Proceedings of the 8th Economics & Finance Conference, London

Dear Authors, esteemed Readers,

It is with deep satisfaction that I write this Foreword to the Proceedings of the IISES 8th Economics and Finance Conference held in London, United Kingdom in May 29 - 31, 2017.

IISES continues a tradition of bringing together researchers, academics and professionals from all over the world, experts in economics and finance. The conference particularly encouraged the interaction of research students and developing academics with the more established academic community in an informal setting to present and to discuss new and current work. Their contributions helped to make the Conference as outstanding as it has been.

This proceedings record the fully refereed papers presented at the conference. All full-length papers and work-in-progress abstracts were submitted to a double-blind peer-review process. All the submitted papers in the proceedings have been peer reviewed by the reviewers drawn from the scientific committee, external reviewers and editorial board depending on the subject matter of the paper. After the rigorous peer-review process, the submitted papers were selected on the basis of originality, significance, and clarity for the purpose of the conference. The conference program was extremely rich, featuring high-impact presentations.

The papers contributed the most recent scientific knowledge known in the fields of Macroeconomics, Microeconomics, International Economics, Labour Economics and Finance and Banking.

In addition to the contributed papers, Jack Strauss from the University of Denver, United States delivered the speech "Do High Speed Railways Lead to Urban Economic Growth in China?".

These Proceedings will furnish the scientists of the world with an excellent reference book. I trust also that this will be an impetus to stimulate further study and research in all these areas.

We thank all authors and participants for their contributions.

Robert Holman
Conference Chair