1995 marked the 50th Anniversary of the founding of the Department of Applied Economics, which we celebrated with a two-day conference on 15–16 December in Queens' College. Over 100 former members of the Department and current colleagues attended, many coming from distant parts of the world, to renew long-standing acquaintanceships. The papers presented were fascinating, and speak for themselves in this volume, but the conference was memorable in other ways. Brian Henry demonstrated the newly refurbished Phillips machine in the Meade room. James Meade was unfortunately too ill to attend but was present in spirit on a video (made in 1992) in which he was shown demonstrating the accelerator. It was fascinating to compare the transparency of this early analogue model of the economy with its later and more opaque digital representations discussed in the conference.

The suggestion and initial preparations for the Anniversary Conference came from Iain Begg, who was later joined in this undertaking by the then newly arrived Assistant Director, Brian Henry. The papers recalled past achievements while presenting research at the current frontiers of the subject. We were treated to nostalgia, history of thought and method, and the excitement that good applied economics arouses in those who believe that economics still has a key role to play both in understanding the world and in offering soundly based policy advice.