International Economic Review, University of Pennsylvania

The International Economic Review (IER), one of the leading economics journals in the world, was inaugurated in 1960 by two of the most active and acclaimed scholars in the economics profession: Michio Morishima, who was then at Osaka University's Institute of Social and Economic Research (ISER), and Lawrence R. Klein, who was then at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School and Department of Economics. Their purpose was two-fold: to fill the worldwide demand for high quality general audience journals and to stimulate the academic research of Japanese economists through the creation and maintenance of a credible editorial office based in Japan. The IER became an immediate success with the publication of a series of influential articles that have since become modern classics in mathematical economics, economic theory, and econometrics. Despite the later proliferation of academic journals in economics, the IER has been consistently ranked as one of the top economics journals in the world.

The Kansai Economic Federation of Osaka materially and financially supported the IER's initial push into viable editorial operations, but the IER is now run as a non-profit joint academic venture between Osaka University's Institute of Social and Economic Research and the University of Pennsylvania's Department of Economics. The IER publishes one volume per year and four issues per volume (February, May, August and November). The IER accepts only English-language manuscripts.

Since its inception, the IER has maintained dual editorial offices in Osaka and Pennsylvania. The spirit of cooperation and academic entrepreneurship fostered by the two founders has continued, and today the two editorial offices thrive under an organizational setup that maintains a robust mixture of mutual independence and coordination. The Pennsylvania Editorial Office is headed by Dirk Krueger (Editor) and Michele Souli (Senior Editor Assistant), while the Osaka Editorial Office is managed by Masaki Aoyagi (Co-Editor) and Emi Kurimune (Assistant Editor). The two offices coordinate in selecting Editorial Board Members and Associate Editors from a broad set of internationally established scholars.

In addition, the Osaka IER office occasionally sponsors or co-sponsors international conferences, some of the papers from which are published in the IER. For example, a conference on the Economic Analysis of Japanese Firms and Markets was held in November 1992, and a conference on New Developments in Experimental Economics was held in March 1999. Both conferences were attended by about 100 participants from not only Japan but also North America, Europe, Australia, and elsewhere in Asia.