Dear NBER Health Economics FRFs and RAs,
You will soon be receiving an email from Jim Poterba about nominating
new individuals for NBER membership. I regularly get inquiries about
the process, so I decided this year I would write in advance to
clarify a few things.
First: NBER FRF/RA selection is done by a Steering Committee, which
rotates periodically. Last year this committee was Kosali Simon and
Heather Royer and me. This year Kosali and Heather have kindly agreed
to serve again with me.
Second: I have decided to follow the lead of some other program
directors in the goal of trying to reduce the politicking and
awkwardness on all sides that comes with people trying to be
strategic about gathering many nominations. We aim to appoint
individuals who are outstanding health economists working on topics
relevant to our program, and we will use people's CVs as the primary
way of assessing this. There is no need to write detailed nomination
statements, nor is it advantageous to be nominated by more than one
person. Our review will focus on the CVs of nominated candidates
without regard to nomination statements, who nominated a given
individual, or how many nominations a given individual received. Put
differently, the goal of the nomination process is just to get a set
of names/CVs in front of the committee for consideration.
Third: in terms of who can be nominated, there is no rule other than
that they must have a tenure track position at a North American
university (which is an NBER requirement). Although most new
affiliates are junior faculty, we can appoint outstanding senior
health economists who may have been overlooked in past years. Every
year there are many, many more qualified nominees than we can appoint
(typically there are three new HE program members in each year). The
NBER is actively looking to ensure diversity in each of its programs
along many dimensions, so please keep that in mind as you compile
your nominations.
Please let me know if you have any questions, comments, or
suggestions about this.
I hope you are all having a safe and good start to the New Year,
-Kitt Carpenter
Received on Wed Jan 12 2022 - 12:09:13 EST
