Dear MEA participants,

Greetings, and welcome to Kansas City for the 89th annual meetings of the Midwest Economic Association!  Once again, we offer a high-quality conference with nearly 500 research presentations, including special sessions organized by the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists (AERE), the Committee for the Status of Women in the Economics Profession (CSWEP), and the Society of Labor Economists (SOLE) and many others.

Members from all over the United States and the world are traveling to this year’s meeting to present their research. In addition to distinguished faculty and professionals in the field of economics and business administration, we have papers from many PhD students and five special sessions for undergraduates.

We are honored to host Dr. C. Kirabo Jackson, the Abraham Harris Professor of Education and Social Policy at Northwestern University, who will deliver the 2025 C. Woody Thompson Guest Lecture. Jackson is also a professor of economics, a fellow at the Institute for Policy Research, and a Faculty Research Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research. He earned his bachelor’s degree in ethics, politics, and economics from Yale University, and obtained his PhD in economics from Harvard University. His plenary lecture, “The Economic Benefits of Public Investments in Children,” is on Friday, March 21, at 5:45 pm.

I will deliver the Presidential Address with my lecture titled “What Do We Know About Intergenerational Mobility in Socioeconomic Outcomes?” on Saturday, March 22, at 5:45 pm.

The Midwest Economics Association is deeply grateful to the sponsors for this year’s conference, the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, StataCorp LLC, the Juli Plant Grainger Institute for Economic Research at UW-Madison, the University of Chicago Department of Economics, the W.E. Upjohn Institute, Stevens Doctoral Program at Chicago Booth, the Institute for Policy Research at Northwestern University, and the University of Michigan Ross School of Business. The generous financial support of these organizations contributes to the MEA’s mission to promote the advancement of economic knowledge and the economics profession through this annual forum.

I personally want to thank the other officers of the MEA for their help in organizing the conference, specifically, First Vice President Alessandra Fogli, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis; Second Vice President Jihui “Susan” Chen, Illinois State University; and Past President Lisa Barrow, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland. I am especially grateful to the wonderful team at Grinnell College: MEA Secretary-Treasurer Logan Lee and Managing Secretary Allison Utech. I cannot overstate how valuable their contributions are to the MEA and to these meetings.

Following my lecture on March 22, the MEA will hold its Annual Business Meeting. All members are invited to attend. At the conclusion of the business meeting, I will turn over my position to President Elect Linda Tesar, University of Michigan. I have every confidence that Linda and the rest of next year’s leadership team will oversee another excellent installment of the annual MEA meeting when we assemble in Chicago in 2026, for the MEA’s 90th annual meetings.

Warmest regards,