John McCombie retired from his University post in 2017, but continues as Director of CCEPP. He is Senior Emeritus Fellow of the Department and continues as Director of Studies in Land Economy for Downing, Christ’s and Girton Colleges. (He has retired from being Director of Studies in Economics for Downing College.) He continues to be actively engaged in research and undertakes some part-time teaching for the Department. He was presented with a Festschrift edited by Philip Arestis entitled Alternative Approaches in Macroeconomics: Essays in Honour of John McCombie (Palgrave, 2018).

 Philip Arestis has recently received the two following awards. In January, 2018 he was honoured by being given the Thomas Divine Award of the Association for Social Economics (ASE). This award is presented annually to an Association member who over a lifetime has made important contributions to the study of social economics and the social economy. The award was presented at the annual meeting of the ASSA, Philadelphia, USA, 4-6 January 2018. He was also honoured by the Marquis Who's Who which gave him their prestigious official 2018 Albert Nelson Marquis Lifetime Achievement Award, for hard work and dedication to our profession.

 We are delighted to report the award of the PhD to Joao Romero (2015) for his thesis Technical Progress and Structural Change: The Roles of Demand and Supply in Economic Growth. His thesis was awarded the BRICs Economic Research Award of 2016. We congratulate Rafael Riberio for the successful completion of his PhD in 2016, Real Exchange Rate, Structural Change and the Balance-of-Payments Constrained Growth Model and also Guilherme Magacho for his PhD (2016) Brazilian Growth in 2000s: A Sectoral Approach to its Sources and Long-term Implications. We further congratulate them all on their academic appointments as Associate Professors of Economics. We are also delighted to report three further PhD awards. Carol Baltar for the completion of her thesis (2013), Economic Growth and Inflation in an Open Developing Economy: the Case of Brazil. Peter Phelps for his thesis (2012), Regional Integration and Business Cycle Synchronisation in an Enlarged EU and Anderson Cavalante for his thesis (2012), Regional Financial Development and Economic Growth. We also wish to congratulate all three of them on their academic appointments as Lecturers in Economics. We are also delighted to report a further PhD award, Gabor Pinter for the completion of his thesis (2013), Macroeconomics and Financial Frictions, and congratulate him for his appointment at the Bank of England upon finishing successfully his PhD thesis.

 The Centre was saddened by the untimely death of Nigel Allington in April 2016 who was a valued member of the Centre. Nigel was Professor of Applied Macroeconomics at Grenoble Ecole de Management, Affiliated Lecturer with the Department and Bye-Fellow and Director of Studies in Economics for Downing College, Cambridge. Nigel was a gifted teacher and prolific researcher. His latest research was as a co-editor and contributor to the volume, The Philosophy of Politics and Economics of Finance in the 21^st Century, Routledge (2015).

The Centre continued to run a successful conference in conjunction with The Cambridge Trust for New Thinking in Economics in March 2018. The conference looked into inequalities in economic systems. Inequality has been considered a problem by many academics and policy makers for a long time now and recently there has been some evidence of increasing inequalities in the society. The speakers focused on the causes and consequences of inequality along with the importance of tackling inequality and recommend potential policies to reduce it, for example, tax reforms. The talks covered different aspects of inequality - from income to gender – and explore links between inequality and economic growth or financialisaton and financial crisis.

The Conference also organised, in collaboration with the Department of Applied Economics V of the University of the Basque Country UPV/EHU, the 15^th International Conference , Developments in Economic Theory and Policy (2018).