LIS in 2014 & what’s next in 2015

We have had a busy year behind us with many events and achievements.

In a nutshell:
28 Working Papers
63 uploaded and released datasets
1200 new user registrations

YEAR MONTH ACCOMPLISHMENT
2014 January Branko Milanovic left his position as lead economist at the World Bank to take the dual positions of Visiting Presidential Professor and Senior Scholar at the LIS Center, New York.
Book launch of Income Inequality: Economic Disparities and the Middle Class in Affluent Countries in Luxembourg.
Ceremony in Luxembourg: LIS Director Janet Gornick bestowed the honor of “LIS Senior Scholar” on Professors Louis Chauvel and Conchita d’Ambrosio of the University of Luxembourg.
February Paul Krugman announced he would resign from Princeton in 2015 to become Distinguished Professor of Economics at the Graduate Center of CUNY, as of fall 2015, and a Distinguished Scholar in the LIS Center as of summer 2014.
March Review of Income and Wealth, co-edited by Markus Jäntti.
Janet Gornick spoke about LIS at the Third Human Development Report Office Conference on Measuring Human Progress, at UNDP in New York City.
April The LIS Center hosted Thomas Piketty for a sold-out event on his book tour for Capital in the Twenty-First Century.
The New York Times launched a new data-driven site, The Upshot, with a story based on LIS data. The Upshot’s first article struck a chord among Americans, and made it to the 6 top Upshot stories in 2014.
Release of the “LIS/New York Times Income Distribution Database”.
May Janet Gornick gave a seminar about LIS at the Oxford Martin School.
June Signature of a Memorandum of Understanding between LIS and the University of Luxembourg.
July Branko Milanovic presented the 2014 LIS Summer Lecture: “Global Income Inequality: Current Trends, Issues of Justice and Politics.”
Bestowal of the Aldi Award to Stephan Thewissen who accepted the award on behalf of his co-authors for their excellent paper “Sectoral trends in earnings inequality and employment International trade, skill-biased technological change, or labour market institutions?”
September Janet Gornick presented LIS at a meeting of the United Nations’ “Independent Expert Advisory Group on the Data Revolution for Sustainable Development” in New York City.
October Janet Gornick delivered a keynote address to the United Nations General Assembly titled “High and Rising Inequality: Causes and Consequences”.
November Launch of Wave IX with the release of the United States dataset 2013.
December Kickoff of a new project to re-design the LIS homepage.

What’s in store for LIS in 2015?

*spoiler alert*

YEAR MONTH ACCOMPLISHMENT
2015 January Janet Gornick gives a lecture titled “High and Rising Inequality: Causes and Consequences” at the Cercle Münster in Luxembourg.
March Janet Gornick attends the 46th session of the UN Statistical Commission under the slogan “better data, better lives”.
April Special event at the LIS Center in NYC focused on climate change and inequality, featuring Joseph Stiglitz in conversation with Lord Nicholas Stern.
Summer In June 2015, the LIS Center – with support from the Graduate Center and The Century Foundation – will offer a six-day academic workshop on inequality in New York. The teaching staff will include Professors Janet Gornick, Branko Milanovic, Conchita D’Ambrosio, and Louis Chauvel.
The sixth LIS Summer Lecture will be held in conjunction with the ECINEQ conference, which will take place in Luxembourg 13-15 July 2015. The 2015 lecturer will be LSE Professor Stephen Jenkins, a renowned expert on poverty and inequality in affluent countries.
The LIS office in Luxembourg will move premises – from our current location in Cents to the new complex in Belval. Due to the timing of the move, LIS will not hold its annual LIS Summer Workshop in 2015. We look forward to resuming the workshop in 2016.
LIS will launch a modernized, expanded Web Tabulator. The upgraded tool includes results based on the entire LIS Database (i.e., all countries, all years); it has entirely new content, which was designed to increase both user-friendliness and comparability across datasets.
Release of the much-anticipated METadata Information System (METIS). This new feature was created with a generous grant from the US National Science Foundation.

Stay tuned for more!

March 9, 2015 | News