Call for Papers: Asia Economic Community Forum 2025

As in past years, the Association for Comparative Economic Studies (ACES) will organize one or more panels for inclusion in the Asia Economic Community Forum. This year’s Asia Economic Forum will be held virtually and on site in Incheon, Korea on August 22, 2025. We invite authors to submit papers dealing with Asia and its role in the global economy. Papers dealing with the theme of the conference, which is “Asia in the Age of US-China Competition,” are especially welcome, but the selection committee will consider papers on other topics pertaining to Asia as well.

Submissions may take the form of individual extended abstracts or complete papers or of organized panels that combine 3-4 papers around a given topic. In the case of panel proposals, the panel organizer should provide abstracts or complete papers as well as a rationale for the panel topic.

Publication opportunities: Papers presented at the Forum that are successfully evaluated for publication will be published in the journal Asia and the Global Economy and the Forum will cover all publication fees. Asia and the Global Economy is now indexed in SCOPUS.

Paper and panel proposals should be sent to Professor Josef Brada at josef.brada@asu.edu.

The deadline for submissions is July 22, 2025, and papers will be evaluated on a first come – first served basis as they are received. Since sessions and session slots are limited, early submissions ae encouraged as available slots may be filled before the final deadline.

CALL FOR APPLICATIONS: ACES SUMMER SCHOOL IN POLITICAL ECONOMY, AUGUST 20-22, 2025

ACES is pleased to announce its Call for Applications for its 2025 ACES Summer School in Political Economy, running from August 20 - 22 at the African School of Economics Zanzibar.  This 3-day summer school will expose participants to cutting-edge research in political economy, economic history, and development economics, and offer students a unique opportunity to interact with mentors. Participants will receive feedback on their research ideas in focused mentoring sessions both from faculty and from other students. The school also provides an opportunity to develop networks with other young scholars interested in political economy and related subfields of economics. 

Applications will be accepted through 11:59 pm EST on May 9. Application instructions are available here.

Call for Applications: Dissertation Research Fellowship, 2025-2026 

To encourage research on comparative economics and to recognize the fundamental contributions of Gerard Roland to the field, the Association for Comparative Economic Studies (ACES) has established the Gerard Roland Dissertation Fellowship. The fellowship will be awarded for a one-year period. The selection panel consists of Michael Callen (London School of Economics), Filipe Campante (Johns Hopkins University), Vasiliki Fouka (Stanford University), Sara Lowes (University of California, San Diego) and Noam Yuchtman (University of Oxford). The panel will assess each applicant’s potential to make an important contribution to key questions in comparative economics. The panel also strives to recruit a diverse group of award recipients, including, to the extent possible, individuals from under-represented minority groups and from a variety of academic institutions. 

Fellowship recipients are expected to pursue academic research that is primarily related to: i) development/transition economics; ii) comparative institutions; iii) political economy; and iv) economics of culture. Other topics emphasizing theory, methods or implications of comparative economics are accepted too. Students working in related fields are encouraged to apply.

One fellowship will be awarded for the academic year 2025-2026. The fellowship will provide a stipend of $35,000; $5,000 to support the costs of data acquisition and travel to research meetings; and will cover the fellow’s tuition at their home institution, up to a limit of $14,000 for the academic year. Fellows may choose to reduce their stipend to fund a larger data purchase or other research support. The Association aims to announce winners by May 16, 2025.  Fellows will be expected, to the extent possible, to make data collected for their research publicly available. Fellows are also expected to attend, in person, the ACES Members’ Meeting in Philadelphia, PA, USA, in January 2026.

To be eligible for fellowship support, an applicant must be enrolled as a full-time Ph.D. student at an accredited college or university, and must have advanced to dissertation candidacy status by the start of the fellowship period. The ACES strongly encourages applications from women, minorities, people with disabilities, and veterans.

Applicants should email a short research proposal consisting of no more than three pages of text and one supplemental page of tables or graphs, and a CV, to the Coordinator of Membership Services, Brian Deutsch, at briandeutsch@pitt.edu.  The proposal should specify deliverables, such as expected research papers that will be finished at the end of the fellowship year. In addition, applicants should ask their dissertation supervisor to email a letter of recommendation to the same address. All components of the application must be received by 11:59 pm (EST) on April 15, 2025. Applicants are responsible for verifying that their letter of recommendation has been sent by the deadline. In fairness to all applicants, the submission deadline is strictly enforced. Applications that are not complete, including the letter of recommendation, on April 15, 2025 will not be considered. 

By July 31, 2026, fellows must provide the selection committee with a copy of at least one research paper (for example, a draft of the job market paper) on comparative economics (broadly defined) that was completed during the fellowship period.

Please circulate our Call for Papers pdf widely among your relevant networks.

ACES joins Bluesky

As a way to return to a social media presence, ACES has recently joined Bluesky. Follow us there for the latest news and announcements about ACES events, fellowships, education opportunities, and more. Don't forget to also join our Affiliate network to stay on our mailing lists; paid membership opportunities are available as well.

2024 Montias Prize Winner Announcement

ACES is pleased to announce the recipients of the 2024 Montias Prize, for the best paper in the Journal of Comparative Economics over the past two years: Nicola Fontana, Tommaso Nannicini, and Guido Tabellini for their article "Historical roots of political extremism: The effects of Nazi occupation of Italy."

We study the impact of the Italian Civil War and Nazi occupation of Italy in 1943–45 on postwar political outcomes. The Communist Party, which was more active in the resistance movement, gained votes in areas where the Nazi occupation was both longer and harsher, mainly at the expense of centrist parties. This effect persists until the late 1980s. These results suggest that civil war and widespread political violence reshape political identities in favor of the political groups that emerge as winners. This benefits extremist groups and hurts moderates since the former have a comparative advantage in organizing violent conflict.

The Association for Comparative Economic Studies awards prizes every year for the best papers in each of its two journals. Top papers are those ranked the highest by members of the ACES Executive Committee and leadership each year. The Montias Prize, first awarded in 2004, is named after J. Michael Montias and is given to the best paper published in the Journal of Comparative Economics over the past two years.  

Awardees are presented with a monetary prize and a plaque, and are recognized at the annual meeting each January. For more information about our award history, please review this page.

Statement of ACES Leadership on 2022 ASSA Conference Sessions 

To the ACES Community,

We are writing regarding the structure and selection of the ACES sessions in the upcoming 2022 ASSA meetings. We have decided that for these meetings there will be only invited ACES sessions, rather than the usual mix of invited and submitted sessions. We understand that this will be disappointing to those of you who had hoped to submit a session proposal this year, and we apologise for the lack of up-front communication regarding the selection of the sessions at the upcoming meetings.

The uncertainty of COVID's impact on the 2022 ASSA meetings (whether they will be in-person, and who might be able to attend) led us to take the risk-averse strategy of organising all of the sessions ourselves. This made the process more predictable, and also provides some insurance against logistical and administrative changes that may well come up. Of course, this decision has a cost -- limiting the scope of the sessions -- which is understandably disappointing to some ACES members. We fully acknowledge this, but felt that under the circumstances this was the right decision.

Looking ahead, for the 2023 ASSA meetings, we plan to return to accepting submitted sessions. We are committed to supporting a broad range of scholars and scholarship, and look forward to reading a broad range of submissions from our membership for the 2023 ASSA meetings.

We greatly value the participation of ACES members in our ASSA sessions, both as presenters and in the audience. We anticipate that our many members will enjoy the sessions we have organized this year, and hope to see many members in person in January.

Best wishes,

James Kung, President

Noam Yuchtman, President-elect

ACES announces end to submission fees for its two journals

Effective 2021, ACES has ended the submission fee system for its two journals, Comparative Economic Studies and Journal for Comparative Economic Studies.  From summer 2019 through December 2020, ACES required authors to either pay a submission fee or become an ACES member.  However, starting January 2021, authors are no longer required to join the Association or pay a submission fee to the publishers.  We anticipate this will encourage more engagement and greater participation.  Please contact the ACES Coordinator of Membership Services, Brian Deutsch, with any questions or concerns.

Find us on Facebook

ACES has a new Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/comparativeecon/  We will be posting news, announcements, and other items here; feel free to join and follow!