Hi all,
It was great to see so many of you last weekend, and thanks to Jim for
organizing such a nice and well-deserved event during the Friday
dinner, and thanks again to Nancy and Jon for getting NBER IO to be in
such a great shape. Let's see how fast I can run this ship into the
ground ... hopefully slowly enough so nobody notices ...
So here we go with my first email blast. I'll try to not send many of
those, so please try to read through the end even if it's slightly
long ...
1. Next meeting. It is scheduled for January 27-28 at Stanford
(SIEPR). We are still waiting for a formal room confirmation from
SIEPR, but it's safe to put these dates on your calendars. I'll set up
meeting organizers and you should expect to receive the usual call for
papers during the fall.
2. NBER working papers and grants. FWIW, as I now realize even more
than before, the NBER management/board really cares about these and
these are the main (only?) metrics they use to evaluate the various
NBER programs, and on the margin this is affecting program budgets and
new member allocations. We can individually question these metrics or
think that there should be others, but in the end of the day this is
what they care about and if we can help ourselves look better on these
dimensions, we should do the best we can to try. Specifically, how can
you help:
a. Working papers -- take 5 minutes to look at your web page and make
sure that every paper there got submitted as an NBER wp, and submit
those that were not. It's not too late and it's very easy to do, and
it's good for the paper's visibility anyway, so no real reason not to
do so other than inattention. Some people worry about NBER scope, and
if a paper is really high level theory or high level econometrics it
may not be a good fit, but I suspect that these are rare cases for
NBER IO, and if in doubt just submit it and let the NBER decide.
b. Grants -- this is relevant to only some of you, but if you apply
for new grants please consider running them through the NBER. They
have less overhead so your eventual budget may get cut less, and my
guess is that their grant support (they help you write the proposal
and do the reporting etc.) is better than in most universities. They
have a particular advantage if you have multiple PIs from multiple
institutions, or if you are at risk of moving institutions (with NBER
you don't really need to "move" your grant money). Some universities
don't mind too much that you run the grant via NBER, others like it
less. My own sense is that you can always find a way to do it, but
with different degrees of hassle around it. Feel free to reach out to
me if you are thinking about it and I can try to help you navigating
the process.
3. Moving forward. Many people asked me last weekend what I plan to do
as the new program director. The short answer is that I have no
specific agenda and I plan to do what you all tell me to do. The
slightly longer answer is that I think the program is doing well and
my impression is that people seem reasonably happy so it's not obvious
we need to change much. Yet, director transition is an opportunity to
get feedback and think about making some tweaks, so I figured I'd run
a short survey. In that spirit, could you take anywhere between 10
seconds (if you click the easy "I'm happy" option) and 10 minutes (if
you want to raise something, anything you think about) and fill the
survey in this link --
https://goo.gl/forms/vMjX7JsrKrANgO8a2. It all
goes to me only so feel free to go crazy, or you can just say so
(there is an option in the same link) and we can set up a phone call
instead.
If you got to read all the way to the end ... thanks!!
Cheers,
Liran
Received on Tue Jul 26 2016 - 10:21:34 EDT
