2009
No 93-94
Crossing the Rubicon
With
the present issue, Annals of Economics and Statistics launches
a new series, a new design and a number of new projects. The journal is now 40 years old, and some of
the papers published by Annales in the past years have been quoted many times
(The most cited paper in our list is Hausman et al.
(1994). For details on this point, see http://annales.ensae.fr). The journal
was initially created, in 1969, by Edmond Malinvaud,
then director of insee (the French Statistical
Institute), under the name Annales de l’INSEE, to
publish the research work of INSEE economists. In the 70s, it soon published papers
written by a number of academic economists and econometricians who later became
prominent in the profession (Olivier Blanchard, Gary Chamberlain, Zvi Griliches, James Heckman,
Paul Krugman, Marc Nerlove,
to name just a few).
In 1986, the Annales de l’INSEE
merged with the Cahiers du Séminaire d’Econométrie and the result of this merger was named
Annales d’Economie et de Statistique. The Cahiers du séminaire
d’économétrie had published a number of papers since
its first issue in 1951, René Roy(1)
being the editor, and was funded by the C.N.R.S (the National Center for
Scientific Research). So, given that our journal is heir to the articles
published in Cahiers du Séminaire d’Econométrie,
it is in fact nearly 60 years old. Some of the articles published in French in
Cahiers became well-known references. It is a nice heritage. Some of the papers
presented in Paris seminars were later translated into English (e.g., Shell
(1977), and Cass and Shell’s (1982) classic piece on “sunspots”). Among the
papers published, (in chronological order) we find the names of Marcel Boiteux, Hendrik Samuel Houthakker, Jan Tinbergen, Jacob Marschak,
Hirofumi Uzawa, Ragnar
Frisch, Henri Theil, Richard N. Stone, Lawrence
R. Klein, Charles F. Manski, Hugo F. Sonnenschein, Hal R. Varian, Robert F. Engle,
Eric S. Maskin, and Roger B. Myerson, to
name only the most “legendary”, among which we find a handful of Nobel-Prize
winners. To run the new journal and to promote high-quality research in quantitative
economics in France, a new association, ADRES (Association for the Development of Research in
Economics and Statistics) was then created by Alain Monfort and others. The
editorial board of 1986 included some influential French economists, such as
Jean-Jacques Laffont, Jean-Michel Grandmont
and Guy Laroque, who, a few years later, like Monfort
himself, played a prominent role in the Econometric Society and in the
editorial board of its journal, Econometrica. In
1986, the first issue of the new series was a special volume on Industrial
Organization with contributions by Jean Tirole,
Jean-Jacques Laffont and others. During all these
years, the journal has been entirely funded by INSEE.
Today, Annals of Economics and Statistics
is the number one French journal in the fields of Economics and Econometrics,
and our goal is to maintain its rank and to increase its international
visibility and scientific reputation. The current policy can easily be
described. First, we endeavor to improve the management of manuscripts and
submissions. The editorial board was entirely renewed in 2009 with a list of
young and talented associate editors representing various subfields of
Economics. We try to reach a first decision on every submitted manuscript
within 4 months, and to shorten the time to final decision. Second, we more
than welcome papers written in English (although of course, our rules still say
that papers can be submitted in French). Annals of Economics and Statistics
will become an international reference only if interested readers in the United
States, China, India, Europe and in all other parts of the world can have easy
access to the journal and understand its articles.
The regular series of Annals of Economics
and Statistics will continue to publish refereed articles in all fields of
economic theory, econometrics and applied economics. We will also continue to
publish special issues, based on papers presented in international conferences
held in France and sponsored by ADRES, as these volumes have greatly contributed to the
reputation of Annals. The journal can play a rôle in
publishing rigorously crafted empirical work on important policy questions,
using up-to-date methods and based on French data, but this is not its only
purpose, and, as before, we will welcome all sorts of submissions, including
pure theory.
Third, in
addition to regular issues, we plan to launch a new series of special issues,
entirely written in French, under the traditional French title, Annales d’économie et de statistique, and
devoted to policy questions and debates. In principle, and for these special
policy-issues only, we would then translate into French the articles written by
foreign contributors. The papers of these policy issues should be essentially
non-technical and aim at arousing the interest of a wider audience, beyond
purely academic circles, while keeping high standards of scientific rigor.
Fourth, we plan to develop a new website that will permit up-to-date electronic
publishing of the journal. Finally,
Annals is currently in the middle of a catch-up, retrieval plan and we hope to
print (and post) all of the 2010 and 2011 issues before the end of 2011.
Paris, November 2010.
Robert J. Gary-Bobo, Editor.
1. René Roy gave his name to the well-known
“Roy equations” of consumer theory.
References
CASS, David and Karl SHELL (1982): "Les taches
solaires ont-elles de l'importance?",
Cahiers du séminaire d'économétrie, 24, 93-127 [5]
HAUSMAN, Jerry, LEONARD, Gregory and J. Douglas ZONA (1994): “Competitive Analysis with Differentiated
Products”, Annales d’économie
et de statistique, 34, 159-180 [5].
Karl
SHELL (1977): "Monnaie et allocation intertemporelle" title and abstract in French, text in
English, mimeo. Séminaire Roy-Malinvaud,
C.N.R.S., Paris, November 21, 1977. Translation to be published in
Macroeconomic Dynamics as a Vintage Unpublished Paper [5]