In 2026, CEC will take place at the Yildiz Technical University, in Istanbul.
The Conference on Economic Complexity (CEC) is a global conference dedicated to the growing field of economic complexity. In 2026 it is organized by the faculty of the Yildiz Technical University & the Center for Collective Learning (CCL). The goal of the conference is to facilitate interactions and collaborations among scholars, practitioners, and thought leaders working on the field of economic complexity and its applications.
Program outline in 2026
Day 1: July 9 2026
Conference day 1
This day is dedicated to presentations form scholars, researchers, and practitioners.
Day 2: july 10 2026
Conference day 2
This day is dedicated to presentations form scholars, researchers, and practitioners.
Keynote Speakers
İbrahim Tuğrul Çınar | Faculty of Economics and Administrative Sciences, Anadolu University, Eskisehir, Turkiye
İbrahim Tuğrul Çınar is an economist based in Eskişehir, Turkey, with experience across academia, the private sector, and public service. He began his professional career as a Research Assistant at Kütahya Dumlupınar University, later serving as a Regional Development Specialist and Coordinator in Turkish Regional Development Agencies, and subsequently working in the private sector as R&D center staff, and corporate management & innovation officer.
İbrahim Tuğrul Çınar earned a B.A. in Economics from Dokuz Eylül University (İzmir) and completed a Ph.D. in 2016 with the dissertation “Interregional Labor Productivity Convergence in Turkey: A Spatial Panel Approach.” In 2019, he joined Anadolu University (Eskişehir) as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Economics and has served as an Associate Professor at the same institution since
2024. Since the beginning of 2025, he has been serving as an Executive Board Member of the Turkish Regional Science National Committee. His research focuses on regional and spatial economic analysis in Turkey, evolutionary economic geography and economic complexity.
Johannes Wachs | Institute of Data Analytics and Information Science, Corvinus University of Budapest
Johannes Wachs is an Associate Professor at Corvinus University Budapest in the Institute of Data Analytics and Information Science, a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Economic and Regional Studies, and Faculty at the Complexity Science Hub Vienna. Before joining Corvinus, he was an Assistant Professor at the Vienna University of Economics and Business and a postdoctoral researcher at RWTH Aachen. His research explores the digital economy and its economic geography. Specifically, he examines how people build software together, how AI is transforming knowledge work, and what role geography plays in these processes. Another strand of his research focuses on corruption and favoritism in public contracting. His work has been featured in Science, Research Policy, PNAS Nexus, Technological Forecasting and Social Change, and the Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, among others. He is the program director of the MSc in Social Data Science at Corvinus.
Venue: Davutpasa Campus – Faculty of Economics and Administrative Sciences
