NBER Asset Pricing Program

From: Carl Beck <cbeck_at_nber.org>
Date: Fri, 19 Jul 2019 20:34:52 +0000

Dear Asset Pricing Program Members,

We want to thank many of you who have provided us with ideas and
suggestions as to how we can keep the program broad and impactful, and
build on the successes of the past decade. We are looking forward to
beginning our service as program co-directors in September. In response
to the many valuable suggestions that we have received, we have decided
to try several innovations in the coming year.

At the November 8, 2019 program meeting, which will be held at Stanford,
we will convene a panel discussion on the big questions that asset
pricing should tackle in future years. To guide the conversation, we
will participate in a panel along with leading experts in four broad
areas – intermediary asset pricing, macro and monetary policy, models of
beliefs, and international asset pricing. We will ask each speaker to
prepare a ten-minute presentation to address open research questions and
to propose reasonable metrics of progress and success. There will be
ample time for commentary and discussion. The slides of the
presentations will be posted on the NBER website so that they are
accessible to a broad audience, including graduate students. The papers
for the rest of the fall meeting will be selected by Stefano Giglio and
Tarek Hassan.

Next spring, when the program meeting will be on April 10, 2020 in
Chicago, the organizers will be Andrea Eisfeldt and Stijn Van
Nieuwerburgh. The program will include two papers on one of the four
themes above. If this is successful, we will include another themed
session in the Summer Institute meeting in 2020. We also plan to
introduce a session for short paper presentations at the Summer
Institute meeting. A number of other NBER programs use this approach
with apparent success; it may be particularly well-suited for papers
documenting an important empirical fact or earlier work.

We want to close with two requests. First, please remember that although
program members are not expected to attend every meeting, regular
participation is important for the intellectual life of the group. We
hope that you will make every effort to participate in the next year.
Second, please remember that NSF grants that run via the NBER are an
important source of funding for the organization. If you are considering
applying to the NSF for research support, please consider working with
the NBER’s outstanding grant support team.

Please reach out to us if you have any ideas, comments or suggestions.
We look forward seeing you in Stanford.

Ralph and Sydney
Received on Fri Jul 19 2019 - 16:39:29 EDT