INFORMS Open Forum

Key Dates

TL;DR for Seasoned Authors

• Authors must submit abstracts by February 5 and full papers by February 12. 

• Papers submitted to EC'24 must select one of four methodological tracks and several content areas. The list of tracks and content areas can be found below.

• EC'24 is continuing the forward-to-journal option as in previous years.

• EC'24 is currently planned as a primarily in-person event.

Background

Since 1999, the ACM Special Interest Group on Economics and Computation (SIGecom) has sponsored the leading scientific conference on advances in theory, empirics, and applications at the interface of economics and computation. The 25th ACM Conference on Economics and Computation (EC'24) will feature invited speakers, a technical program of submitted paper presentations, workshops, and posters. EC'24 is currently planned as a primarily in-person event, taking place from July 8 through July 11, 2024 at Yale University.

We solicit paper submissions for presentation in the technical program.

Timetable for Authors

• Monday, February 5, 2024 (11:59 pm AoE): Abstract submission deadline.

• Monday, February 12, 2024 (11:59 pm AoE): Paper submission deadline.

• Thursday, March 28, 2024: First-round decisions sent to authors.

• Tuesday, April 23, 2024: Second-round reviews sent to authors for feedback.

• Friday, April 26, 2024 (11:59pm AoE): Author responses due.

• Saturday May 18, 2024: Paper accept/reject notifications.

• TBA (11:59pm AoE): Camera-ready versions of accepted papers due.

• July 8-11, 2024: Conference technical program.

Submission Instructions

Deadlines. Authors must submit abstracts by February 5 and full papers by February 12. The submission server will open mid-January.

Format. The body of the submission (excluding the title page and the bibliography) may be up to 18 pages long. The title page should only contain the title, submission number, and the abstract. In addition, an appendix of arbitrary length may be included at the end of the paper only for the review process (i.e., an appendix will not appear if the paper is published). This appendix will be read at the discretion of the reviewers. To add the submission number to the title page, one must first submit a paper without a number, see what number was assigned, and then revise the submission to include this number. The body of the submission should contain a clear presentation of the contributions of the paper, including a discussion of prior work and an outline of the key technical ideas and methods used to achieve the main claims. The submission as a whole should include all of the ideas necessary for an expert to fully verify the central claims in the paper. Submitted papers will be evaluated on significance of the contribution, originality, relation to prior research, technical quality, and exposition. 

LaTex style files. Authors will be required to format their submissions using the EC'24 LaTex style files, which uses a single-column format with 10-point font. A link to the style file will be provided here in mid-January, when the submission server opens. Papers that do not use the EC'24 LaTex style files or violate the page limit may be rejected without review.

Tracks. Each submission must select one of four tracks that differ along methodological dimensions. The reviewing process of each track will be overseen by the corresponding Track Chair(s), who are primarily responsible for ensuring that consistent reviewing standards are applied to all papers in the same track. Authors should consider the description of the tracks to select which track best captures the research community according to whose standards their paper should be evaluated. Authors from any research community are welcome to submit to any of the tracks. EC'24 will use the following four tracks:

• Theory: Typical papers in this track make progress on existing theoretical problems, propose new ones, or introduce significant new techniques that could be applied more broadly. Track chairs: Ozan Candogan (University of Chicago), Laura Doval (Columbia University), Renato Paes Leme (Google), and Inbal Talgam-Cohen (Tel Aviv University).

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• Applied Modeling: Typical papers in this track propose and analyze novel models that capture real-world phenomena or provide fresh perspectives on previously studied applied problems. Track chairs: Nageeb Ali (Penn State) and Omar Besbes (Columbia University)

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• Empirics and Experiments: Typical papers in this track draw significant insights from real or synthetic data, through access to new data sources or experiments, or through novel analysis of existing data sources or experiments. Track chair: Davide Proserpio (University of Southern California)

• AI: Typical papers in this track apply the methods and models of artificial intelligence, including both theoretical and computational approaches, to topics at the intersection of economics and computing.  Track chair: David Pennock (Rutgers)

Areas. Each submission must select at least one content area from the list provided below. Note that the areas are partially overlapping; if in doubt, authors are advised to select those area(s) that best fit their paper. Content areas will be used to match papers with a member of the Senior Program Committee (SPC) who is assigned to at least one of the paper's areas. SPCs are responsible for shepherding papers through the review process and for making accept/reject recommendations to the Track and Program Chairs.

• Agent-based modeling

• Algorithmic fairness and data privacy

• Auctions and pricing

• Behavioral economics and bounded rationality

• Blockchains and cryptocurrencies

• Contract design

• Crowdsourcing and information elicitation

• Decision theory

• Dynamic games

• Econometrics, ML, and data science

• Economic aspects of learning algorithms

• Economic aspects of neural networks and large language models

• Equilibrium analysis, including price of anarchy

• Equilibrium computation and complexity

• Fair division

• Industrial organization

• Information design

• Laboratory and field experiments

• Market design & matching markets

• Market equilibria

• Mechanism design

• Online algorithms

• Online platforms and applications

• Social good and ethics

• Social choice & voting theory

• Social networks and social learning

Alternative venues. In addition, we will ask the authors to specify alternative venues to which they would consider submitting the paper. We understand that different communities have different ways of highlighting the contribution and will use this information to match papers to reviewers familiar with the appropriate context. 

STOC submissions. Please note that the full paper submission deadline has been set after the notification date for STOC decisions. Authors of papers in submission to STOC on EC-relevant topics are encouraged to register their abstracts even if they have not yet been notified of the STOC decision; the EC submission can then be withdrawn if the paper is accepted to STOC.

Review process. Each paper will be reviewed in detail by at least two referees.

There will be two stages of review, with some decisions announced on March 28 after first-round reviews, and the remaining decisions announced on May 18 after a second round of reviews. Between April 23-26, authors of papers undergoing second-round reviewing will be able to submit responses to the reviews, which will be taken into account by the review team.

The review process is double blind. Authors must take measures to ensure that their identity is not easily revealed from the submission itself. Authors should refer to their prior work in a neutral manner (i.e., instead of saying "We showed" say "XYZ et al. showed").

Submission of code and data. In the interest of reproducibility, authors are strongly encouraged to submit their code and data, if any. Such material should be archived as a single zip file and submitted as supplementary material.

One-page extended abstract option. To accommodate the publishing traditions of different fields, authors of accepted papers can ask that only a one-page abstract of the paper appear in the proceedings, along with a URL pointing to the full paper. Authors should guarantee the link to be reliable for at least two years. This option is available to accommodate subsequent publication in journals that would not consider results that have been published in preliminary form in conference proceedings. Such papers must be submitted electronically and formatted just like papers submitted for full-text publication. 

Submission of publicly available work (e.g., papers on arXiv). It is acceptable to submit work that has been presented in public (provided there are no published proceedings) or has been uploaded to arXiv or similar online archives, provided the submission itself is anonymized.

Simultaneous submissions to journals. As in prior years, it is acceptable to simultaneously submit papers to EC'24 and to a journal, or to submit papers that are already under review at a journal, including papers that have already received a "revise and resubmit", as long as the paper has not been accepted for publication prior to the EC submission deadline, and provided that the authors intend to publish the paper as a one-page abstract in EC. Papers that are accepted at EC'24 and appear as a one-page abstract can subsequently be submitted for publication in a journal but may not be submitted to any other archival conference (i.e., with published proceedings).

No other simultaneous submissions. The following submissions are not allowed: (a) papers that are currently under review at another archival conference, (b) papers that have been accepted for publication in a journal or archival conference before the EC'24 submission deadline, (c) papers in which one or more of the contributions have previously been published or accepted for publication in a journal or archival conference.

Forward to journal: As in prior years, authors of accepted papers will have the option to select the forward-to-journal option to have the reviews forwarded to a journal of their choice. The decision to select or decline this option will take place when authors are submitting the camera-ready version of the paper (or one-page abstract) for the conference proceedings. The list of partner journals, and additional instructions for authors, will be provided at that time. We emphasize that the ultimate disposition of the paper is within the editorial discretion of each journal; in particular, there is no guarantee of acceptance if the forward-to-journal option is chosen. However, we do anticipate that this process should result in a faster decision from the journal.

Feature at INFORMS. Authors of accepted papers can indicate if they wish to be considered for presenting their papers in special sessions at the 2024 INFORMS Annual Meeting, organized and sponsored by the INFORMS Auctions and Market Design (AMD) Section. To be considered for this fast-track selection process conducted by the AMD cluster chairs, authors will need to provide a short non-technical abstract (at most 500 characters) and indicate whether the intended presenter is an INFORMS job market candidate. The exact deadline to submit this information will be announced soon.

Conflict of interest. Authors will have the opportunity to declare conflicts of interest (COIs) with Program Committee members. This must be done separately for each submission. Declaring COIs prevents the specified people from reviewing a paper, thereby constraining the matching process and so potentially negatively impacting review quality. For this reason, COIs should not be declared automatically based on a prior relationship. Instead, when declaring COIs, authors are asked to follow the ACM Conflict of Interest Policy. Program Committee members can also declare a conflict of interest with authors as well as with specific papers.

AUTHORS TAKE NOTE: The official publication date is the date the proceedings are made available in the ACM Digital Library. This date may be up to two weeks prior to the first day of the conference. The official publication date affects the deadline for any patent filings related to published work.

By submitting your article to an ACM Publication, you are hereby acknowledging that you and your co-authors are subject to all ACM Publications Policies, including ACM's new Publications Policy on Research Involving Human Participants and Subjects. Alleged violations of this policy or any ACM Publications Policy will be investigated by ACM and may result in a full retraction of your paper, in addition to other potential penalties, as per ACM Publications Policy.

Please ensure that you and your co-authors obtain an ORCID ID, so you can complete the publishing process for your accepted paper. ACM has been involved in ORCID from the start and we have recently made a commitment to collect ORCID IDs from all of our published authors. The collection process has started and will roll out as a requirement throughout 2022. We are committed to improve author discoverability, ensure proper attribution and contribute to ongoing community efforts around name normalization; your ORCID ID will help in these efforts.