The Association needs supports from all members. There are only 42 members who paid their annual membership dues as of March 30, 1998. You may see the list by clicking on Dues-Paying Members. Please send your payment to Professor Yeon-Koo Che, Department of Economics, University of Wisconsin, 1180 Observatory Drive, Madison, WI 53706. Checks should be made payable to the Korea-America Economic Association.

You may download the Annual Membership Application Form in a pdf file if you need one.

FUNDING
We have reported in the last newsletter (March, 1998) that the Korea Economic Association (KEA) has invited 30 members of the KAEA to the Seoul convention, with a promise of room and board for the period of the convention. As the KEA is about to embark on their fund raising drive, the president of the KEA, Dr. Hak-Yong Rhee, expects now that he should be able to provide an additional support. If everything goes much better than they expect now, there could be even more support, though the prospect is not so bright. There is no doubt in my mind that they are doing their best under the current circumstance.

To eliminate the uncertainty about the financial support, the executive committee has decided to provide the following package of support to the participants:

The last item in Korean currency will be funded from the 1998 KEA convention fund and our own funding efforts if there is any shortage. If the fund raising drive is more successful than expected (current expected value is zero), we may be able to raise the support in Korean currency.

THEME OF THE CONVENTION
The KEA requested to change the main theme of the convention to “Foreign Exchange Crisis in Korean Economy” for the obvious reason. They also would like to have papers on Information Super Highway / Information Infrastructure / Telecommunication Policies. One of their major sponsors is very much interested in this issue.

We have a pretty bad news about the upcoming New York meeting. The KAEA has had six academic sessions until three years ago. We lost one session two years ago, and now the ASSA asks us to reduce further to four sessions. Professor Byung-Joo Lee, the program coordinator of the KAEA, has pleaded with them without success. John Siegfried explains the reasons in a very cordial manner in his response to the request made by Byung-Joo Lee. Siegfried's letter is posted below, followed by Lee's letter of request.

Siegfried's Letter

Dear Professor Lee:

Thanks for your cordial complaint about the session reductions. Many of your sister societies have already complained, and not all were cordial.

There is a misunderstanding about the registration count. The number of registrant members of KAEA (and other societies) is NOT taken from the annual registration form where you are asked to indicate membership in one of only six of the founding societies. This count came from a special tabulation organized by the ASSa secretaries and taken at the January 1996 meetings in San Francisco. That survey asked registrants clearly to identify ALL of the societies of which they are a member. The results have been distributed in the annual Secretaries meeting at the ASSa meetings for the past two years. The fact that many KAEA members are also AEA or Econometric Society members should not affect the results.

The room constraints in New York are absolutely binding. At this point we do not have rooms to place all of the sessions EVEN AFTER the cuts. We are holding the convention in the same hotels where we have been in New York in the past, but sessions have grown so much those hotels don't hold us. Our regular room rates are so low (a benefit to KAEA members) that no other hotels will provide meeting space. There is simply no choice there.

Beyond New York, the AEA Executive Committee, for whom I work, has expressed apreference to get the number of aggregate sessions under control. since the early 1980s the number of sessions has gone up about 250%. The AEA is also losing sessions (about 10), and the average attendance at their sessions was twice that of the KAEA. Econometric Society is losing 11 sessions, and their attendance averaged 7 more than KAEA. Everybody must contribute.

I know it is difficult to make choices about the program. That is the nature of scarcity. This year fewer than ten percent of the contributed papers proposed for the AEA sessions will be on the program. There is scarcity everywhere.

We are starting poster sessions this year. If you would like to do a poster session, which might have up to a dozen participants, please contact Violet Sikes at 615-322-2595. A poster session has easels with cardboard on them and participants post a few pages about their paper and have copies available. They stand by the paper and discuss it with

interested people who browse through the room. There are no formal presentations. this is a way to make space on the program for more people. Poster sessions, however, DO count as a session. In fact, anything that takes up a room counts as a session.

I wish you luck in making the difficult choices that are necessary. Let me also assure you, NO association's session allotment has gone up (even though some, like American Finance Association) could justify an increase. AFA attendance is about 70 per session.

Cheers,

John Siegfried

Lee's Letter

Dear Professor Siegfried:

My name is B.J. Lee, and I am a Secretary for the Korea-America Economic Association (KAEA). I am writing a letter today regarding the KAEA session allocations for the 1999 New York meetings and 2000 Boston meetings. KAEA is allocated for 4 sessions for the following meetings. I fully understand your position to keep the ASSA sessions manageable as you summarized in the Chicago meeting and in your recent letter.

However, I would like to address some issues regarding KAEA session allocations. KAEA has more than 400 active members in our association and some of your quoted statistics are rather misleading. For example, you said that there are only 42 KAEA registrants in the 1996 registration survey. In fact, most of KAEA members are also members of AEA, AFA (American Financial Association) or Econometric Society. Therefore, many of them simply register for other associations. KAEA members are very actively participating KAEA sessions as well as all other association sessions. In addition, we had very enthusiastic participation in one of our sessions in the Chicago meetings, a special session organized to discuss the recent Asian economic crisis, especially focused on Korean economic situation. This session was great success. The meeting room was completely full, but audiences kept coming, and we had to turn them back because of the crowded room condition. This is only one of the examples that there are enthusiastic responses for the current Asian and particularly Korean economic crisis.

In the past meetings KAEA had 6 sessions in New Orleans (1997) and 5 (regular) sessions and one special session in Chicago (1998). We are now reduced to 4 sessions for the upcoming meetings. For the last 2 years, the number of our sessions reduced by 33%, while KAEA memberships and the importance of the Korean economy kept increasing.

I understand that you have a very difficult job to keep the meetings under manageable size, but I really appreciate if you reconsider KAEA's session allocations. We would like to keep our sessions the same number as the Chicago meetings, namely 5 sessions for the upcoming meetings. We always have overwhelming paper submissions to present in the KAEA sessions. If we have only 4 sessions, we have a hard time to accommodate all the quality papers in our sessions. KAEA members will appreciate your understanding regarding this matter.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Sincerely,

B.J. Lee