Preface

The International Conference on Applied Economics (ICOAE 2016) has been coorganised in 2016 by the Department of Finance and Economics of the University of Nicosia, Cyprus, and the Department of International Trade at Kastoria of the Western Macedonia University of Applied Sciences, Greece, after the kind invitation by the Head of the Department of Finance and Economics of the University of Nicosia Dr. Spyros Hadjidakis who is also a co-chair of the conference. ICOAE is an annual conference started in 2008 with the aim to bring together economists from different fields of Applied Economic Research in order to share methods and ideas. Applied economics is the field of economics that combines economic theory with econometrics to analyse economic problems of the real world usually with economic policy interest. The topics covered by the articles presented at ICOAE 2016 include applied financial economics issues with wide geographical dispersion, applied microeconomics with a focus on specific economic sectors of various countries, applied macroeconomics with interesting policy conclusions for the specific countries used in the analysis, applied international economics with interesting conclusions about the effects of globalisation process and applied education and health economics with conclusions regarding welfare. All papers presented in ICOAE 2016 and published in the conference proceedings were peer reviewed by anonymous referees. In total, 96 works were submitted from 32 countries while 64 papers were accepted for presentation and publication in the conference proceedings. The acceptance rate for ICOAE 2016 was 67 %. ICOAE 2016 had the following keynote speakers who are scientists with a major contribution in their fields (in alphabetical order):