Dear Board Members -
It was wonderful to see most of you at the Wequassett Inn last week. I
am very grateful to you for devoting your time and attention to the
NBER's activities, and I found the feedback and comments at the meeting
extremely helpful, as usual. I know that David Card and Eddie Lazear
also enjoyed your comments on the activities of their groups.
In the hope of maximizing attendance at our future meetings, I am
writing to solicit your input regarding potential meeting dates for
*2016*. We have already fixed our meeting dates for 2014 (April 28 and
September 15) and 2015 (April 20 and September 28).
For *Spring 2016*, my proposed date for our New York meeting is
Monday, April 18, 2016 (Executive Committee meeting on Sunday evening,
April 17)
The best alternative date, which I already know will not work for some
board members, is Monday, April 11, 2016 (Executive Committee on Sunday,
April 11). Moving a week later to April 25 would not work because it
conflicts with Passover, so I hope that April 18 will meet with general
approval.
For*Fall 2016*, my proposed date for our Cambridge meeting is
Monday, September 19, 2016 (Exec Comm and Board Dinner on Sunday night,
September 18)
Our alternative date is Monday September 26, 2016 (Exec Comm & Board
Dinner, September 25).
I would be very grateful if you would let me know in the next two weeks
-- by Friday October 25 -- if you are *unable *to attend meetings on any
of these dates. No reply is needed if all the dates look good. I hope
that the two proposed dates will work, but If there are substantially
more conflicts with the proposed date than with the alternative date for
either meeting, then we'll need to consider shifting to the
alternative. At the end of this month, I'll set the dates and send you
an announcement so that you can save them in your calendar.
I also want to take this opportunity to alert you to an oversight in the
list of vendors that was distributed in connection with our potential
financial conflict of interest form this summer. The list did not
include four firms with which the NBER does more than $10,000 of annual
business, but which are not paid through our standard "invoice and
payment" system, but rather deduct charges at source. These firms are:
BlackRock
Citizens Bank
Morgan Stanley
Social Science Electronic Publishing
If you have a relationship with any of these four firms that was not
disclosed on the form that you sent Gerri in August, please let me know
so that we can update your report and take further actions as appropriate.
Thank you and all best wishes.
Jim
Received on Fri Oct 11 2013 - 09:59:06 EDT
