Dear Board Members, Researchers, and Staff Colleagues -
The NBER reached a milestone this morning with the distribution of our
30,000th working paper.The series was launched in 1973 by labor
economist Robert Michael to disseminate research prior to journal
publication and to facilitate distribution of data appendices and
related supplemental material. Working paper number 1 was *Education,
Information, and Efficiency* <
https://www.nber.org/papers/w0001> by
Finis Welch.
The series began on a modest scale, reflecting the small number of NBER
affiliates at the time. There were 41 working papers in the first year,
and it took 12 years to reach the 1000 paper mark. Originally, working
papers were printed and had bright yellow covers. Packets of papers were
mailed occasionally to libraries, leading economics departments, and
research institutes. As the number of NBER researchers expanded, the
volume of working papers rose. Eventually, a shift to digital
distribution became essential for accommodating the expanding number of
studies.
In 2020, when many economists ratcheted up their research output to
address the many new questions posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, a record
1,713 working papers were distributed.The annual average for the last
five years was 1,322. More than 25,000 subscribers receive the “New This
Week” email each Monday, and there were more than 2.9 million paper
downloads in 2021. Twitter has become an increasingly important channel
for calling attention to working paper content.
The NBER working papers provide some insights on the changing structure
of economic research. For example, 60 percent of the papers distributed
during the series’ first decade had a single author, while 35 percent
were coauthored and 5 percent had more than two authors.In the last
decade, only 11 percent had a single author; 56 percent had three or
more.The number of working papers per NBER affiliate per year, which was
more than 1.7 in 1980, has trended down. It averaged about 0.95 at the
turn of the century, and was 0.78 in most recent five years excluding 2020.
Please join me in thanking Laura Bethard and Shaniah Lindsey, who manage
production, and Tim Page, who manages subscriptions, for all their
support of the working paper series. All best wishes.
Jim Poterba
Received on Mon May 02 2022 - 10:07:36 EDT
