The Society for Computational Economics (SCE) promotes computational methods in economics and finance. The SCE sponsors an annual scientific conference which focuses on the research interests of its members and encourages their participation.

Computational economics explores the intersection of economics and computation. These areas include agent-based computational modeling, computational econometrics and statistics, computational finance, computational modeling of dynamic macroeconomic systems, computational tools for the design of automated Internet markets, programming tools specifically designed for computational economics, and pedagogical tools for the teaching of computational economics. Some of these areas are unique to computational economics, while others extend traditional areas of economics to new areas through computational techniques.

A Letter from President Lilia Maliar

Dear Members of the Society of Computational Economics,
It was nice seeing many of you at our annual conference on June 20-21 held at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. This was the 30th conference of our Society, and Singapore was a great place to celebrate the anniversary. The conference was a remarkable success, showcasing the global reach and diversity of our community. The organizing committee was led by Te Bao from Nanyang Technological University. We are very grateful to him for the superb organization of the conference.|

I am pleased to provide you with a comprehensive report on the conference. There were 334 submissions, with 159 papers presented and 174 people registered. Among the attendees, 17% were students, 26% were from central banks and government, and 57% were from academia.

The geographical breakdown was as follows: 36 countries were represented, among them Europe: 44, UK: 21, Asia: 58, Australia/New Zealand: 13, Canada: 2, United States: 33, and Russia: 2.

It has become a tradition to have two pre-conference workshops. This year, one workshop was by John Stachursky on “Dynamic Programming with Google JAX”, and another one by Tomasz Makarewicz on “Genetic Algorithms: Introduction and Applications”, with a total of 42 registered participants.

There were three plenary talks by Herbert Dawid (University of Bielefeld) on “The Effects of Algorithmic Decision Making”, Neng Wang (Columbia University) on “The Economics of Dynamic Capital Structure”, and Yan Bai (Rochester University) on “World Financial Cycles”. The plenary talks were well attended.

This year, we introduced two new events: a lunch workshop by Christopher Carroll (Johns Hopkins University) and Alan Lujan, and a career workshop organized by Giulia Iori (Ca ‘Foscari University of Venice). The lunch workshop, “A (Working) Platform for Reproducible Research”, was well received with about 20 attendees. It discussed a platform developed by Christopher Carroll and co-authors to promote the reproducibility of research in economics. The career workshop, organized as a breakfast event, had about 20 participants who discussed steps the Society can take to promote mentorship programs, networking opportunities, work-life balance, diversity of inclusion, and innovation. Here are the slides prepared by Giulia Iori on the basis of the discussion: Slides. Marina Azzimonti (Richmond’s Fed) prepared a video presentation on measures taken by the US Fed to promote female economists: Video. Marina is the director of the Richmond’s Fed Center for Advancing Women in Economics.

Among the conference events, there was a reception on June 20th and a seated dinner at the Orchard Hotel on June 21st. The dinner featured a seven-course menu, and the food was very delicious.

We are very grateful to our sponsors, the Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control. We also relied on the services of Simple Meetings in organizing the conference, with special thanks to Kristin Scheyer and Lynn Semier.

The next CEF 2025 conference will be at the University of Costa Rica, San Jose (Costa Rica). Hope to see everyone there.

Best regards

Lilia Maliar
President of the Society of Computational Economics (2022-2024)
Professor of Economics and Executive Officer, the CUNY Graduate Center
https://lmaliar.ws.gc.cuny.edu/