We would like to thank you for your increased interest in International Economics and share with you some recent developments and changes.

The scope of our journal is to publish top-quality, original research in applied and specifically empirical international economics. We aim for a quick turn-around. The time from submission to first decision is on average 8 days, while the time from submission to final decision decreased from around 25 weeks in 2015 to 22 weeks in 2018. Recent highly downloaded and cited papers cover topics as diverse as global value chains, the effects of natural resource on growth, the role of carbon emissions in a global economy, the effect of governance on economic growth, the volatility estimation of Bitcoins, and exchange rate predictability, to name just a few.

Further, we have a “Data, Tools, and Replication” section that is devoted to the publication of short notes presenting new and innovative datasets in the area of international economics, new tools useful for research in international economics, and/or replications of existing empirical studies in the field of international economics. In this section, we are planning to have articles describing a database on the Belt and Road Initiative, a routine to harmonize product classifications over time, different economic sanction databases, a new trade elasticity database, and a novel trade and production database in the near future.

We also offer a “Fast Track” option, with a “yes or no” decision given within six weeks, and a transfer option for papers that were rejected from top field or general-purpose journals.

Keeping with these aforementioned scopes, according to many indicators, our journal is on the rise:

The number of submissions rose to over 250 per year, corresponding to an increase of about 40% from 2015;

The citation trends increased. In 2018, International Economics is ranked 31 among the 202 indexed journals in economics and finance according to CiteScore, with a CiteScore Scopus value multiplied by nearly 6 from 2014 to 2018. The SJR (SCImago Journal Rank) value has more than quadrupled between 2014 and 2018. Full-text downloads also illustrate the evolution of the journal, exhibiting a strongly increasing trend: the number of full-text downloads has multiplied by around 2.6 since 2014.

We are very happy about these developments and are fully aware that the improvements would not have been possible without the great work and engagement of the editorial board. We would like to take the opportunity to thank Bernhard Herz and Guido Porto for all their work for the journal over the last years. They decided to leave the editorial board, and we wish them all the best for their future endeavors.

We are pleased to welcome Ansgar Belke, Holger Breinlich, and Lukas Vogel as new members of the editorial board. Ansgar is Jean-Monnet professor at the University of Duisburg-Essen, associate senior research fellow at the Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS, Brussels), senior research fellow at the Centre for Data Analytics for Finance and Macroeconomics (DAFM, King's Business School, London), member of the Adjunct Faculty at the Ruhr Graduate School in Economics (RGS Econ), and a visiting professor at the Europa-Institute at Saarland University (Saarbrucken). His research focusses on international macroeconomics, monetary economics, European integration and applied econometrics. Holger is Professor of Economics at the University of Surrey, Research Affiliate/Fellow at the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR), and associate of the Centre for Economic Performance of the London School of Economics. His research focusses on international trade, industrial organization, corporate finance, development economics, economic geography, and applied econometrics. Lukas is principal administrator at the Directorate General for Economic and Financial Affairs (ECFIN) of the European Commission. His research focusses on applied macroeconomic modelling and the macroeconomics of fiscal, monetary and structural policies. We very warmly welcome Ansgar, Holger, and Lukas at International Economics and look forward to working with them!

The positive developments are based on the great work of the editorial board, the invaluable help of many referees, the great contributions of the authors, and the readers citing and supporting the journal. We are very grateful to all of you. We would also like to thank Véronique Le Rolland, our editorial assistant, for her continued outstanding work since so many years.

We hope that our journal will develop further and establish itself as a valuable support for publication of top-quality research in international economics and a source for describing new databases.