Dear EAEPE members,

It is still time for me to wish you all the very best for 2010, in both your professional and personal life.

It is also a moment to say how I am pleased and honored to be the new EAEPE General Secretary, especially in view of my great predecessors Geoff Hodgson and John Groenewegen. It is also a great pleasure to join the EAEPE secretariat where Pascal Petit (President), Albert Jolink (Treasurer), Eva Niesten (Newsletter and website editor) and myself will work together closely in expanding the academic prestige of the association in the coming years. EAEPE has always been to me an important source of new ideas, academic contacts, and friends. I wish the EAEPE to represent for the membership an association where professionalism, non conformism, novelty, and amity are central.

For EAEPE this new year will be an opportunity to implement new projects:

1) The proposal of constitutional amendments on the creation of new committees: auditing committee, strategy committee, and Board of Trustees.

2) An EAEPE summer school to be held at the University of Rome 3, at the initiative of Pasquale Tridico. The summer school will take place from 5 to 9 of July, and is expected to be a recurring and important event for the dynamism of our association.

3) A series of working papers, called PEPE, under the responsibility of Hardy Hanappi. Submissions will be coordinated by the RACs.

4) EAEPE members will continue to receive for 2010 the academic journal JOIE (Journal of Institutional Economics), which now passes from 3 to 4 issues a year.

5) A change in the membership fee and the adjustment of the income categories will be applied this year.

Besides these new projects, it is also crucial to talk about what makes the continuity in our association.

The major event is obviously the annual conference. It will be held in Bordeaux, 28-30 of October 2010, and Yannick Lung will be the local organizer. The theme this year will be centered on the economic crisis. David Soskice (Duke University) is already confirmed as a keynote speaker.
This year the Scientific Committee together with Research Area Coordinators will further improve the quality of this event, both by attracting new participants and improving the consistency of the sessions presented.

It is worthwhile to remind that EAEPE delivers each year at this annual conference several awards: The Kapp Prize, The Myrdal Prize, and The Herbert Simon Young Scholar Prize, coordinated by Klaus Kubeczko. Please do not hesitate to submit your work. The deadlines and procedures are described on the website.

Finally, the Spring Symposium is not yet a structuring event for our association, and this definitely should be improved in the next coming years.

NB: Elections for the renewal of the EAEPE council are still ongoing.
The deadline to receive your votes is February 5.
You can send your ballots by electronic mail: Jackie.Krafft@gredeg.cnrs.fr
or postal mail: Jackie Krafft, CNRS-GREDEG, 250 rue Albert Einstein, 06560 Valbonne, France.