Call for Papers
Economia The Journal of LACEA
Cambridge, Massachusetts, April 2005

Economía, the Journal of the Latin American and Caribbean Economic Association (LACEA), calls for papers to be presented at its next panel meeting. This panel meeting will be held in Cambridge, Massachusetts in April 2005. Please note that this call for papers has nothing to do with the LACEA call for papers: they are independent from each other.

Journal characteristics:

Economía has three distinguishing features:

• It is a policy journal --that is, one in which new theories or techniques are applied to policy questions, and not simply presented for their own sake.

• It seeks papers on issues that are both at the forefront of the policy agenda and of broad interest to countries throughout the region. Examples include the design of regulatory frameworks for privatized utilities, lessons on avoiding financial meltdown, managing the challenge of greater economic integration, and new research on the determinants of earnings inequality.

• It demands the highest standards of theoretical and statistical rigor, but only publishes papers that are written in a style and language accessible to policy makers.

The closest models are the Brookings Papers on Economic Activity in the United States and Economic Policy in Europe --both of them policy-relevant publications that carry weight with decision-makers while adhering to very high standards of research.

Following the model of the Brookings Papers on Economic Activity and Economic Policy, papers are presented at twice-yearly panel meetings. One of these meetings is scheduled with the LACEA annual meeting. The other is hosted by Harvard University.

Papers sought:

Papers should adhere to the criteria above. They should deal with any topic relevant to economic policy-making in Latin America and the Caribbean. They can be theoretical, empirical, or a mixture of both, as long as they are policy-relevant. They should be written in English, in a style and language that avoids jargon and needless technicalities. They should not exceed 40 double-spaced pages, including graphs, tables and references. Please note that in the past 4 call for papers the rejection rate has been 90% of the submissions.

Submission procedure:

Send paper electronically to Managing Editor Magdalena Balcells (m_balcells@yahoo.com). We only accept complete papers in English (no abstracts, please). Please specify all your contact information, affiliation, title of the paper and co-authors in the e-mail you send. Papers submitted in any other way will not be considered.  The deadline is October 1, 2004. You will only hear back from the editors by December 1, 2004, if your paper is invited to be presented at the panel meeting to be held in Cambridge, Massachusetts in April 2005.  An invitation to present a paper at the panel meeting is not a guarantee the paper will be published in Economía. After presentation, papers are subjected to a refereeing and evaluation process. Only a subset of panel papers are eventually published in Economía.