Robert Summers Fellows

The Robert Summers annual fellowships enable economic statisticians working in government statistical agencies and international organizations to attend the Conference on Research on Income and Wealth (CRIW) held annually in Cambridge, MA as part of Summer Institute.

The CRIW was founded in 1936 by Simon Kuznets to promote research and implementation of economic measurement. Its meetings provide opportunities for academic, government, and business economists to explore the latest developments in this field.

The fellowship program celebrates the intellectual legacy of long-time CRIW member and University of Pennsylvania professor Robert Summers, who pioneered the study of international price and output comparisons. Along with his colleagues Alan Heston and Irving Kravis, he developed the Penn World Table (PWT), a detailed compendium of national income account data and other information presented in comparable format, and measured in the same way, for many countries across many years. The initial PWT, developed by Summers and his collaborates Alan Heston and Irving Kravis, was a product of the United Nations International Comparison Program, which began with 10 countries and a reference year of 1970. It has subsequently grown to include 190 countries. It is a standard source of publicly available data on both output and prices and it is widely used in research on the determinants of cross-country growth.

The fellowship program aims to promote research on economic measurement and to strengthen ties between the academics and practitioners working in this area. Fellows will participate in the research meeting and have an opportunity to interact with leading scholars as well as other practitioners in the field of economic measurement. The program is ongoing.

The 2025 fellowship recipients are: Thomas Anderson from the US Bureau of Economic Analysis, Carmelita Esclanda from the Department of Economic Statistics at the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas, Kelsey O'Flaherty from the Federal Reserve Board, Dominic Smith from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, Dean Villanueva from the Asian Development Bank, and Romalahy Mande Isaora Zefania from the Madagascar Institut National de la Statistique. The fellows work on a range of issues concerning economic statistics, including international comparisons and price measurement.

2025 Fellowship Recipients
2024 Fellowship Recipients
2023 Fellowship Recipients