Robert Summers Fellowship Program on Economic Measurements

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

The CRIW was founded in 1936 by Simon Kuznets to promote research on 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 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 185 countries over more than 70 years. 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 economic growth.

2026 Fellowship Recipients
2025 Fellowship Recipients
2024 Fellowship Recipients
2023 Fellowship Recipients