Subject: Program Update and Call For Papers
From: James Poterba (poterba@MIT.EDU)
Date: Thu Jan 08 2004 - 23:01:53 EST
Dear Program Members:
I am writing to provide you with a brief update on program activities
for the coming year. I hope that early notice will help to avoid schedule
conflicts and that it will facilitate participation in all of the meetings.
First, the spring program meeting will be held at the NBER offices at
Stanford on Thursday-Friday, April 8-9, 2004. The meeting will begin at
1:00 on April 8 (lunch will begin at noon) and it will conclude in the late
afternoon on April 9. The meeting will be jointly organized by Alan
Auerbach, Roger Gordon, and Antonio Rangel. I am very grateful to them
for taking on the chore of organizing the meeting. If you have a paper
that you would like considered for the meeting, please email it to Antonio
at rangel@stanford.edu. The deadline for submissions is FEBRUARY
1. There will be a meeting of the Environmental Economics working group,
organized by Don Fullerton, on Friday and Saturday, April 9-10, also at
Stanford.
At Alan Auerbach's suggestion, let me ask you to think about your
travel arrangements for this meeting sooner rather than later. Alan
writes: "Although fares to the Bay Area fluctuate and can be quite
expensive without a Saturday night stay-over, it is currently possible to
get very inexpensive tickets (in the $250-$400 range) for nonstop travel
from New York, Newark, Boston, Chicago, Washington and most likely other
major cities departing the morning of April 8 and leaving the Bay Area the
morning of April 10. Some of these fares are on major carriers (e.g.,
United, American, Continental), although in some cases one will need to
expand the search to include recent entrants such as ATA, Jet Blue, and
America West. When searching for flights, keep in mind that Stanford is
nearly midway between San Francisco and San Jose Airports, and that Oakland
Airport in only slightly farther away."
Second, this year's Summer Institute will be held in Cambridge on
August 2-5, 2004. This is slightly later than usual because the Democratic
National Convention will be held in Boston the previous week. There will
be five different sessions this summer. I indicate the topics and the
organizers below:
Monday August 2: Economics of National Security (Feldstein)
Monday-Tuesday, August 2-3: Environmental Economics (Goulder/Greenstone)
Tues-Wed, August 3-4: Real Estate and Local Public Finance
(Gyourko/Mayer/Sinai)
Wednesday, August 4: Social Security (Liebman)
Thursday, August 5: Current Developments in Taxation Economics (Chari/Saez)
As in the past, there will be a number of other NBER meetings, such as the
Health and Aging Summer Institute, during this week as well. There will be
a call for papers for the Summer Institute later this spring.
Third, the Tax Policy and the Economy meeting will be held in
Washington DC on Thursday October 7. The program is not yet full, so if
you have a paper that would be well suited to a broad policy audience,
please let me know. The TP&E audience consists primarily of the
professional staff at the committees and agencies that oversee taxation and
expenditure programs.
Fourth, the fall program meeting will be held in Cambridge on
Thursday-Friday, October 28-29, 2004. I will organize that meeting, and
will send out a call for papers in the late summer. As usual, the first
paper will begin at 1:00 on Thursday, and we will conclude by 3:00 on
Friday afternoon.
Finally, let me say a word about identifying and recruiting new program
members. You should have received a memo from Marty Feldstein very
recently asking you to nominate new faculty research fellows and research
associates. Please take a moment to think about potential candidates, and
submit nominations that you feel are appropriate. The nominations are
reviewed by our program's steering committee (David Bradford, Austan
Goolsbee, Emmanuel Saez, John Shoven, and me) and we make recommendations
to Marty for new appointments.
I wish you all the best, and look forward to seeing you in Palo Alto.
Jim
