Subject: (no subject)
From: James Poterba (poterba@MIT.EDU)
Date: Sun Jan 22 2006 - 22:54:40 EST
Hi everyone -
I am writing to keep you informed about current and future activities
in the Public Economics program. You should recently have received a "call
for papers" from the conference department for the Spring Program
meeting. That meeting will be held on April 6-7 in Cambridge. The program
meeting will start after lunch on Thursday and conclude by 3:00 on
Friday. If you have a paper that you would like considered for the program
meeting, please email it to me by the end of this month. I am delighted to
report that Greg Mankiw will be our dinner speaker on Thursday evening.
As is often the case, other meetings will "piggyback" with the Public
Economics program meeting. On Thursday morning April 6, the Behavioral
Responses to Taxation working group will meet. This working group brings
together policy-oriented researchers from organizations like CBO, JCT, and
Treasury, with NBER program members who are primarily interested in
household and firm responses to taxation. There will be several paper
presentations at that working group, and if you have a paper that fits the
topic area, please let me know. AFTER the program meeting, Don Fullerton
will convene a meeting of the Environmental Economics working group. That
meeting will begin on Friday afternoon April 7 and continue through
Saturday April 8. Please contact Don if you have a paper that is suitable
for that meeting.
Another near-term agenda item is nomination of new Faculty Research
Fellows for the Public Economics Program. The nomination process is
simple. You can visit the NBER website at
www.nber.org/family/nomination.html
and submit information on candidates who you think should be considered for
program affiliation. Most new program members join at the FRF level,
although it is also possible to nominate potential Research
Associates. You can nominate candidates for membership in any program, not
just Public Economics - so think about junior colleagues or former students
who might be suitable for other programs, too. In Public Economics, a
steering committee that consists of Austan Goolsbee, Emmanuel Saez, John
Shoven, and me reviews the nominations and recommends new appointments to
Marty Feldstein. In a typical year we appoint two new FRFs, so the
competition is quite stiff. The deadline for FRF nominations is January 31
- so please think about nominations soon! In making a nomination, please
think about whether a candidate would be an active member of the NBER
family -- carrying out empirical research, coming to program meetings, and
periodically helping to raise resources for NBER-based research projects.
If you happen to be carrying out research on the economics of the
not-for-profit sector, or have a student working in this area, please note
that the NBER is in the last few weeks of a call for proposals for research
support or fellowship support. The cap on research grants is $25000, and
the grants cannot cover faculty salary but they can support a research
assistant or data acquisition. Students who apply for fellowship support
must be supervised by an NBER faculty affiliate. Sue Colligan at NBER can
provide more details on the application process, which is painless -- a two
page research summary is all that is required. The deadline for
applications is January 27, 2006.
Looking ahead, there are a number of important dates to record in
your calendar:
July 24-28, 2006: Summer Institute . The set of workshops will probably
bear a close resemblance to those in past years, but I am always on the
lookout for suggestions of new research groups to convene. Please let me
know if you have any suggestions.
September 14, 2006: Tax Policy and the Economy (Washington): This is the
annual "blue book" conference at which current research findings are
presented to a Washington-based audience of economists working in
government and other parts of the policy process. I have not yet finalized
the program for this year's meeting, so if you have a project that you
might like to summarize for this audience, please let me know.
November 2-3, 2006: Fall Program Meeting in Cambridge. This meeting will
be organized by Austan Goolsbee and Josh Rauh.
December 8-9, 2006: Universities Research Conference (Cambridge). This is
a special NBER meeting. Each year, two programs are invited to organize
open-access conferences that are designed to highlight current research in
their field. This year, the Public Economics Program has the opportunity
to arrange one of these meetings; this opportunity won't return for another
seven years! The conference is open to non-NBER affiliates, and the
program includes a mix of researchers with, and without, NBER
affiliations. Attendance at such meetings is typically significantly
higher than that at program meetings, since invitations are sent to the
department chairs at a long list of economics departments requesting
"nominations" of faculty members who would be interested in attending. Raj
Chetty and Emmanuel Saez will be organizing this meeting. You will be
receiving a call for papers later this year, with more information about
the conference focus, and I hope that you will try to attend.
April 5-6, 2007: Spring Program Meeting
July 23-27, 2007: Summer Institute
November 1-2, 2007: Fall Program Meeting (at least you won't be able to
say that you couldn't make it because you weren't sure when it would be,
and booked another commitment!)
I hope that all is well, and look forward to seeing you in April.
Jim
