Dear NBER Family, Board, and Staff Members -
I am writing to tell you about two upcoming changes in NBER program
leadership. Two current program directors, Raghu Rajan and Ernst
Berndt, plan to step down at the end of this calendar year.
Raghu, who has led the Corporate Finance Program since 1998, will be
succeeded by Malcolm Baker of the Harvard Business School. Ernie, who
has led the Productivity & Technological Change Program since 2000, will
be succeeded by Nicholas Bloom of Stanford. I hope that you will join
me and the members of their respective programs in thanking Raghu and
Ernie for their visionary and enthusiastic leadership. They
have created intellectual excitement in their programs and helped to
advance the NBER's research enterprise more generally.
I am confident that Malcolm and Nick will build on the successes of
their predecessors. Malcolm's research ranges widely in corporate
finance, and touches on many of the field's core topics including the
determinants of capital structure and corporate payout policy. Nick
studies productivity-related topics from a variety of different
perspectives; his work has examined the links between R&D spending,
capital investment, management practices, and productivity growth. Both
Malcolm and Nick are enthusiastic about their new opportunities to serve
their research communities, and I look forward to their program leadership.
Jim Poterba
Received on Sun Jul 25 2010 - 22:44:44 EDT
