At the 51st Congress of the European Regional Science Association (ERSA) held in Barcelona, Andrés Rodríguez-Pose was elected as ERSA’s vice-president. His tenure as vice-president starts on 1 January 2012 and lasts until December 2016. ERSA is the largest international scientific association devoted to the analysis of regions. It incorporates 18 national and linguistic associations across Europe and its 5,000 members are academics, policy professionals and researchers interested in spatial economics and planning, regional and local development and related issues. In addition to promoting the field of regional science, ERSA organises an annual European Congress, an annual Summer School, and awards the European Investment Bank EIB-ERSA prize to recognise outstanding regional scientists and the EPAINOS prize for young scientists. These ERSA events are essential for the understanding of current economic, social and political issues. With more than 1,000 delegates participating in the Congresses held in Jönköping 2010 and Barcelona in 2011, the annual ERSA congress is unrivalled for size and depth of coverage among scientific gatherings focusing on regional economic issues.

The 2011 Conference in Urban and Regional Economics (CURE) was held in Madrid, on 30 September and 1 October 2011, co-organised by PROCIUDAD researchers Klaus Desmet, Diego Puga and Andrés Rodríguez-Pose. CURE has quickly become the key international conference in regional and urban economics. It is an annual event that brings together a group of about 50 leading urban and regional economists as well as economic geographers from across the world. CURE alternates across the Atlantic, being held in Europe on odd years and in North America on even years. Previous editions were held in Milan and in Princeton. When held in Europe, CURE is organized in cooperation with the International Trade and Regional Economics Programme of the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR). This year's CURE was held with support and funding from IMDEA Social Sciences Institute, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, CEMFI, the Excellence Program of the Bank of Spain, the Regional Government of Madrid through the programme PROCIUDAD-CM, and Spain's Ministry of Science and Innovation.

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The British Academy of Social Sciences has elected Andrés Rodríguez-Pose as one of its Academicians. This prestigious institution aims to promote social sciences in the United Kingdom for the public benefit and elects its members, who have to be nominated and seconded by fellow Academicians, by virtue of their scientific eminence. The Academy is composed of members from 40 Learned Societies, representing 50,000 scholars and all branches of the social sciences. Academicians are entitled to add the letters 'AcSS' after their name.

Professors Diego Puga and Andrés Rodríguez-Pose, Research Professors at IMDEA Social Sciences Institute, have been awarded a European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Grant. The prestigious ERC Advanced Grants scheme is based exclusively on scientific excellence and encourages exceptional established scientists and scholars to pursue frontier research in their fields of expertise. In this third edition 4080 proposals were received, only 260 have been awarded, 13 of them in Spain, and 2 in the Comunidad de Madrid.

Diego Puga and Andrés Rodríguez-Pose have been awarded in the still rare category of interdisciplinary grants which reward a combination of complementary expertise in rather different scientific areas in order to enable the realization of unconventional methodological approaches beyond established disciplinary boundaries.

The project “Spatial spikes: bridging geography and economics to study distance, agglomeration, and policy” (SPIKES), seeks to promote the collaboration between economics and geography in order to unearth the factors determining why economic activity agglomerates in certain territories and not in others.

The XXXV Simposio de la Asociación Española de Economía (SAEe), the main meeting of academic economists in Spain, was held in Madrid 16-18 December 2010. Diego Puga, IMDEA Research Professor and PI of PROCIUDAD-CM, chaired the Scientific Committee.

There were 436 participants from 32 countries, who presented 334 research studies in all areas of economics. A job market for economists who will complete their PhD in 2011 took place in parallel to the Simposio, with 26 institutions interviewing candidates for positions.

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The XXXV Simposio de la Asociación Española de Economía (SAEe), the main meeting of academic economists in Spain, will be held in Madrid 16-18 December 2010. IMDEA Research Professor Diego Puga will chair the Scientific Committee.

The Local Committeee is chaired by Juan Carlos García-Bermejo and María Isabel García, of Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. Core funding for the conference is provided by the Madrid Regional Governement and IMDEA Social Sciences is also a sponsor.

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Andrés Rodríguez-Pose is prominently featured in the international ranking of geographers published in the January 2010 issue of the Journal of Economic Geography ("Measuring the influentialness of economic geographers during the 'great half century': an approach using the h index"). It measures the impact between 1970 and today of researchers in geography according to their h-index (a researcher is said to have an h-index of n if he or she has published n articles that have each been cited at least n times). In the ranking that includes geographers from all countries and all branches of geography except physical geography, and which takes into account the date of publication of articles (Table 3 in the article), Andrés Rodríguez-Pose is ranked 16th worldwide and is the only Spanish geographer listed.

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This month saw the launch of Madrid Economics, which promotes cooperation and interactions among researchers in Economics based in Madrid.

It is an initiative of the PROCIUDAD-CM programme, through which the Directorate General of Universities and Research of the Comunidad de Madrid provides funding, with the support of the Centre for Monetary and Financial Studies (CEMFI), the Madrid Institute for Advanced Studies (IMDEA) Social Sciences, and the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. Researchers and graduate students from other institutions are also welcome and encouraged to participate in its activities. Other public and private institutions provide additional funding for individual activities.

Among the activities of Madrid Economics are the maintainance of a combined calendar of seminars and conferences in Economics taking place in Madrid, available at http://madrideconomics.org/calendar/, to which it is also possible to subscribe from desktop calendar applications (Outlook, iCal, Mozilla Sunbird, etc.).

It also organizes a new regular joint seminar, the Madrid Microeconomics and Organizations Workshop (M-MIAOW) (see separate news item below); an annual Madrid Summer Workshop in Economic Theory (M-SWET); and other occasional conferences. Madrid Economics also promotes cross-institutional participation in research projects and graduate teaching.

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A new seminar series, the Madrid Microeconomics and Organizations Workshop (M-MiAOW) will begin on October 27. This is a periodic seminar in theoretical and applied microeconomics, with a special focus on applications to the design of organizations, institutions and markets. It is co-organized by Antonio Cabrales of Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Guillermo Caruana and Gerard Llobet of CEMFI, and Diego Puga of IMDEA Social Sciences under the umbrella of MadridEconomics.org. Each event will consist of two presentations, one by a prominent international researcher and another by a colleague from the Madrid area.

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Europe's key conference in international trade, CEPR's European Research Workshop in International Trade (ERWIT) took place in Madrid on 1-3 June 2009, co-organised by PROCIUDAD researchers Klaus Desmet and Diego Puga. This is the main annual event of the International Trade and Regional Economics Programme (of which IMDEA Research Professor Diego Puga is Co-Director) of the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR). This year, ERWIT was held jointly with the First EFIGE Scientific Workshop and Policy Conference. EFIGE (European Firms in a Global Economy) is a Collaborative Research Project funded by the 7th Framework Programme of the European Union, which will look at the international competitiveness of European firms on the basis of a new publicly-available firm-level survey that will be carried out in parallel in seven EU countries linked to existing firm-level data sources.

A group of researches from IMDEA Social Sciences and Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, led by Diego Puga, was awarded a research grant by the Banco de España in its first call Excellence in Education and Research in Economics. The project, titled "The export decisions of individuals firms: Market size, frictions, and innovation", was the only research proposal funded.