Chicago and the AEA meetings

I am leaving for North America today. I’ll spend about a week in Chicago attending the American Economic Association meetings there.

Chicago is the third-largest city in the United States with population of 7 million and one of my favorite US cities – I first spent six months living in Illinois in 1982 while visiting the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. I have revisited the ‘windy city’ several times since then and always find plenty to do. There’s a newspaper that comes out with a list of weekly events – the variety overwhelms me – there are 9000 restaurants and 4,000 clubs and bars. I’ll try to make it to 1 or 2 – the blues bars are unforgettable. It is freezing in Chicago at this time of year with mean maximum temperatures below zero. I’ll do some of the tourist bit while there and certainly visit the bookshop at the University of Chicago which is good. I’ll also enjoy the Chicago Tribune – a great newspaper.

The papers of the Conference are a nightmare to select between. It a vast meeting – the program is 191 pages and the number of concurrent sessions huge – in the first time slot, for example, there are 50 concurrent sessions. Many of the papers are on the web so one can preview which helps. But I will be busy and posts over the next week will be occasional.