Subject: New AP appointments and news
From: John Cochrane (john.cochrane@gsb.uchicago.edu)
Date: Fri Apr 07 2006 - 10:40:07 EDT
Dear Fellow AP members:
I am pleased to announce that we have four new members. Nicolae Garleanu,
Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh and Motohiro Yogo will join us as Faculty Research
Fellows, and Markus Brunnermeir will join us as a Research Associate. I
hope you will join me in welcoming them to our group.
In addition, Andrew Ang, Leonid Kogan, Jonathan Lewellen, Toby Moskowitz,
Lubos Pastor, Lasse Pedersen, Tano Santos, Pietro Veronesi are promoted to
research associate. Since we normally are only allowed two new research
associates, either internal or external, in addition to three new FRF's, I
am very grateful to Marty Feldstein for recognizing the great talent in our
group and being willing to grant so many RA cases.
It's a good moment for a word on how this works. Every year in January, you
get an email asking for nominations from the bureau, and I typically send
one as well. I collect the nominations, and consult with an informal
steering committee to pick that year's appointments. Nominations matter.
Support from someone's colleagues and especially support from people at
other places counts a lot in our deliberations.
We are strictly limited in the number of new people we can appoint. If your
nomination doesn't get in right away, please keep trying.
Being a member of the NBER is not one of those nice little academic honors
you put on your vita and forget. We're looking not just for distinguished
scholars, but also for active participants: people who will regularly come
to the meetings, participate in the discussions, take an occasional turn
organizing a meeting, send their work in to the working paper series, and
apply for grants through the NBER.
Once a year, Marty Feldstein and I review each member's contributions on
these dimensions. People who have lost interest in bureau activities are
sometimes asked if they'd like to resign in order to make room for new
people, and it's a bit of a black mark on me if I appoint someone who
takes no interest in bureau activities. Thus, in your nominations, think
about who would be active participants as well as well as whose work you
think would be of interest to the group.
Conversely, if you have lost interest in bureau activities - if you find
that over the last 3 years, say, you haven't come to a meeting, sent in a
working paper, or applied for a grant, and you don't see yourself doing so
in the future - you might consider resigning all on your own, and saving me
the embarrassment of having to ask.
FRF (faculty research fellow) are generally untenured, RA (research
associate) are generally tenured. The other difference is that FRF have a
finite term, and RA is indefinite; RA also are eligible for honoraria.
Promotion to RA is not automatic. It depends on the above review, and is
usually limited in number.
People often ask "how can I join the bureau?" Well, now you know the
process. The best way for people in the group to get to know a new person
and support the nomination is to have that person give papers and act as a
discussant. The "call for papers" list is open to anyone, just email Lita
Kimble and ask to be on it. Feel free also to send on the call for papers to
any colleagues you think have work our group would find interesting.
To join the NBER you must have a US academic appointment. Some people joined
while in the US and may stay on after moving to Europe, but we can't make
new appointments to people outside the US, or with Government or industry
jobs.
Non-bureau members often want to come to meetings. Here's how that works. We
have a limited number of seats, so the organizers of the meetings are in
charge of sending out extra (non bureau member) invitations, while keeping
track of the available space. Just have the person who wants to come email
the organizers, and they'll say yes or no. There is usually lots more room
at the summer institute than at regular program meetings. Non bureau members
have to pay their own way.
I encourage the organizers also to think about who is likely to contribute
to the discussion, rather than just sit there like a bump on a log. For that
reason, I discourage having too many graduate students at the meetings.
Please remember that all meetings are by invitation! Do not tell colleagues
or graduate students to show up. People showing up at the last moment cause
lots of problems. For example, we ran out of food at lunch during the spring
meeting. Conversely, I like to treat everyone well, to give them a name tag,
put them on the participant list, and make sure they are invited to lunch
and dinner. I hope this encourages everyone to participate, which is the
hallmark of our meetings.
We're also having a little problem with members not answering on time,
showing up without having replied, showing up to only some of the papers, or
drifting in to talks late. Please help us to run efficient meetings, and to
show each speaker the courtesy we would all like when giving our own work.
Yes, there is an annual review. The bureau appreciates your attendance at,
active participation in, and organization of meetings. You do a favor to the
bureau when you send in a working paper. There is no problem with sending it
in simultaneously to the NBER and SSRN. This does not happen automatically.
It's easy; just go to the NBER website. I don't know why so many of our
members don't send in any working papers.
All of this is funded by grant overhead. If you like being part of the
bureau, you should consider applying for a grant through the NBER. Our group
is particularly bad about this, since many of us have summer salary through
our home institutions. A grant can often still get you some marginal money,
it can buy you RA, travel or other research support, and it makes the
bureau very happy, which can trickle back to you in lots of little ways.
It's easy; as you would imagine the NBER support for grant applications is
superb. All you have to do is boil that last working paper down to 10 pages
or so and they do the rest.
Some people think that their institution will not let them run a grant
through the NBER. This is not true! Occasionally there is some difficulty,
but a call from Marty Feldstein to the concerned dean or administrator
always quickly settles the issue. If someone tells you you can't run a grant
through the NBER, just let Sue Colligan know and the problem will disappear.
Yes, the NSF does give money to asset pricing projects and to people who
work in business schools. There are also other sources of funding, and the
NBER is good at telling you about them.
Ravi Jagannathan and Tano Santos are organizing the summer meeting in
Cambridge. I look forward to seeing you all there.
John Cochrane
*************************************************************************
John H. Cochrane
Graduate School of Business
University of Chicago
5807 S. Woodlawn
Chicago IL 60637
773 702 3059
773 702 0458 GSB fax
773-834-2081 my secretary's fax
My office: HPC 459
Web page:
http://gsbwww.uchicago.edu/fac/john.cochrane/research/Papers/
