To promote research on issues that bear on the economics of mobility and related questions of inequality in both income and wealth, the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), with the support of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, has formed a Study Group on Economic Mobility. This initiative brings together researchers across a variety of fields who share and discuss current research findings on economic mobility broadly defined and also charts the most promising future directions for research in this area.
The NBER will convene an in-person research conference in Cambridge, Massachusetts on Friday, December 2, 2022 on economic mobility. It will include a keynote address by Stefanie Stantcheva (Harvard University and NBER) as well as presentations of six research papers. Paper presenters will be expected to attend the conference in person, assuming that there are no travel restrictions at the time of the meeting. The program will be organized by NBER affiliates Sandra Black (Columbia University, the Study Group director, and Jesse Rothstein (UC Berkeley).
The conference will showcase research papers that address various aspects of the economics of mobility, with special interest in potential differences across race and gender. The meeting will focus on the role of policy in affecting mobility outcomes, on measurement issues, and on new empirical findings, but conceptual papers are also welcome. Potential topics of interest include, but are not limited to:
• The measurement of inequality and economic mobility using household surveys, administrative data from government agencies, and other data sources;
• The causal relationships between various factors that affect economic mobility, such as health shocks, labor market shocks, family structure shocks, and mobility outcomes;
• The effect of experiences at very young ages on economic mobility patterns later in life;
• The effects of public policies, including cash and in-kind transfer programs, employment assistance programs, education systems, safety nets, and place-based policies, on economic mobility, at both the individual and aggregate levels.
To be considered for presentation at the meeting, papers or extended abstracts must be submitted by midnight Eastern time on Thursday, September 15, 2022, via the following link:
https://conference.nber.org/confsubmit/backend/cfp?id=EMf22
The conference organizers welcome submissions from scholars who are early in their careers, who are not NBER affiliates, and who are from groups that have been under-represented in the economics profession. Submitted papers should not be published by December 2022. Questions about this conference may be directed to confer@nber.org.