meeting held in August 1984, this decision was taken at the Madrid meeting of the Executive Committee on 3 September 1984 and the Australasian Region came into existence at the beginning of 1985. Along with the establishment of the Australasian Region came the appointment of E J Hannan as the first Australasian Region’s member of the Council by the President, Amartya Sen. At this point the formalities in the creation of the Australasian Region, consisting of Australia and New Zealand, and Standing Committee had been completed, just a little over two years since the crystallization of the initial idea and its presentation to the Society. The successful completion of this task is due in large measure to the foresight of Max King in initiating the proposal and his dedicated efforts in bringing it to fruition.

Since the formation of the Interim Standing Committee in 1983, regional meetings have been successfully held every year excluding those years when the World Congress has been held. While those who attended the Monash meeting in 1982 were enthusiastic about the concept of future meetings there was, as I recall, some concern as to whether annual meetings were viable. As it has turned out, there was no need for any concerns on this score; the meetings have been successful and are now well established in the region. The venues of the Australasian Meetings of the Econometric Society held since then, together with the co-chairs, are presented in Table 1.

The 1997 meeting will be held at the University of Melbourne with Vance Martin and Peter Bardsley as co-chairs while the 1998 meeting will be hosted by the Australian National University, the co-chairs being Chris Skeels and Simon Grant. Currently, there are strong expressions of interest by at least two universities for hosting the 1999 meetings and formal proposals are expected to be passed on to the Standing Committee soon. Thus, the future of the Australasian meetings for the rest of this millennium seems secure!

Administration and Organization of Australasian Activities

The Australasian Standing Committee consists of the Chair (appointed by the President), Secretary (elected by the Standing Committee for 3-year terms), Australasian Members of the Council, the two co-chairs of the program committee of the past, current and future meetings, and a member elected by the committee to provide regional balance. The Standing Committee is charged with the responsibility of organizing and administering the operations of the Econometric Society in the Australasian Region. In particular, its main purpose is to ensure the successful operation of the regional meetings by establishing and implementing procedures whereby the venue is chosen and the program and organizing committee chairs are appointed. The Standing Committee also maintains records and, more generally, deals with any issues of importance to Society members. The Secretary of the committee also acts as Treasurer, maintaining the financial accounts and records and administering the Regional Fund.

The Standing Committee evolves through time as a result of the rule that co-chairs of the past, present and future meetings are members of the committee. Another important membership rule is that one additional member is chosen by the committee to provide regional balance. This was thought to be very important; without it there is a risk that membership will be concentrated along the Sydney-Canberra-Melbourne axis, which has the greatest concentration of universities and Econometric Society members. The member chosen for regional balance has come from Armidale, Auckland, Christchurch, Gold Coast and Perth. Because of these two membership rules, there has been a healthy change in the composition of the committee while still retaining continuity.

In 1992 the Standing Committee approved an Aide-Memoire that sets out the arrangements for the Australasian activities of the Econometric Society. This document was adapted from the European Aide-Memoire, the changes being made to deal with local conditions.

While the Aide-Memoire maintained the distinction between the Program Committee and the Local Arrangements Committee as set out in the European document, it has been normal practice to have the functions of these two committees to be undertaken by a single program/organizing committee. That is, it has been the practice for the co-chairs and members of the program/organising committee to come from the host university. That committee undertakes the local arrangements, seeks financial sponsorship and settles the program: in other words, it performs all tasks related to the organization and running of the Australasian meetings. The clear advantage is that the co-ordination of various tasks is made much easier under this centralized system; the disadvantage is that significant resource and time demands are placed upon the co-chairs and their committee, which is typically relatively small (6-8 people). Nevertheless, given that that Australasian meetings are relatively small and that the Australasian Region does not consist of a large number of separate countries, unlike some of the other regions such as Europe and Latin America, the current system of having one committee to undertake all organizational tasks has worked very well and seems suited to the region.

There have been some exceptions to this practice. Twice the co-chairs or committee members have come from different universities in the same city; and occasionally (as with the recent Perth meeting) some committee members have been appointed from other cities to ensure balance in committee composition. This procedure is likely to become more prevalent, especially if the Standing Committee is to sometimes choose smaller universities as the host institutions.

Initiatives

The Australasian Standing Committee has undertaken some initiatives that are worthy of particular mention. Firstly, it has established several named lectures that are given by invited speakers at the annual conferences. There are now three such lectures named in honour of distinguished Australasian economists and econometricians who also had a strong involvement with the Econometric Society. These are the A W Phillips Lecture established in 1987 and first given at the Canberra meeting in 1988, the Colin Clark Lecture first given at the Armidale meeting in 1994, and the E J (Ted) Hannan Lecture which was approved (subject also to ratification by the Hannan family) at the recent July 1996 meeting of the Standing Committee held in Perth. Each of these was a Fellow of the Society, and Ted Hannan was both a member of Council and the inaugural Chair of the Australasian Standing Committee.

The A W Phillips Lecture was given by John B Taylor in 1988, David Hendry in 1989, Daniel McFadden in 1991, Clive W J Granger in 1992, Peter Robinson in 1993, Jean-Jacques Laffont in 1994, and by Arie Kapteyn at the 1996 meetings in Perth. The Colin Clark Lecturers to date are John F Geweke (Armidale, 1994) and Elhanan Helpman (Perth, 1996).

The Jacob Marschak Lecture rotates among the regions and has been given three times at the Australasian meetings. The first was given by Jerry A Hausman at the Canberra meeting in 1988, the second by Mervyn King at Monash in 1992, and the most recent was given to the 1996 Perth meeting by Ronald Gallant.

Secondly, a decision was taken at the 1989 meeting of the Standing Committee to use some of the regional funds to encourage the participation of promising graduate students in the annual meetings. This encouragement has been effected by providing AUD$2,500 to the Chairs of recent meetings to enable them to award, on a competitive basis, grants-in-aid to graduate students who have a paper accepted for presentation. To gain acceptance, students have to compete with all paper contributors; there is no separate category for graduate students. It is strongly felt by committee members that this is a very worthy cause and that it has been very successfully implemented. Indeed, some program Chairs have contributed additional funds to grants-in-aid for graduate students from their general conference revenues. As an indication of the success of this initiative in encouraging participation, it is noted from Table 2 that the number of students attending the conference has averaged around 20 in the meetings since 1991.

Thirdly, work is currently being undertaken to set up a home page for the Australasian Region on the Internet. This will provide information about the activities of the Australasian Standing Committee, provide access on links to past and future conference details, and establish links to most of the departments of economics and econometrics within Australia and New Zealand.

The Australasian Meetings

As indicated above, the Australasian Meetings of the Econometric Society officially began with the Canberra meeting in 1983. This meeting was held over three days (two effective days since the conference started and finished in the middle of the day). There were two invited lectures and 33 contributed papers in two simultaneous sessions. Of these, 14 were papers in economic theory and the other 19 were in applied econometrics and econometric theory. There were 63 participants.

Since then the meetings have expanded in all aspects. The standard conference length is now three full days, there are typically three or four invited speakers, there are typically three simultaneous sessions, and the number of participants is now usually in the order of 130-140, with the Canberra meetings in 1988 and the Monash meetings in 1992 attracting significantly greater numbers of participants. The number of contributed papers is now approximately 100, three times the number presented at the first Canberra meeting. The organizational and financial burdens have grown commensurably.

The Standing Committee has taken the view that, within the general constraints and philosophy established by it from time to time, the co-chairs should have the freedom to undertake whatever innovations they see fit in organizing the conferences. Typically, the more recent conferences have been organized around three streams: economic theory, econometric theory, and applied econometrics. While three simultaneous streams are now typical, earlier meetings had only two simultaneous sessions labelled econometrics and economics. The Monash meeting had four streams, and at the most recent meeting in Perth there were also four simultaneous sessions: econometric theory, economic theory, microeconometrics, and macroeconometrics and finance. There are normally three or four invited speakers, who address the whole collection of participants in plenary sessions. In some meetings special sessions or symposia are run on some specialized topic, usually chosen on the basis of speaker availability and current interests.

There has been a recurrent debate within the Standing Committee about the future direction of the meetings in terms of their size and structure. One of the principal advantages of small conferences such as the Australasian Meetings is that there is close interaction between conference participants who therefore get to know each other well. This cohesiveness tends to be lost in larger conferences that also have many simultaneous sessions. There has therefore been a principle in operation that program co-chairs should try to limit the number of simultaneous sessions to prevent segmentation of participants and to foster more cohesiveness. However, with growing submissions of papers and interest in having specialized sessions, there is a trade-off between the size of the conference and the number of simultaneous sessions that co-chairs and the Standing Committee need to monitor carefully.

The proportion of papers presented at the Australasian meetings in the area of econometrics as distinct from economic theory seems fairly high in comparison with the North American and European Meetings and with the World Congress. This conclusion is based upon casual observation and comments by overseas visitors, and it would be useful to undertake a more rigorous analysis of the various meetings’ programs to substantiate it. Table 3 provides a break-up of contributed papers into three categories: economic theory, econometric theory and applied econometrics. While this break-up is fairly arbitrary (being based upon the titles of the papers and/or sessions in which the papers were given), they are reasonably indicative of the nature of the Australasian conferences. For the 1991-1996 conferences, in aggregate there were a total of 445 contributed papers of which 23% were categorized as economic theory, 34% as econometric theory, and the remaining 43% as applied econometrics. Thus, allowing for the possibility that some papers designated applied econometrics are really economics papers of an applied nature (the reverse is also quite possible), it seems reasonably clear that there are fewer economics papers than there are econometrics papers. Moreover, there is a downward trend in the proportion of papers that are in economic theory. The imbalance between econometrics and economics has been a source of some concern for the Standing Committee in recent years and attempts are being made to increase the number of quality papers presented in the economic theory stream. There are, of course, other specialized workshops and conferences being run that provide strong competition for the Australasian Meetings for the presentation of papers in economic theory. One reason for the preponderance of econometrics papers is that econometrics seems very strong in Australasia (perhaps due partly to the existence of separate departments of econometrics in many of the Australian universities, an arrangement almost unique to Australia). Consequently, a relatively large number of econometricians might be expected to generate a large number of econometrics papers, both theoretical and applied. While this is arguably true, the Standing Committee would nevertheless like to encourage more economic theorists to participate in the Australasian meetings and aims to take steps to achieve this objective in the next two meetings.

The organizers of the recent Perth meeting have initiated an idea that may be taken up by other conference organizers. They requested all papers to be submitted in a standard form suitable for reproduction and then produced four bound volumes of papers which were made available to all participants in their conference satchel upon arrival. The cost of the volumes (containing over 2500 pages of submitted papers) was AUD$65.00, which was included in the registration fee. The clear advantage of this initiative is that presenters do not have to take copies to the conference and/or do not have to undertake the costs and effort of a subsequent mailout; and participants have ready access to all papers at the conference. The Australasian Standing Committee noted the success of this method at the Perth conference but is leaving it open to future organizers to make their own arrangements. Clearly, another approach is to have papers available on a conference web site on the Internet. While there are a variety of methods available, it seems an important and practical aim to have conference papers readily accessible.

While most of the Australasian meetings have occurred independently of other meetings, the Standing Committee has considered joint meetings from time to time and there have been two meetings held jointly with others. In 1988, the bicentenary of European settlement of Australia, the Australasian Meetings were held in Canberra as part of the 1988 Australian Economics Congress. Other societies to hold their meetings at the same time at this venue were the Economic Society of Australia, the Australian Agricultural Economics Society and the Economic History Society of Australia and New Zealand. At that meeting we were very pleased to have the members of the Executive Committee of the Econometric Society in attendance for their meeting and participation in the conference. On one other occasion, the Australasian Meetings were held in Melbourne at Monash University in 1992 immediately before, and overlapping one day with, the annual meetings of the Economic Society of Australia held at the University of Melbourne. Although held at different universities the two conferences were closely co-ordinated, had some sessions in common and allowed for joint registration. While we have been open to the possibility of further co-operative efforts of this nature (which have clear travel cost gains but also substantial coordination costs on the part of the co-chairs) and have taken some initiatives to suggest joint meetings or common venues, there has not been a fortuitous coincidence of venue and timing of related conferences. Consequently, since 1988 the Australasian meetings have not been held jointly with other societies’ meetings.

The Australasian Meetings have been successful in fostering intellectual exchange between Australasians and others from various parts of the world. As an indicator of the attraction of the meetings to overseas economists and econometricians, the distributions by region of the participants at the meetings held during 1992-1996 are presented in Table 4. The geographical distribution of the 603 participants attending these four meetings was as follows: Australia and New Zealand (77.8%), Asia (7.2%), North America (9.5%) and Europe (5.5%). Thus, some 22% (134 participants) came from outside Australasia. Excluding Monash, which had an unusually large number of (Australasian) participants, the percentage of overseas visitors is higher at around 24%. While similar records have not been kept for most of the other conferences, there is no reason to expect that the geographic distribution of participants of the conferences held at these venues would be significantly different from the distributions for other venues.

Financial Arrangements

The Australasian Standing Committee administers a Regional Fund that is used for several purposes related to the running of the Australasian meetings. The fund was initiated by a small grant from Monash University and received a welcome boost through a loan of USD$2,000 from the Executive of the Econometric Society in 1983. Over the thirteen years since its inception in 1983, the fund has grown to the sum of AUD$30,859.80 as of 30 June 1996. The fund provides insurance for unexpected conference shortfalls and allows flexibility in forward planning.

The only sources of funds have been the profits earned by the various conferences and the interest earned from investments in bank term deposits. Most of the conferences have yielded a profit, due largely to substantial funds usually donated by the host institution, allowing the fund to grow. Table 5 presents a summary of the financial health of the fund, showing for each year the net income, fund balance and the net conference proceeds. It is the current aim of the Standing Committee to maintain the fund at roughly its present level. This level provides a strong buffer against unforeseen losses in meetings. To maintain the fund at this level, the meetings will be required to make small profits (on average at least) to allow for annual expenses such as the provision of funding for graduate student participation in the meetings.

Table 6 provides some information on the main income and expenditure categories for those Australasian Meetings for which data are readily available. The first part of the table shows the main sources of revenue. While registration fees are the biggest revenue item, reliance upon donations from the host institution is heavy and, moreover, is generally understated since the department of the conference chairs usually provides considerable support in kind (secretarial support, postage, materials and sometimes support for invited speakers) that are often not included in the financial reports. Outside funding has been minimal for the most part.

The second part of the table shows some expenditure categories, namely the costs of air fares and accommodation for invited speakers, grants-in-aid to student participants presenting papers, and payments to the Econometric Society representing new membership fees. The latter are a result of the pricing of registration fees to provide a financial incentive for registrants to take out membership of the Econometric Society if they are not already members. It is clear from the table that the number of new members has been in the order of 30-40 in recent years. Evidently, many of these new members are not retained in subsequent years and/or are from outside Australia and New Zealand, since overall membership for the Australasian region (shown in the last column of Table 2) has grown much more slowly than the figures in Table 6 might suggest.

The main expenditure by conference organisers is on travel and accommodation for the invited speakers. These are normally the people giving the Invited Lectures but may also include others invited to participate in special sessions or symposia. It has been a policy of the organizers to not provide travel and/or accommodation funding for those giving contributed papers. While expenditures on invited speakers are normally made out of general funds derived mainly from the host institution, other sources have been obtained from time to time. These include subsidies from other universities where the speaker may be visiting and from private and government sources. The latter have not been significant sources of funds to date. Recognizing the past (somewhat burdensome) reliance on host donations of both money and services/materials in kind, there has been a shift in recent years towards alternative sources of outside funds and, more particularly, to higher registration fees. The aim, therefore, is to have the costs of running the meetings to be largely or fully covered by the registration fees and outside donations, with little or no reliance on funds from the host institution. Further shifts in this direction will be essential if the meetings are to be hosted by some of the smaller universities.

Membership

The participation in the Australasian Meetings by members of the Society is fairly high. Approximately one-half of the participants attending the meetings in recent years are Econometric Society members, as indicated by the figures in Table 2. Table 2 also provides information on the numbers of Society members residing in the Australasian region, the figures being taken from various annual reports of the Society. Although membership has grown more rapidly than participation, the participation rate is reasonably high and is currently around 66% (though it is overstated by inclusion of participants who are Society members from other regions).

Australasian membership of the Society currently constitutes around 2.8% of the total membership. There are currently 5 fellows of the Society in the Australasian region out of a total 1994 membership (members excluding students) of 99. The percent ratio of fellows to members in the Society as a whole is reported to be 13.6% in 1994. Accordingly, the ratio of fellows to members is far less in Australasia (5%) than in the Society generally. While there is clearly no case for a uniform fellow/member ratio throughout the world, the relatively low ratio for Australasia may be indicative of special difficulties in getting worthy candidates from distant regions such as Australasia recognized and well known in the more populous regions like Europe and North America (which have 92% of all fellows), and, hence, in getting them elected as fellows. Certainly, the potential problems associated with distance is a source of some concern to the Australasian fellows and the Australasian Standing Committee and, I believe, should also be of concern to the Society more generally and to the fellowship nominating committee in particular.

Concluding Remarks

The Australasian Meetings of the Econometric Society have now been in operation for some thirteen years. From a small, enthusiastic but somewhat uncertain beginning, the annual meetings have now become an established part of the academic scene in Australia and New Zealand and their future is both secure and promising. Australasia is a long way from other centres of concentration of the economics discipline and the Australasian Meetings have played an important role in the dissemination of ideas and in professional discourse, not only in acting as a focal point for bringing together econometricians and economists within Australia that espouse the quantitative and analytical approach to economics, but also in fostering an intellectual interchange between economists in Australasia and those in other parts of the world. The bringing to Australia and New Zealand of prominent invited speakers and the encouragement of participation in the Australasian Meetings of economists from such areas as Europe, North America and Asia has been particularly valuable in my opinion. The Society has achieved significant progress within the region over the last thirteen years. Hopefully, the Australasian Standing Committee and the Econometric Society can build upon this foundation and make more progress in the future.