The present webpage is a slightly modified version of the one created in 2005 by the Spanish Economic Association, which was funded by a grant from the Spanish Ministry of Education and CREA/Barcelona Economics. The Spanish Economic Association has run job-market meetings coinciding with the annual conference of the Association (the Simposio de Análisis Económico) for over 20 years. The candidates and the institutions for the Spanish meetings exchanged information (CVs, interests, papers) through a (more primitive) webpage since at least the mid 1990’s. In 2005 the association decided to create a new webpage open to all candidates and institutions, not just those who attended the meetings. The European Economic Association became aware of the effort and decided to expand the initiative to a European level.

The Spanish job market started out very small. One of the candidates for the meetings in 1984 was Miguel Sebastián, (then a PhD candidate in Minnesota, now the Secretary of State directing the Economic Bureau of the Spanish Prime Minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero). Reportedly, Sebastián told his colleagues when coming back from Spain: “We were all around a table. One side of the market on each side of the table. We were four candidates and three institutions. That is, a very thin market.” The thin market worked well for the participants. But, more importantly, they had the impression that the institution would grow and prosper. In 2006 there are over 100 candidates, and more than 20 institutions present at the Spanish job market meetings. This experience hints at the huge potential and all the opportunities to improve market allocation, and social welfare, in case a large number of European institutions decide to participate actively in the initiative of the European Economic Association to expand the scope of the initial effort of the Spanish Economic Association. It also hints at the vision of those pioneers who organized the first instance of a job market in Europe at the Simposio de Análisis Económico.

The history of this webpage is based on our impressions as well as helpful comments from Inés Macho-Stadler, Albert Marcet, and Enrique Sentana. If you have any suggestion (or correction), please feel free to email us at: antonio.cabrales@uc3m.es.
Thank you, Antonio Cabrales, Carlo Favero, Leonardo Felli.