SES Activities

SES Schools Initiative

Scottish Economic Society/Scottish Parliament 
Students-Teachers Event

The Scottish Economic Society (SES) recently funded an “Enquiry into the State of Economics in Scotland” chaired by Eileen Mackay. One of the key findings was that in the last decade there has been a continuous and substantial decline in the number of young Scots studying economics at Scottish institutions of Further and Higher Education. This trend is in sharp contrast to the general trend of increasing participation across a wide range of subjects.  

There are a variety of reasons for why economics is not doing so well in Scotland. Part of the explanation lies with the fact that the decline in economics in higher and further education has been (not surprisingly) mirrored in secondary schools e.g. there has been a steady decline in the number of students sitting economics highers.   

In light of these worrying trends, the Scottish Economic Society has decided to organise and pay for a one-day knowledge-transfer event focussed on secondary school students and their teachers. This event will be held in the Scottish Parliament on November 12, 2007.  

At this stage the programme is still very much in draft form. However, the plan is to have sessions of interest to both students and teachers. For example, there will be an opening address on the “Future of the World Economy” by a leading economics journalist. Professor John Sloman, the UK’s leading figure in the teaching of economics, has agreed to participate. Members of the SES and the Scottish economics community will be actively involved.  

For further information, contact ses@public-economics.com.

We plan to make ancillary material available from this page beginning in September. Be sure to visit us often in the autumn! 

Conference

SCOTTISH ECONOMIC SOCIETY

ANNUAL CONFERENCE


Monday 21st – Wednesday 23rd April 2008

Provisional programme available:

For further information and enquiries, contact ses@public-economics.com

REGISTRATION FOR THE CONFERENCE

We now accept registrations for the 2008 SES Annual Conference. Delegates are encouraged to register on-line using the registration form on this site. We use PayPal to process payments in a convenient on-line process – you can pay the conference fee using any major credit card, and there is no need to sign up for PayPal membership to register. 

Please note that registration will close at midnight on April 4th. We will send a reminder notice to everybody whose paper submission has been accepted shortly before that deadline.

If in doubt, or if there are any further questions, feel free to contact us at  ses@public-economics.com.


CONFERENCE EVENTS
The Conference Dinner will be held in the Quay Suite of Apex City Hotel, Dundee. This will be preceded by a Canapé-wine Reception at Discovery Point, which includes a tour of “Scott of the Antarctic's” famous ship. The after-dinner speaker is Andy Ross, Deputy Director, Government Economic Service.
The 2008 SES President’s Lecture will be delivered by Professor Martin Browning of the University of Oxford. The topic for the SES Policy Forum in 2008 will be “The Future of the Housing Market”. Also, Professor John Sloman will chair our traditional Economics’ Network Workshop on improving the teaching of Economics.

Please refer to the provisional conference programme for the conference schedule and for the timing of events. Sessions will be scheduled based on the registrations we receive, such that the availability of the final programme will coincide with the closing of registrations (April 4th, 2008).
SIR ALEC CAIRNCROSS PRIZE
The Scottish Economic Society will award a prize of £1000 for the best paper presented at the 2008 annual conference by an economist currently registered for a PhD or who has successfully completed a PhD within the last five years. Consideration for the prize presupposes conference attendance and society membership.

PAST CONFERENCES

2006 - The final conference programme is now available either separately or as part of the full conference package, which also includes abstracts for all accepted submissions and all papers that have made the March 15th deadline. We also plan to make a CD version of the package available at the conference itself. Note that the package comes as a zip archive and is a 22 MB download.

We also offer the conference packs for previous conferences for download:

- 2005 annual conference pack,
- 2004 annual conference pack,
- 2003 annual conference pack.

All of those come in zip format and are of considerable size.


CONFERENCE VENUE

Finding the Ramada:
The Ramada Jarvis is located in the centre of Perth, in West Mill Street, more or less opposite the Tourist Information Centre - both are signposted.   It is within 10 minutes walking distance from the both the Train and Bus Stations.   If you are driving, there is limited free parking at the hotel and adjacent metered parking.  Note the map below, which shows our venue's location in Perth city centre as a red circle:

Perth%20Map.optimized

The hotel's driving directions are available here.

Flying to Edinburgh: 
If you are flying to Edinburgh, the Airport Bus will take you to Edinburgh Waverley Train Station from where you can then take a train to Perth.  The train time to Perth from Edinburgh is approximately 1 hour 15 minutes.

Where to get the Airlink bus:  Edinburgh Airport – Exit the main terminal building and turn left. The Airlink bus service arrives and departs from the bus stances at the end of the terminal building. Edinburgh Waverley Station – Waverley Bridge, opposite the vehicle carriageway entrance/exit to the station.

Further details of the Edinburgh Airport Bus/Rail link can be found at http://www.scotrail.co.uk/edairport.htm.

Flying to Glasgow: 
If you are flying to Glasgow, the Airport Bus will bring you into Glasgow City Centre, adjacent to Queen Street Train Station from where you can take a train to Perth.  The train time to Perth from Glasgow is approximately 1 hour.

Where to get the Airport bus: Glasgow Airport – At the front of the main terminal building.  Buses arrive at West George Street for Queen Street Station
Queen Street Station - buses depart from North Hanover Street for the Queen Street Station Connection to Glasgow Airport

Buses run approximately every 10 minutes.  Further details of the Glasgow Airport Bus/Rail link can be found at http://www.scotrail.co.uk/glwairport.htm.

The following link has further information on both airport rail/bus links http://www.firstgroup.com/scotrail/index.php .  NB Alternatively, there are taxi ranks at both airports, the approximate cost to either city centre train station is likely to be in the region of £15 - £20.

Conference Registration - Step 1 of 2

Conference Registration - Step 2 of 2

Provisional Programme

Journal

The Scottish Economic Society's journal is the Scottish Journal of Political Economy, published in hard copy and electronically by Blackwell Publishing, Oxford. There are presently five issues per year, in February, May, August, September and November. It is distributed free of charge to members of the Society. Institutional subscription rates for 2005 are £165 (UK, Eur), £191 (ROW), $310 (USA).

The Scottish Journal of Political Economy is a generalist journal with an explicitly international reach in both readership and authorship. It is dedicated to publishing the highest quality research in any field of economics, without prejudice to the methodology or to the analytical techniques used. The editors encourage submissions in all fields of economics in order to provide practical contributions to the literature, and to further the influence of economics in the world of practical affairs.

Publishing the highest quality articles, Scottish Journal of Political Economy aims to publish a balance of the best theoretical and empirical material from an international authorship, without favouring a particular type of analysis or subject area.

The Journal is currently edited by Professor Robert Hart, Professor Andrew Hughes Hallett and Dr Campbell Leith, assisted by an International Editorial Board.  The Editorial Address is The Editors, Scottish Journal of Political Economy, Department of Economics, University of Stirling, FK9 4LA, (e-mail: sjpe@stir.ac.uk)

Manuscripts: for consideration should be sent by email to: sjpe@stir.ac.uk. Only documents in standard pdf or Microsoft Word format should be sent.

Annual Lecture

Each year since 1966 (with only two gaps) the Society has provided an opportunity for a distinguished member of the profession to deliver a lecture to a Scottish audience on a topic of contemporary relevance. Up until 1994 these guests were generally academic economists and included such significant and contrasting figures as Roy Harrod (1966), Nicholas Kaldor (1970), John Hicks (1974), George Shackle (1982), David Hendry (1983), Frank Hahn (1987) and Maghnad Desai (1993). In 1994 the Society and the Royal Bank of Scotland entered into an agreement to provide a Joint Annual Lecture to a wider audience drawn from the academic, financial and commercial communities in Scotland, inviting distinguished speakers from a variety of policy-related contexts. These lectures, held in Edinburgh, have been delivered by figures such as Mervyn King (1994), Ed Balls (1997), Willem Buiter (1999), Kate Barker (2001) and Sushil Wadhwani (2003).

This year's Joint Annual Lecture took place on 15th March 2007.  In front of a packed auditorium, Dr. Andrew Sentance (Monetary Policy Committee, Bank of England) gave a lecture on "The Changing Pattern of Savings. Implications for Growth and Inflation". The full text of Dr. Sentance's lecture is available from the Bank of England web site.

SGPE Scholarship

As part of its commitment to encouraging entry to the profession the Society provides a number of studentships for first-degree graduates from Scottish universities (home, EU or overseas) entering the Scottish Graduate Programme in Economics (SGPE) but who have not qualified for Research Council (or equivalent) funding. This Programme involves a year of taught postgraduate courses in economics leading to the degree of MSc, followed by progression, where appropriate, to a PhD in a Department of Economics at one of the eight collaborating Scottish Universities (Aberdeen, Dundee, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Heriot Watt, St Andrews, Stirling, Strathclyde). The studentships are currently valued at £4100.
Students admitted to the Programme become members of the Society and thus qualify for all the benefits of membership.

The Programme is currently administered by the University of Edinburgh. The contact is Andy Snell (snella@staffmail.ed.ac.uk).


Link to SGPE

Cairncross Prize

The Society offers a prize of £1000 for the best paper by a younger member of the Society delivered at its Annual Conference. This prize is offered in memory of Sir Alexander Cairncross, KCMG, FBA, Hon FRSE.

During his long and distinctively active career Sir Alec Cairncross made distinguished contributions in several walks of life – as Economic Adviser to the Government (1961-64), Head of the Government Economic Service (1964-69), Master of St Peters College Oxford (1969-78), President of the British Association (1970-71) and writer of several books on economic policy – and by no means least at the University of Glasgow as Professor of Applied Economics (1950-61) and subsequently its Chancellor from 1972 to 1996.

He also contributed signally to the development of the Scottish Economic Society. In 1954 he became the first Editor of the Society's Scottish Journal of Political Economy, a post he held until 1961. A Vice President from 1962 he became President from 1969 to 1973, and remained an Honorary Vice President thereafter.

The Scottish Economic Society instituted a Prize Essay Competition to express its commitment to the development of the discipline, directed at encouraging younger members of the profession. It chose to call this the Sir Alexander Cairncross Prize, to mark the contribution which he had personally made to the Society and to the discipline. It was first competed for in 1998, sadly the year of Sir Alec's death.

The prize-winning essay is also guaranteed publication in the Scottish Journal of Political Economy.

The 2007 prize has been awarded to Silke Anger for her paper on "Overtime Work as a Signalling Device".

Younger Medal

The Society administers, on behalf of the Royal Bank of Scotland Group, the Younger Memorial Medal Essay Competition. This competition is targetted at undergraduate students studying economics in Scotland. The Medal, with a cheque for £500, is awarded to the best undergraduate essay on a policy-related theme relevant to the Scottish economy. There are two runner-up prizes of £200. The essay is expected to be no more than 3000 words in length in a style accessible to a broad audience. An undergraduate dissertation on a similar theme may be considered if it is of exceptional quality, although a distillation into an essay format would be preferred.

(c) SES, 2008. Last edited on 2008-02-14