NBER IO Program Request

From: Nancy Rose <nrose_at_MIT.EDU>
Date: Fri, 03 Aug 2007 13:52:02 -0400

I' writing with a few requests/reminders pertinent to your involvement with the NBER Research program in Industrial Organization.  Some of these involve the annual IO program review, which will take place soon with Marty Feldstein.   Please take a few minutes to respond--it makes for a more productive review, which helps the IO program enormously.

1.  Research grant activity:  I'd like to encourage you to apply for an NSF (or other sponsored research grant) this year, and I hope that you'll strongly consider doing so through the NBER.  If you are contemplating a grant application and haven't decided whether to run it through the NBER or your university, I would love to talk with you about that choice.  I understand the pressures everyone is under to run grants through their universities these days, but the NBER relies on grant overhead to provide support for its research program-- and I hope you share my view that the NBER IO research program is extraordinarily valuable to empirical IO researchers.  It would be great to see our program step up to becoming more self-funding.  On a personal level, the NBER provides great grant adminstration support and attractive pension contributions on salary paid through NBER grants.  Please contact me or Susan Colligan at the NBER ( colligan@nber.org ) for more information.

    If you don't feel able to run the entire grant through the NBER, there may be a compromise that provides  benefits for everyone, and I'd be delighted to describe that for you (and put you in touch with economists in your school who have done so).  If you have sponsored research grants that are run through your home institution, the NBER records probably indicate that (particularly for NSF/NIH/NIA grants).  No pressure intended, but it would be helpful for me to understand why you chose that route, as I will definitely be asked about it in our program review.  (The NBER has understandings with virtually all major research universities to allow faculty to run grants through the NBER, and it's important to the NBER to be sure that these are in place in fact as well as principle).

2.  Research update. Part of the program review is devoted to updating Marty on what program members are working on.  He'll already know about NBER working papers you've put out in the past year.  If you don't have recent NBER working papers, it would be great if you would respond with a few sentences telling me about your current projects, so I can convey a sense of the breadth of research activity in our discussion.  If you have papers you haven't put out yet in WP form, please do so (and let me know if they're just going in  now, so I can convey that information).  Contrary to popular belief, I don't see working paper submissions--I find out about them only when they come out in yellow covers.

3.  Program nominations.  As you know, overall official program membership (Faculty Research Fellows and Research Associates) is constrained, but we try to be broadly inclusive in who we consider for nominations to the program.  If you have recommendations for new program members, either at the junior faculty (FRF) or tenured faculty (RA) level, please send me their names, and a sentence or two explaining your endorsement.  You receive official requests for nominations once or twice a year from the NBER, but I hope you'll also feel free to send me your suggestions at any time.  You can obtain a list of current program members at the NBER website:

        http://www.nber.org/programs/io/io.html

4.  Winter 2008 program meeting "heads up".  The Winter 2008 program meeting will be held in Palo Alto on Friday, February 8 and Saturday February 9.  We will hold the Friday afternoon session joint with the NBER's new Energy and Environmental Economics (EEE) program; the Saturday session will be general IO.  If you have work that might be suitable for the joint session, I would strongly encourage you to target completion by a submission deadline of November 26.  If you know of others who may be working on relevant papers, please pass this information along to them.

I enjoyed the chance to catch up with many of you at our recent Summer Institute meeting, and again extend my appreciation to Steve and Fiona for organizing the meetings, and to all the authors and discussants for providing the grist for interesting and productive discussions.  If anyone has suggestions for future sessions like the pharmaceutical roundtable that Fiona organized, please pass those along to me.

With warm regard,
Nancy Received on Fri Aug 03 2007 - 13:52:02 EDT