Secretary's Report (2005)
Econometrica, Vol. 74, No. 1 (January, 2006), 283–298
THE ECONOMETRIC SOCIETY ANNUAL REPORTS REPORT OF THE SECRETARY
LONDON, ENGLAND AUGUST 18, 2005
1. Status of Membership and Circulation
THE FIRST SECTION of this report describes the evolution of the Society’s membership and of the number of institutional subscribers. Information is provided on members and subscribers on both a mid-year and an end-of-year basis. In each case, circulation is “real,” tied to actual banked receipts of dues and subscription revenue. It is exciting in this, my last report, to observe that the membership of the Society has literally exploded over the past two years.
The latest information available, as of June 30 of the current year and of previous years, is provided in the top half of Table I. The bottom half of Table I reports the final number of paid-up members and subscribers as of the end of 2004 and previous years. For any given year prior to 2005, the figures in the bottom half of Table I are larger than in the top half, reflecting those memberships and subscriptions for a given year that are initiated between the middle of that calendar year and the middle of the following calendar year.
The bottom section of Table I shows that the circulation of Econometrica increased in 2004 to 7,095, representing growth of 13.2 percent from the 2000–2002 average of 6,265. Furthermore, the 2004 total for the first time in the current decade ex- ceeded (by 5.2 percent) the average of 6,742 for 1990–1999. Within the circulation categories, the Society experienced a more rapid erosion of institutional subscrip- tions, but unprecedented growth in the number of regular memberships, which in 2004 reached 3,810, fully 13.8 percent above the 1990–1999 average and 23.0 percent above the 2000–2002 average. Student memberships in 2004 were a stunning 68.8 percent above the 1990–1999 average and 57.6 percent above the 2000–2002 average. Much of the increase in membership is, of course, due to the requirement of membership for those submitting papers to Econometrica and to regional meetings, but some of the in- crease may also be attributable to price decreases for members, and to the availability of electronic access to current issues (in addition to or in place of print issues) and indeed to full electronic access to all articles published in the history of Econometrica since 1933.
