The 14th International Conference on Panel Data (Panel Data 2007) has officially commenced on Monday, 16 July 2007 and will take place over three days at Xiamen University (XMU). Hosting by the Wang Yanan Institute for Studies in Economics (WISE), it is the first time in its whole history for this highly authoritative conference to be held in Asia. On the opening ceremony, Prof. Shinong WU, Vice President of XMU; Prof. Tongsan Wang, President of the Institute of Quantitative & Technical Economics, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and Prof. M Hashem Pesaran, Professor of Economics at University of Cambridge delivered their speech representatively.
The conference is comprised by 4 Keynote Sessions and 7 Parallel Sessions, and each Parallel Session consists of 2-4 sub-venues which concern with different branches of the Panel Data, such as unit root & forecasting, cross-sectional dependence, diagnostic testing & bootstrap, robust econometrics, efficient estimation & inference and so on. Besides, the organizing committee has specially set up Chinese sessions for local experts to discuss the relative topics in China Economy.
As to the lectures delivered on the Keynote Sessions, a group of international renowned scholars have convened to the conference, which includes Prof. Jerry Hausman, 1985 John Bates Clark Medal recipient and Professor of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT); Prof. Wolfgang Härdle, Professor of Economics at Humboldt-Universität zu
Berlin; Prof. Jan F. Kiviet, Professor of Econometrics at Universiteit van Amsterdam; Prof. Rosa L. Matzkin, Professor of Economics at Northwestern University; Prof. Whitney Newey, Co-editor of the
Econometrica and Professor of Economics at the MIT; Prof. M. Hashem Pesaran, Co-editor of the
Journal of Applied Econometrics and Professor of Economics at University of Cambridge; Prof. Peter Phillips, Editor of the
Econometric Theory and Professor of Economics at Yale University, and Prof. Tongsan Wang, Chairman of the Chinese Association of Quantitative Economics and the President of the Institute of Quantitative & Technical Economics, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. Besides, the 97 papers presented on the Parallel Sessions are diligently selected from 150 highly competitive submissions which come from the United States, United Kingdom, France, Germany，Australia, Canada, Belgium, Spain, Italy, Pakistan, Singapore, Greece, Turkey, New Zealand, India, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Mainland China.
The term panel data refers to two-dimensional data sets, which consist of cross-sectional observations over multiple time periods. The panel data econometrics, as a crucial component of the comprehensive data analysis in the field of economics, has developed rapidly since its innovation and has now played an important role in economic researches. Accompanying with the development of panel data econometrics, many countries and research institutes have realized its tragic magnitude and have set up their own specialized databases, which will definite contribute to the further development of economic and financial analysis in relative fields.
