President's Letter | Summer 2024
I hope this letter finds you well this summer! I’d like to thank you for your strong support of the Association and tell you about the progress we have recently made at AREUEA.
We celebrated AREUEA’s 60th anniversary with an outstanding National Conference at the end of May – check out conference photos on the homepage of our website! More photos can be found in the “Member Content” section, and you may find yours there, if not on our AREUEA homepage. From those photos, you can tell it was an intellectually stimulating and socially engaging gathering. Thanks to Albert Saiz, our First Vice President and the conference organizer, for such a wonderful program and the sharp AREUEA backpack!
Some National Conference highlights include:
- For the first time, we had four concurrent sessions, and the total number of “regular” sessions increased from 15 to 20. Despite that, the program remained highly selective given the record number of paper submissions. Thanks to the Program Committee for their efforts!
- For two consecutive years, we have had over 250 participants at our National Conference! But it’s more than just the number – the quality of papers and presentations, the level of participation in our sessions, and the overall atmosphere at the conference were impressive.
- The WREN breakfast featured a panel discussion on “"Strategies and Tricks of the Trade for Publishing in Economics, Finance, and Policy Journals." Thanks to journal editors Brent Ambrose, Stephanie Moulton, Eva Steiner, and Siqi Zheng for their insights, and to Rachel Meltzer, Sonia Gilbukh and the WREN Committee for organizing the event!
- During the three Junior Scholars sessions, junior scholars presented their work and their mentors provided constructive feedback. Our other mentoring program, the Pipeline Scholars Program, hosted 12 undergraduate and graduate students who are interested in a career in real estate and urban economics research. By having these programs, we are investing in AREUEA’s future! Thanks to Ruchi Singh, Luis Lopez, Ben Keys, Kyle Mangum, Tingyu Zhou, and Shawn McCoy for organizing and moderating the sessions.
- We hosted another great Policy Forum luncheon. The AREUEA Policy Forum is a new initiative we started two years ago to build bridges between research and policy making in real estate and urban policy and to increase the visibility and impact of our research. Albert Saiz moderated a great panel discussion on "Families, children, and economic mobility in cities."
- Nancy Wallace received the John Quigley Medal, AREUEA’s highest honor, and gave an enlightening award address titled "The Wildfire Risk of California Residential Real Estate: Measurement, property insurance, and mitigation policies”. Thanks to Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh and the Nominating Committee for a great selection!
- We awarded the Best Conference Paper Prize to Ferdinando Monte, Charly Porcher, and Esteban Rossi-Hansberg and the Best Junior Scholar Paper Prize to Robert French and Valentine Gilbert. Thanks to Jeff Lin and the Awards Committee for their hard work in selecting the winners.
In June, we also had a great AREUEA International Conference in Curaçao, which was hosted by Maastricht University’s School of Business and Economics and the University of Curaçao. I had to miss it, but I heard it was very enjoyable! Thanks to the local organizers, Nils Kok and Guido Rojer! Later this month, the 2024 AREUEA-Asian Real Estate Society (AsRES) Joint Conference will take place in Hsinchu, Taiwan. Our AREUEA-ASSA annual conference will be in San Francisco in January 2025. We have received another record high number of submissions, and our Second Vice President, Siqi Zheng, is putting the finishing touches on the program.
Post-pandemic, lots of conferences including the ASSA conference have experienced significant challenges in drawing participation. In stark contrast, our AREUEA conferences have remained extremely strong. I wanted to thank every one of you who have contributed to our collective success including simply attending our conferences!
Our journal Real Estate Economics is thriving with strong submission volumes and fast turnaround times. Please remember to send your best work to our journal! After a busy spring semester, the Virtual Seminars will take a summer break until late August. You can watch past seminars on our website and find instructions for submitting your work for consideration for the fall semester. We are also planning for a third Policy Forum this year to be held in the fall. Our data initiative is well-underway, and we are working on taking our International Conference to Latin American soon.
We have an enthusiastic Board of Directors. At its May meeting, the Board had an extensive discussion about our strategies and made several important decisions to further strengthen the organization. For example, it approved additional funding for our mentoring programs and for special issues of our Journal. We also agreed to establish a special task force to see how to make our AREUEA website more informative and valuable to you (regular website visitors will have noticed that we have already made some improvements to the website in the past a few weeks).
I once heard the comment from a colleague: “AREUEA does a lot, more than other academic organizations.” Yes, WE do! Three to four major conferences; mentoring programs such as the Junior Scholars Program, the Pipeline Scholars Program, and WREN; Virtual Seminars; Policy Forums; data initiative; PCI effort; social media; membership campaign; our Association journal, and awards! All those things take effort. In that regard, I wanted to thank all the committee members, volunteers, and every one of you for your contributions! Together, WE make AREUEA a great organization!
Let’s keep the momentum going, and I look forward to seeing you at various AREUEA events in the fall and at our San Francisco AREUEA-ASSA Conference in January 2025!
Xudong An
President, AREUEA
Vice President, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia
[email protected]
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