LACEA President’s Quarterly Letter: Second Quarter | 2026

The submission period for the LACEA-LAMES 2026 Annual Meeting has officially ended. This year, we received more than 950 paper submissions, and we are grateful to all authors who chose the conference as a venue to share their research.

While the review process is underway, preparations for the conference continue. The next important milestone is approaching: on July 31, 2026, authors will be notified of the acceptance or rejection of their submitted papers. Conference registration will also open on that date.

We look forward to welcoming participants to Lima, Peru, on November 12–14, 2026, for three days of academic exchange, networking, and discussion.

In the coming weeks, we will share registration details, program updates, and other important announcements. Stay tuned—and get ready to join us in Lima.

We hope to see you there!

We are pleased to announce that LACEA’s proposed session for the 2027 ASSA Annual Meeting has been selected. The session, “Macro Policy Using Micro Data,” was proposed by Sergio Schmukler and will bring together leading researchers to discuss how micro-level data can inform macroeconomic policy questions. The session will feature presentations on investment networks, minimum wages and firm outcomes, market power in formal and informal sectors, and structural transformation and employment.

We congratulate Sergio Schmukler and all participating authors and discussants, and we look forward to LACEA’s presence at the ASSA 2027 meetings in Washington, D.C.

From May 18 to 22, the 2026 RIDGE May Forum was held at The University of the West Indies, Cave Hill, Barbados. The event featured a series of workshops organized in collaboration with LACEA networks, bringing together researchers from across the region to discuss recent advances in Political Economy, Inequality and Poverty, Health Economics, Impact Evaluation, Labor Economics, Historical Development, Behavioral and Experimental Economics, Gender and Household Economics, and Migration.

LACEA congratulates RIDGE and all network organizers for the success of the 2026 May Forum and thanks them for their continued contribution to fostering high-quality research, academic exchange, and collaboration across Latin America and the Caribbean.

LACEA participated in the IEA World Congress in Serbia with a dedicated Invited Academic Session on Development and Informality, featuring research on key structural challenges in Latin American labor markets and firm dynamics. The session brought together Marcela Eslava (chair), Gabriel Ulyssea, and Cezar Santos, highlighting LACEA’s continued engagement in international academic discussions on development economics.

15th Annual Meeting of AL CAPONE

The 15th Annual Meeting of AL CAPONE, LACEA’s Crime and Policy Network, was held at FGV-EBAPE in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on May 28–29, 2026. The meeting provided a forum for researchers to present and discuss recent work on crime, public policy, and institutional challenges in Latin America.

The event was organized by FGV-EBAPE and AL CAPONE, a network of the Latin American and Caribbean Economic Association (LACEA).

The 16th Annual Conference of the LACEA Trade, Integration and Growth Network was held at the Universidad de los Andes in Santiago, Chile, on May 28–29, 2026.

The conference was sponsored by the Latin American and Caribbean Economic Association (LACEA), the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), and CAF – Development Bank of Latin America and the Caribbean.