In the Fall of 1997, ECARE then merged with the Centre d’Economie Mathématique et d’Econométrie (CEME), which had been founded at ULB in the 1970’s, with as purpose to foster international quantitative research in economics at ULB. Through this merger, ECARE became a research centre of both the IEE and the Faculté des Sciences Sociales,Politiques et Economiques of ULB.

The collaboration with statisticians from ULB’s Institut de Statistique et de Recherche Opérationnelle (ISRO) was officialized in 1999 by the transformation of ECARE into ECARES, the “European Centre for Advanced Research in Economics and Statistics”, and in 2006, by the integration of the Institute for Research in Statistics. These institutional changes have thus gone in the same direction: strengthening the connection between research in economics, econometrics and statistics while keeping our commitment to excellence and internationalization.

The institutional growth over the past years had meant that ECARES researchers were scattered around several places on the ULB campuses.