The conference FindEcon "Forecasting Financial Markets and Economic Decision-Making" was launched in 2002 as an initiative of the Department of Econometrics, Institute of Econometrics and Statistics (Institute of Econometrics since 2008), University of Lodz. Initially the conference was a local event, given in Polish, titled "Prognozowanie rynków finansowych" (Forecasting Financial Markets). The conference was an answer to a growing interest in theory and practice of financial markets and their impact on macroeconomy. First two conferences (2002-2003) were national events with a broad participation of major universities from Poland. The success of first meetings was an incentive to become an international forum of econometric modelling of financial markets. In 2004 we organized an international meeting with a very broad participation of scholars from many countries. Since then the conference has become international, organized annually, in mid-May, with one exception in 2011 when the conference was not organized. After each conference we published, with Lodz University Press, a single or multiple books with refereed papers as outcome of the conference. In 2012 we will celebrate a 10th anniversary.

Participants and Papers:

Each year we host around 50 guests and around 30 papers are presented. 

Invited Speakers:

• Timo Terasvirta Stockholm School of Economics, Aarhus University, Multivariate Autoregressive Conditional Heteroskedasticity with Smooth Transitions in Conditional Correlations (2005),  Modelling conditional heteroskedasticity with smooth time-varying structure (2006)

• Yongmiao Hong Cornell University, Generalized Spectral Analysis with Applications to Economics and Finance (2006)

• Tom Engsted CREATES, The long-linear return approximation: pitffals and clarifications (2007)

• Joseph Plasmans University of Antwerp, Macroeconomic policy coordination in the EMU: Effects of Accession (2005)

• Jacek Osiewalski Cracow University of Economics, Bayesian value-at-risk for large portfolios: methodological issues (2008)

• Matti Viren Bank of Finland, Why do growth rates differ? Evidence from cross-country data on private sector production (2008)

• D. Stephen Pollock University of Leicester, Band-Limited Processes in Discrete and Continuous Time (2010)

We also keep organizing sessions and panel discussions with representatives of national monetary authorities:

• Andrzej Sławiński Monetary Policy Council (in 2007),

• Krzysztof Rybiński National Bank of Polandi (in 2007),

• Stanislaw Kluza Financial Supervision Authority (in 2008).

• Andrzej Raczko Financial Supervision Authority (in 2009).

Countries:

Our guests comes from Belgium, The Netherlands, Australia, Austria, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Hongkong, Italy, Japan, Kuwait, Latvia, Lithuania, New Zealand, Pakistan, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Turkey, UK, Ukraine, USA.

The conference is a dynamic activity and has a very good score.

Each year we publish the conference output as refereed monographs in

FindEcon Monograph Series: Advances in Financial Market Analysis

published in English by Lodz University Press.