It was founded in July 1992, to encourage professional interaction and foster increased dialogue among researchers and practitioners whose work focuses on the economies of Latin America and the Caribbean.
Since 1996, its Annual Meetings bring together scholars, practitioners and students to discuss research papers and listen to invited keynote speakers who present the latest academic findings in economic and social development issues.
LACEA fosters several thematic research networks, publishes the academic journal Economia,[1] and administers the digital repository LACER-LACEA.
Nora Lustig, then at the Brookings Institution, was selected as Vice-President, and Darryl McLeod, professor at Fordham University, was invited to become the Treasurer of the association.
The other members of the Executive Committee were: Edmar Bacha, Carlos Bazdresch, Guillermo Calvo, Michael Conroy, Vittorio Corbo, Carmen Diana Deere, Sebastian Edwards, Raul Feliz, Daniel Heymann, Ricardo Hausmann, Patricio Meller, and John Welch.
In recognition of their contributions, the title of President Emeritus was awarded to Professors Fishlow and Lustig at the 2017 Lacea meeting in Buenos Aires (November 9–11).
In the same vein, it is expected that the 2018 meeting will take place in Guayaquil, hosted by Escuela Superior Politécnica del Litoral (ESPOL), under Santiago Levy’s presidency (2018–19).
The joint LACEA-LAMES conference is currently regarded as one of the most prestigious gatherings of academic economists in the developing world, not just in Latin America.
In parallel, the number of specialized networks has grown to eight, currently covering the following areas: Inequality and Poverty; Political Economy; Trade, Integration and Growth; Impact Evaluation; Finance; Crime; Labor and Economic History.
The Economía Journal of the Latin American and Caribbean Economic Association, launched in 2000, has continued apace, with major reorganizations under Roberto Rigobón’s presidency (2012-13), when the reviewing process through bi-annual panel meetings was substituted by the standard peer reviewing (keeping the panel meetings for discussion purposes), and in 2017 under Carlos Vegh’s leadership as Editor, when the bi-annual call for submissions was replaced by on-line rolling submissions.
The Journal has boasted an impressive list of Editors: Andrés Velasco, Eduardo Engel, Francisco Ferreira, Roberto Rigobón, Rodrigo Soares, Ugo Panizza, Raquel Bernal, Marcela Eslava, Sergio Urzúa, Julián Messina and Alexander Monge-Naranjo.
Economia has become the outlet of choice for some of the best research on Latin America and is currently ranked 71st among nearly 2000 journals worldwide evaluated by RePec and undergoing an accreditation process.
The Carlos Díaz-Alejandro Prize, created in 1998, has been awarded every two years to outstanding scholars who have made significant contributions to economic policy issues of especial relevance to the region.
Edmar Bacha, Arnold Harberger, Rudiger Dornbusch, Guillermo Calvo, Jere Behrman, Hugo Hopenhayn, Sebastian Edwards, Carmen Reinhart and Orazio Attanasio have been recipients of this distinction.
Under Ricardo Hausmann’s presidency (2010-11), the Juan Luis Londoño Prize was created to encourage research in social policy issues.
Also under Eduardo Engel, a protocol was signed with the Latin American Chapter of the Econometric Society (LAMES) in order to clarify the terms of collaboration between the two associations for the organization of the joint LACEA-LAMES meetings.
The LACER-LACEA digital repository supports optimal discoverability and re-usability of the content by complying with Dublin Core and the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting.
Vox.LACEA[12] is an online resource center to promote the dissemination of research-based policy analysis, academic articles, interviews, debates and teaching materials.