President's Column
April 2022
Registration is now open for the 2022 AAEA Annual Meeting in Anaheim, CA this year, July 31- August 2. We have lined up an exciting group of invited speakers, including Robert Pindyck (MIT) for the Galbraith Forum, Awudu Abdulai for the Fellows Address and Norbert Wilson giving the Presidential Address. The theme of the Gordon Rausser Keynote Lecture and Panel Discussion, organized jointly with C-FARE, is “Communicating Agricultural and Applied Economics Research to Stakeholders for Greater Impact,” with Shefali Mehta, the Deputy Under Secretary for Research, Education, and Economics, USDA, as the keynote speaker. Her talk will be followed by a panel discussion with Keith Coble (Mississippi State), Lowell Randel (Randel Group, and AAEA Government Relations), Kent Schescke (CAST) and Laura Wood Peterson (LWP Consulting) to provide both an academic and non-academic perspective on effective strategies for increasing the impact of our research.
This year we received 1,068 submitted Selected Presentation abstracts. We were able to accept 805, which gives us an acceptance rate of 75%. Thanks to the Topic Leaders that managed the review and selection process and are now putting together the Selected Presentation sessions. You should have received a notification letter last month regarding your abstract, if you did not receive one, please reach out to the AAEA Business Office at info@aaea.org.
The Pre- and Post-conference Workshops will also be outstanding with a local craft brewery tour, a workshop on Leadership Development for Agricultural and Applied Economists, and a workshop on Contribution of the Bioeconomy to the SDGs: Challenges for Monitoring, Measurement and Modelling as well as a post-conference extension tour. Make sure you add these ticketed events to your registration early, since they often sell out.
The meetings will have a hybrid format this year due to continued uncertainty about the spread of COVID and to enable greater participation by members who may not be able to travel.
We continue to learn about organizing hybrid conferences from our experience over the past couple of years and the feedback many of you provided and aim to improve the quality of the hybrid experience for our members. The Board together with EDI have spent a considerable amount of time weighing the various technology options for organizing a hybrid meeting that would provide a high-quality audio and video experience and technical assistance to ensure a more seamless interaction between on-line and in-person participants. The Board has opted for a technology package that involves live-streamed presentation of all the plenaries and awards ceremony as well as the provision of zoom links for each meeting session room by AAEA. It is our hope that this simplifies the management of virtual participation in sessions for organizers and participants, more cameras and other audio equipment in each room than last year and greater tech support to facilitate productive discussions during the session.
A hybrid meeting does cost substantially more than either an all in-person meeting or an all-virtual meeting. After deliberating at length about the registration fees to charge for in-person and virtual participants, the Board decided to charge the same fee for both types of participants. This will at least partially cover the costs of providing a high-quality hybrid experience and to encourage in-person participation by those that are able to do so, so that AAEA can meet its minimum commitments for food, beverage and hotel rooms. The AAEA trust will be providing travel grant funds to subsidize travel costs for members from low income countries and early career professionals.
Anaheim is a great place to visit with the family and I encourage you to register and make plans to attend the meetings. In 2021 we required that all in-person attendees self-claim that they are or will be completely vaccinated prior to attending the meeting. The Board feels like this is important to continue in 2022. Masks will not be required unless mandated by the city/state; however, attendees will be encouraged to wear a mask if they prefer.
Finally, I would like to congratulate our incoming editors for Applied Economic Perspectives and Policies that will be starting their positions on January 1, 2023. Gopi Munisamy, University of Georgia, Athens, is the incoming Managing Editor and Alessandro Bonanno, Colorado State University, is the incoming Co-editor for Submitted articles. I also want to encourage applications for the currently open position of Editor of Choices Magazine.