It was my pleasure to act as editor for this special conference issue of the European Society for Population Economics (ESPE). The 36th Annual Conference of the Society took place on June 15–17 of 2023, and it was hosted by the Institute of Economics Sciences (IES) in Belgrade, Serbia. The aim of the Conference was to facilitate the exchange of research ideas and results across a range of fields, including the economics of the household, labor economics, public economics, demography, and health economics. Emilia Del Bono (University of Essex) served as the program chair, and Lara Lebedinski (Institute of Economic Sciences, Serbia and University of Vienna, Austria) was the coordinator of the local organizing team. The keynote speakers were Stefania Albanesi (University of Miami) and Martha J. Bailey (UCLA). The presidential address was given by myself.
We received a number of valuable submissions, and after the refereeing process, four papers were accepted into this issue. The four articles cover some of the main topics of interest for the Society, including labor economics, migration, culture, gender inequalities, working conditions, unemployment, and public policies. The authors come from different European countries (Belgium, Italy, Poland), and use data from multiple countries and a range of empirical methods. We hope that you will enjoy reading them, and we encourage you to submit a paper to the next conference of the Society (visit our webpage at: https://www.espe.org/).
