We would like to invite you to submit a paper for presentation at the RCEF 2012 conference “Cities, Open Economies, and Public Policy”.

The conference will be held at the University of Toronto in Ontario, Canada.

The world economy is increasingly interconnected, yet cities are supplanting countries as the primary building blocks of a globalized world.
Of necessity, the economic models and related evidence that inform policy discussions are being re-evaluated. As the recent financial crisis shows, our understanding of global macroeconomic policy is in a state of flux, and there is no escaping the role that international financial factors play in local outcomes. At the same time, there is increasing recognition that the forces driving urbanization are also related to international trade and long run economic growth.

The Rimini Conference in Economics and Finance (RCEF) is a biennial conference series that alternates between Italy and Canada, but with a different focus each time. This year’s theme will draw researchers from urban economics, with a micro focus on long run development, trade, and increasingly the environment and from international macroeconomics with a focus on business cycles, financial markets, and monetary policy.
Intersecting these two fields will be researchers on public policy, that is, economists who study the levers that national governments typically wield: taxes, transfers, education, and labor mobility (migration and immigration). We also invite papers in other areas of economics, including general equilibrium, industrial organization, and quantitative methods.

The conference is organized by Canadian and Italian economists under the sponsorship of the Rimini Centre for Economic Analysis (RCEA) but invites scientific contributions from all over the world. Authors should submit an extended abstract of up to 500 words. Please include with the submission JEL classification codes or the paper, keywords as well as JEL classification codes of the author(s) specialization field(s).
Complete papers may be submitted but the extended abstract is required. In case of more than one author, please note the corresponding author.
The submissions should be sent in PDF format to the address provided below.

Proposals for sessions, consisting of three papers, are particularly welcome. If you are interested in submitting a session please send the session topic, paper titles and names of authors and arrange for the abstracts to be sent to the address provided below.

Student submissions. We welcome paper submissions from graduate students. The registration fee will be waived for Canadian students whose papers are accepted.

The deadline for submissions is March 13, 2012. Authors will be notified by April 22, 2012 whether their papers have been accepted.

Fees. There are no submission fees. The registration fee for the conference is

Students		CAD$50
RCEA Senior Fellows and Fellows		CAD$140
Others		CAD$200
Late Fee		CAD$280

The late fee will be applied to all registrations received after May 14, 2012.
The fees include HST and (except for students) all meals at the conference site.

To submit a paper please use the conference website www.rcef.ca
Questions about the conference should be addressed to rcef@economics.utoronto.ca .