CERGE-EI celebrated its 20th birthday on October 7-11, 2011. Hundreds of students, alumni, faculty, supporters, employees, collaborators and friends of CERGE-EI gathered to join the cheer in a series of academic and social events.

Anniversary week began with an opening gala ceremony followed by a champagne reception honoring the organization’s founders and graduates. The celebratory panel featured remarks and toasts by CERGE-EI’s founders and ESC members Jan Švejnar and Josef Zieleniec; founder Richard Quandt; its current director, Štěpán Jurajda; the rector of Charles University, Václav Hampl; the president of the Academy of Sciences, Jiří Drahoš; and the EBRD principal economist, Anita Taci.

CERGE-EI alumni conducting research at world-leading universities and institutes contributed papers to a conference entitled CERGE-EI: Economists Changing the World. The conference also featured a special panel by members of CERGE-EI’s Executive and Supervisory committee: Michelle White, Gerard Roland, John Sutton.

The panel was followed by a reception and a buffet dinner, one of the social events for alumni to reconnect and meet current faculty and students during the celebration. For the other, CERGE-EI students, alumni, faculty and friends took over a local pub to continue the long-standing tradition of CERGE-EI Beer Parties.

CERGE-EI was a co-organizer of the 2011 edition of Václav Havel’s  Forum 2000, an annual event centered around a theme that draws prestigious speakers and attendees from around the world to discuss regional social and economic issues. This year’s event was the 15th in Forum 2000’s influential and high-profile history and will focus on the “Rule of Law.”

CERGE-EI Executive and Supervisory Committee member and Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz addressed the Forum’s opening session on Sunday evening, October 9th, when he was presented with the Karel Englis Medal by the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic.

On Monday, October 10 in the afternoon, Nobel Prize winner and ESC member Joseph Stiglitz gave a lecture “Restoring Growth and Stability in a World of Crisis and Contagion:  Lessons from Economic Theory and History”. Next day, he discussed the problems of the eurozone with CERGE-EI’s local sponsors at an informal breakfast.

At the end of Prague celebration, CERGE-EI held an exclusive cocktail party and dinner for its supporters and selected Forum 2000 participants on Tuesday, October 11th, after the Forum’s concluding event.