Conference honoring Gérard Roland’s career

We are very pleased to announce that ECARES will hold a special one-day conference to honor
Gérard Roland on April the 3rd, 2025, at Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB).
Confirmed speakers at this stage are Philippe Aghion, Patrick Bolton, Sergei Guriev, Eric
Maskin, Torsten Persson, Jean Pisani-Ferry, Richard Portes, André Sapir, Monika Schnitzer,
Guido Tabellini, Guntram Wolff, Chenggang Xu, Jeromin Zettelmeyer, and Katia
Zhuravskaya.
As you know, Gérard has made outstanding contributions to multiple fields, and this event is an
opportunity to celebrate his 70th birthday and his work, and to reflect on its impact over the
years.
It is also an opportunity for us to welcome him back to ULB: Gérard studied economics at ULB,
from his Bachelor degree to his PhD, and was a Professor here until continuing his very successful
career at UC Berkeley, from which he will retire this year. We are very fortunate that he and his
wife have decided to return to Brussels.
It is striking how ‘topical’ Gérard’s return in 2025 is: he was a key member of the team that
founded ECARES (then ECARE) in 1991, thanks to the help of our Institute for European Studies
and of CEPR. ECARES started with a conference focused on topics very close to Gérard’s work at
the time: the transition from central planning to a market economy in the wake of the fall of the
Berlin Wall, and its consequences for the European Union. While we can clearly not be happy with
the current state of world affairs, we can say that Gérard’s insights remain remarkably relevant
today !
On April the 3rd, we are thus gathering a group of academics, friends, and colleagues to share
ideas on topics where Gérard has produced influential research, with a special focus on the
above topics as they have evolved in the new ‘geo-politico-economic’ environment. The focus will
be both on Europe and its institutions, and also on the global institutional architecture.
We are very much looking forward to welcoming you on this occasion !

Micael Castanheira and Mathias Dewatripont
ECARES, Solvay Brussels School of Economics and Management, ULB