The Spanish Minister of Science and Innovation, Cristina Garmendia, has announced the recepients of the 2010 Spanish National Research Prizes. This prize has been awarded since 2001 by the Spanish Government to recognize worthy contributions to the advancement of science, knowledge, and the progress of humanity. In this year's edition the "Pascual Madoz" prize on Social Science and Economics has been awarded to Professor Salvador Barberá, director of MOVE. Read more...

Since the creation of the consortium, there has been a shared interest by the IAE and MOVE to promote collaboration and to open MOVE to IAE members.

A first step in this collaboration will be the integration of INSIDE's activities as one of the research lines of MOVE, becoming a shared effort with IAE. The agreement also contemplates the invitation to those members of the IAE who work in the project to become MOVE Research Fellows. The director of INSIDE will become a member of MOVE's start-up committee, the early stage decision board of the institution. Read more... 

Registration is open for the MOVE Workshop on Gender Differences in Competitiveness and Risk Taking. Registration is open to all interested researchers. You can find all relevant information here.

On the 13th of April, the Catalan Government created the new Foundation responsible for the promotion of the corporate, institutional and scientific excellence of the CERCA research institutes. CERCA is the group that gathers the Catalan institutes where the Generalitat de Catalunya, the Catalan Government, is the majority stakeholder. Read more...

We are happy to announce that MOVE Fellow Jordi Caballé has been awarded a prize of the ICREA-Academia Recognition Program for his outstanding contributions to the international scientific community. ICREA, the Catalan institution devoted to recruiting top scientists abroad for the Catalan R&D system, has introduced the ICREA Academia prizes to support researchers already working in Catalonia.  Professor Caballé will receive 250,000€ over the next five years to support his research in the fields of finance and growth. Jordi Caballé is the fourth MOVE Fellow to receive this recognition Prize.

Juan Carlos Conesa (MOVE and Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona), Javier Díaz-Giménez (IESE Business School), Julián Díaz-Saavedra (Universidad de Granada) and Josep Pijoan-Mas (CEMFI and CEPR) presented an article studying the consequences in Spain of the value added tax raise scheduled next July.Juan Carlos and his colleagues have quantified the consequences of such policy using and comparing two models: a representative agent neoclassical growth model and an heterogeneous agent incomplete markets model. According to their results, the VAT raise may hamper the economic activity due to a decrease in labor and production. It may be regressive, as it would particularly damage the younger, older and poorer households. The measure could also come too early in the cycle because there are no clear signals of recovery yet.The article has had relative impact within the Spanish general and business press, for instance in ABC (4th of March), Cinco Días (2nd of March)  or Cotizalia (1st of March).Professor Conesa has also published an entry with the article conclusions the in the FEDEA blog NadaEsGratis (in Spanish).

 MOVE Fellows Xavier Martínez-Giralt and David Pérez-Castrillo participate in the project. On Thursday January 14, a meeting of a group of experts working for the preparatory phase of the ESS will take place at Casa Convalescència. MOVE Research Fellows Xavier Martínez-Giralt and David Pérez-Castrillo participate in the project developing the analysis of potential sources of ESS exploitation income, in particular, the research of actual and potential industrial uses and users as well as the pricing policies and a detailed analysis of the pros and cons of models of governance of presently functioning European science laboratories. More info at http://ess-scandinavia.eu/.

Inés Macho-Stadler, MOVE Fellow, appointed Advisory Editor for Games and Economic Behavior. Games and Economic Behavior facilitates cross-fertilization between theories and applications of game theoretic reasoning. It consistently attracts the best quality and most creative papers in interdisciplinary studies within the social, biological, and mathematical sciences. Most readers recognize it as the leading journal in game theory.