On behalf of the entire Executive Committee of the society, sincerest wishes to the members and friends of SAET for a New Year that is safer, healthier and happier than the old one. The restrictions on travel, seminars, conferences, and even face-to-face conversations that were required in 2020 brought home to all of us the fact that science of any sort is a social endeavor. We can only hope that 2021 will bring an easing of those restrictions. The advancement of science requires the cross-fertilization of ideas, an activity that is difficult at a distance.

Fortunately, the SAET is robust institution and is recovering as quickly as legal restrictions and health concerns allow.

This year we will resume some of the conference activities that had to be deferred last year. The 20th annual SAET conference, which was scheduled for June 14-17 in Seoul, Korea, will be hosted online on June 13-16, 2021 by Seoul National University. Many thanks to Youngsub Chun for leading the local organization of these meetings. More details on the conference will be forthcoming at a later date.

Plans are also underway for the European Workshop in Economic Theory, originally scheduled for June 7-9, 2020 in Akko, Israel. Anna Rubinshik is doing her best to organize it in person for June 7-9, 2021, although a switch to an online format may be required. Robert Aumann will deliver the Debreu Lecture. Originally planned for June 8, 2020, which was his 90th birthday, it will now be on his 91st.

The Mediterranean Workshop in Economic Theory, scheduled for June 1-2, 2020 in Porto, Portugal, is currently on hold. Its primary goal is to develop scientific exchanges between researchers in Africa, Europe and the Mediterranean region, and an online conference is a difficult format for advancing this objective.

Next, it is a pleasure to announce the winners of the 2020 Aliprantis Prize. Because of the large number and very high quality of the submissions, the Executive Committee approved the award of two prizes this year. The winners are Elizabeth Pröhl (University of Amsterdam and Tinbergen Institute) for “Existence and Uniqueness of Recursive Equilibria with Aggregate and Idiosyncratic Risk” and Krishna Dasaratha (University of Pennsylvania and Harvard University) for “Innovation and Strategic Network Formation.” Our heartiest congratulations to these two young scholars for their outstanding work.

Finally, I thank the members of the Fellowship Committee, and especially the Chair, Larry Samuelson, for overseeing the election of the new 2020 members of the Society. The members of the Society are its backbone, the people who carry out our core functions of promoting and disseminating high-quality research in economic theory. We are delighted to welcome this excellent group of new members.

I wish you all a happy and healthy New Year, and look forward to seeing you in June.

Warm regards,

Nancy Stokey, University of Chicago, January 4th, 2020