1 Submissions

With pleasure I can report that the number of new submissions to Empirical Economics has steadily increased over the last years. 608 submissions were received in 2012, and close to 700 papers were submitted last year.

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According to Thompson Reuters Journal Citation Reports, the impact factor for 2012 was 0.614.

Extrapolating the final decision concerning revised manuscripts from previous years, the rejection rate increased to 84 % during the past 2 years.

2 Special Issues

Badi H. Baltagi, Andrew Jones, Francesco Moscone, and John Mullahy produced a special issue on “Health Econometrics,” which was published in volume 42, issue 2, April 2012.

Another special issue entitled “Estimation of Treatment Effects: Recent Developments and Applications” was edited by Bernd Fitzenberger, Michael Lechner, and Jeff Smith. It was published in volume 44, issue 1, February 2013.

Forthcoming is the topical issue “Applications of Nonparametric and Semiparametric Methods” edited by Subal C. Kumbhakar and Christopher Parmeter.

3 “The Lawrence R. Klein Award”

The editors of Empirical Economics and Springer have agreed to honor Lawrence R. Klein (1920–2013) for his services to the journal by implementing the “The Lawrence R. Klein Award” in 2012. The award is assigned every two years for the best paper published in Empirical Economics.

http://www.springer.com/economics/econometrics/journal/181?detailsPage=societies

The first awardee of this prize was Professor Nattavudh Powdthavee at the London School of Economics, for his paper “How Much does Money Really Matter? Estimating the Causal Effects of Income on Happiness.”

This year, the “Lawrence R. Klein Award” will be awarded for the best paper published in 2012/2013.

Empirical Economics mourns the loss of Nobel Prize winner Lawrence R. Klein, who passed away October 20, 2013.

http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00181-013-0751-0/fulltext.html

4 Board of Editors

First of all, I regret to report that Bernd Fitzenberger has decided to leave the journal’s editorial team by the end of 2013. In the future, Bernd will continue to support us as an associate editor. Bernd has handled the review process for a large number of papers serving as editor and replication editor for Empirical Economics since 2002. It was a pleasure to work with Bernd, and I would like to extend my sincerest thanks and appreciation for his services to the journal over the past years.

Fortunately, I can announce that Michael Lechner, Professor of Econometrics at the University of St.Gallen, Switzerland could be convinced to join the editorial team of Empirical Economics at the beginning of 2014. Michael Lechner’s research focuses on labor economics, sports and health economics, and on developing and improving econometric methods for causal analysis in the field of microeconometrics.

The editors are delighted to be supported by the following new associate editors Martin Biewen, Erik Biørn, Bertrand Candelon, J. Paul Elhorst, Domenico Giannone, David A. Jäger, Christian Keuschnigg, Tobias J. Klein, Myoung-jae Lee, Roman Liesenfeld, Francesco Moscone, Christopher O’Donnell, Efthymios G. Tsionas, Martin Wagner, Hung-Jen Wang, Joakim Westerlund, Ralf Wilke , and Conny Wunsch, who could be attracted to join as new members of the editorial board.

On behalf of my fellow editors, I would like to thank departing board members Jason Abrevaya, Renée Adams, Panicos O. Demetriades, Peter Egger, Bertil Holmlund, Eric Renault, Ingmar Prucha, Arthur van Soest, Francis Vella, and Tony Wirjanto for their editorial services to the journal during the past years.