The INFORUM community has met from September 2 through September 6, 2019 in the Olympic resort of Sochi at the Black Sea in Russia for the 27th World Conference. This year, the conference was hosted by Prof. Alexander Shirov and his team from the Institute of Economic Forecasting of the Russian Academy of Sciences (IEF RAS) based in Moscow. 

The INFORUM group (standing for INterindustry FORcasting Project at the University of Maryland) was founded by Clopper Almon, Professor Emeritus from the University of Maryland, USA in the 1970s. Since 1992, the international community of economists and scientific researchers from five continents have met every year for a World Conference to share and discuss new research approaches and results in the field of I/O-based macroeconomic and industry modelling. 

Apart from general economic I/O modelling questions, many topics of this year’s presentations and discussions dealt with climate, energy, mobility and sustainability questions. In many cases, the research work involved relates to the climate debate as one of the dominating worldwide societal and political discussions at present. Besides, new and progress in existing regional I/O modelling approaches were presented as well as studies focusing on socio-economic and labour market research.

Please find attached the list of presenters & topics including links to all presentations open to the public at the end of this information.

The social program was a well-balanced mix of day and night events and of course included a visit of the Olympic Centre and the skiing resort where the Winter Olympics in Sochi took place back in 2014. The Nature Tree path in the Caucasian Reserve and the harbor & boat cruise on the Black Sea have given all participants a fine impression of the natural wealth of the city and region in the South of Russia.