9th Winter Workshop in Economics held in Istanbul

This year marks the the ninth year of the Winter Workshop in Economics held in Istanbul, Turkey

When Ayse Imrohoroglu and Kamil Yilmaz decided to hold the Winter Workshop in Economics (WWE) for the first time in 2007, their objective was to bring together Turkish economist living abroad with the ones living in Turkey.  There are many economists working in similar fields all around the world. They hoped that this would give people a chance to connect, get to know each other, and collaborate. Since many Turkish economists travel to Turkey during the Christmas break, they thought December would be a good month to hold this workshop. They organized these workshops with funding from Koc University. 

Until 2015, the workshop was organized by Ayse Imrohoroglu and Kamil Yilmaz with a focus on macro economic issues.  This year with support from two colleagues from Koc University, Alp Atakan and Levent Kockesen, a second workshop was added to take place on the same day, focusing on Microeconomic issues. 

The topics that are presented each year represent the interests of the researchers, but are quite often influenced by the current events in the world economy. A quick look at the list of the past programs in http://home.ku.edu.tr/~wwe/ will show topics related to the great recession; income inequality; optimal progressivity of taxes; unemployment; and health care reform, among others.

This year’s conference was very well attended. The macro session included papers about optimal monetary policy; behavior of prices in the great recession; how financial innovations may have induced investors to save more; and why start-up rates have been declining in the US, among others. In micro, topics included comparison of centralized and decentralized college admissions, a study of recent reforms in the Turkish high school admissions system, strategic inaccuracy in bargaining, and representation of preferences that lack transitivity or completeness.

2016 marks the 10th anniversary of the workshop. It will most likely take place at the end of December again. The organizers hope to make this a larger event with some invited speakers as well!