Summer Institute 2026

More than 2,700 researchers, hailing from 39 countries, traveled to Cambridge, MA for the 49th annual NBER Summer Institute in mid-July. The Summer Institute included 49 distinct workshops arranged by more than 150 organizers. Most of the meetings were streamed on the NBER’s YouTube channel.

The participants represented more than 400 universities, central banks, think tanks, businesses, and government agencies. Just over one third were NBER affiliates, and nearly one sixth—470—were attending Summer Institute for the first time. 

The 591 research papers presented over the three weeks were selected from 3,986 submissions, implying an acceptance rate of 14.8 percent. 

Mark Duggan of Stanford University delivered the Martin Feldstein Lecture on "Social Security Reform at a Time of Fiscal Deficits". Melissa Dell of Harvard University and Ashesh Rambachan of MIT presented the Methods Lectures on "Estimation and Inference with AI-Generated Data".