A Superb New Week of Research from NBER

The NBER plays a central role in academic economics as it solves a co-ordination problem and the financing problem of bringing ambitious applied economists of all ages to meet and debate new ideas.  The net result from these conferences is the production of  a set of new working papers that are freely distributed on a highly regarded internet network.  James Poterba and Martin Feldstein deserve enormous credit for creating and fueling this juggernaut.  Even in this age of information technology, face to face communication is crucial for debating ideas and allowing young people to establish their own reputations.  Young scholars know that there will be a competitive process for determining whose paper will be selected for conference presentation. This creates the right incentives to work hard to earn one's slot on the conference program.   While many prominent academic economists are consulting many hours a week, the NBER culture  actually tethers some of these guys to continue to be active academics through a culture of not resting on one's past laurels.  No old guy wants to be known as "tenured deadwood" and the NBER's conferences brings you into face to face with the next generation of  hungry ambitious scholars. Such expectations of these social interactions nudge me to sober up and get back to work!

I have a slightly unique perspective on this organization because at the start of my academic research career in 1993 I was an "outsider".  I was not named to a "group".  At the time, I could rationalize this disappointment because there was no environmental group or urban group. While there was a "public group" and a "labor group", my work didn't fall neatly into one of those categories.  In 2007, I was named as an "insider" to the nascent environmental group.  Between 1993 and 2007, I would co-author with Pat Bajari, Ed Glaeser and Dora Costa and these papers would be NBER working papers and I saw the influence of this "social network".   So, for those who care about identification; note this within variation; the same scholar (me) had papers that were and were not NBER papers and I could see the difference in their influence.

Now, let me point you to some of the awesome new papers posted this week;

All the President’s Friends: Political Access and Firm Value
Jeffrey R. Brown and Jiekun Huang #23356 (   CF   PE   POL)

Averting Catastrophes that Kill
Ian Martin and Robert S. Pindyck #23346 (   EEE   PE)

Economies of Density in E-Commerce: A Study of Amazon’s Fulfillment Center Network
Jean-François Houde, Peter Newberry, and Katja Seim #23361 (   IO   PE)   (my 15 year old son thought that this paper is awesome after I sketched it to him at breakfast today)

Harnessing Policy Complementarities to Conserve Energy: Evidence from a Natural Field Experiment
John A. List, Robert D. Metcalfe, Michael K. Price, and Florian Rundhammer #23355 (   EEE   PE)