Template-type: ReDif-Paper 1.0
Author-Name: Borghans Lex 
Author-Name: Romans Margo 
Author-Name: Sauermann Jan 
Author-workplace-name: ROA rm
Title: What makes a good conference? Analysing the preferences of labour economists
Abstract: Conferences are an important element in the work of researchers, requiring substantialinvestments in fees, travel expenses and the time spent by the participants. The aimof this paper is to identify the preferences of participants with respect to conferencecharacteristics. Based on a sample of European labour economists, preferences aremeasured using the vignette approach where participants are asked to choose betweenhypothetical European Association of Labour Economists (EALE) conferences. We find thatthe keynote speakers are the most important element in the preference for a conference,followed by the location of the conference. There is substantial heterogeneity in thetaste of labour economists especially with respect to location, though the link betweenpreference parameters and measured characteristics like gender, age and seniority islimited. Factor analysis suggests that the variety in preferences can be best described bya latent variable that reflects the weights people put on content versus fun.
Keywords: labour economics ; 
Series: Research Memoranda
Creation-Date: 2010
Number: 005
File-URL: http://edocs.ub.unimaas.nl/loader/file.asp?id=1504
File-Format: application/pdf
File-Size: 412476
Handle: RePEc:unm:umaror:2010005