message for NBER IO members

From: Rob Shannon <rshannon_at_nber.org>
Date: Mon, 24 Feb 2020 08:40:15 -0800

Hi all NBER IO members,

I'm writing to gauge interest/demand for trying to identify a topic
area, and potential support, for an IO-related NBER meeting, on top
of our winter program meeting and Summer Institute meeting.

The NBER hosts a number of meetings each year that are organized
around a particular theme, bringing together a smaller group of
scholars than a typical program meeting, and sometimes cutting across
multiple NBER programs. A recent example would be the conference on
"Megafirms" that Chad Syverson and John van Reenen organized in
Cambridge last fall. These meetings involve dedicated funding,
typically from a foundation funder. The process of convening such a
meeting therefore involves three steps: identifying a promising
topic, working with the NBER grants team to secure financing for the
meeting, and then organizing the conference. In some cases, it may be
possible to line up a publication outlet for the papers presented at
the meeting, such as a special issue of a journal.

If you are interested in potentially organizing a conference on a
particular topic, please send me one or two paragraphs describing
what you have in mind (topic area, why it is important, who the core
participants might be, etc.) and I will collect all the ideas that
come in by late April, and then discuss them with Jim after that.
This would be a new initiative for NBER-IO, and I am mostly trying to
get a feel for whether IO program members are interested in this type
of activity under the NBER umbrella (there are many non-NBER such activities).

Please remember that NBER-sponsored activities cannot make policy
recommendations; it is great to suggest topics that are
policy-relevant, but not ones where the natural output of the papers
would be policy advice.

I look forward to seeing what type of ideas come up. Please send
suggestions and any follow up questions to me at
<mailto:leinav_at_stanford.edu>leinav_at_stanford.edu.

Cheers,

Liran
Received on Mon Feb 24 2020 - 08:40:29 EST