 | |
 The building inCambridge, Massachusetts that contains the NBER main offices[1] | |
 | |
| Abbreviation | NBER |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1920; 105 years ago (1920) |
| Founder | Wesley Clair Mitchell |
| Type | Nonprofit organization |
| 13-1641075 | |
| Location | |
| Leader | James M. Poterba |
| Revenue | $41.7 million[2] (2023) |
| Expenses | $38.5 million[2] (2023) |
| Website | nber |
TheNational Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) is an American privatenonprofit research organization "committed to undertaking and disseminating unbiased economic research among public policymakers, business professionals, and the academic community."[3] The NBER is known for proposing start and end dates forrecessions in the United States.
Many chairpersons of theCouncil of Economic Advisers were previously NBER research associates, including the former NBER president andHarvard professorMartin Feldstein. The NBER's current president and CEO isJames M. Poterba ofMIT.
The NBER was established in 1920 following debates during the Progressive era over income distribution. Founded byMalcolm Rorty and Nachum Stone, the NBER aimed to fill the information gap on economic data. The organization's research is restricted to presenting data and findings without making policy recommendations.
The NBER initially received support from theCarnegie Foundation, theLaura Spelman Rockefeller Foundation, and various corporations.Columbia University professorWesley Clair Mitchell was the first director of research, guiding the organization's research for 25 years. The NBER's initial projects included measuring labor's share of national income and studying unemployment and business-cycle fluctuations.
In 1927, Mitchell brought inSimon Kuznets, who later played a pivotal role in developing the U.S. national income accounts.[clarification needed] Kuznets' work laid the foundation for theNobel Prize he received in 1971.
After World War II, the NBER expanded its research scope.Arthur Burns succeeded Mitchell as research director. The 1950s and 1960s saw groundbreaking work byMilton Friedman andAnna Schwartz on monetary policy's impact on business cycles. Research in labor economics also flourished during this period.
Arthur Burns became NBER's president in 1956, followed byJohn R. Meyer in 1967. Meyer introduced several initiatives, including two NBER journals and the establishment of NBER offices in various cities.
In 1977,Martin S. Feldstein became the NBER's president, transforming the organization. He expanded the NBER's network of university-based affiliates, moved its headquarters toCambridge, Massachusetts and introduced the NBER Working Paper Series. Feldstein also established research programs focusing on specific areas and initiated the NBER Summer Institute.
James Poterba succeeded Feldstein in 2008, continuing the NBER's expansion. The number of affiliated researchers grew significantly, and new programs and working groups were introduced. The NBER now distributes over 1,200 new research studies annually and holds around 125 meetings each year on various economic topics.[4]
In September 2010, after a conference call with its Business Cycle Dating Committee, the NBER declared that theGreat Recession in the United States had officially ended in 2009 and lasted from December 2007 to June 2009.[5][6] In response, a number of newspapers wrote that the majority of Americans did not believe the recession was over, mainly because they were still struggling and because the country still faced high unemployment.[7][8][9]
The NBER's research activities encompass 20 research programs[10] on different subjects and 14 working groups.[11]
Research programs[edit]
| Working groups[edit]
|
The NBER convenes over 120 meetings each year at which researchers share and discuss their latest findings and launch new projects. The Summer Institute, a collection of nearly 50 smaller meetings, is held annually in July.[12]
The NBER is funded by grants from government agencies, private foundations, corporate and individual contributions, and income from the NBER's investment portfolio. The largest donators are theNational Institutes of Health, theNational Science Foundation, theSocial Security Administration, and theAlfred P. Sloan Foundation.[13]
In a 2010 report by theUniversity of Pennsylvania, the NBER was ranked as the second most influential domestic economic policy think tank, after theBrookings Institution.[14]
The NBER is known for its start and end dates of U.S. recessions. The NBER is seen by some as an arbiter of whether the U.S. is in a recession.[15] The National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) does not function as a real-time arbiter in determining the onset and duration of recessions but rather as a retrospective marker.[16] The origins of this role can be traced to the 1960s when the Commerce Department began publishing a digest that relied on NBER's analysis of the business cycle.[15] The recession markers are made by the Business Cycle Dating Committee, whose eight members are selected by the president of the NBER. The eight members tend to be highly distinguished economists.[15] The NBER's Business Cycle Dating Committee, responsible for officially dating recessions, does not make real-time judgments or predict economic downturns.[17] The committee's meetings are neither publicized nor on a fixed schedule.[15] The board's decisions are not always unanimous, but the disagreements within the committee tend not to be about the presence of a recession; rather they are about the specific start and end points of the recession.[15]
The NBER uses a broader definition of arecession than commonly appears in the media. The media commonly define a recession as two consecutive quarters of a shrinkinggross domestic product (GDP). In contrast, the NBER defines a recession as "a significant decline in economic activity spread across the economy, lasting more than a few months, normally visible in real GDP, real income, employment, industrial production, and wholesale-retail sales".[18] Business cycle dates are determined by the NBER dating committee. Typically, these dates correspond to peaks and troughs in real GDP, although not always so.[19]
The NBER prefers this method for a variety of reasons. First, it believes that by measuring a wide range of economic factors, rather than just GDP, a more accurate assessment of the health of an economy can be gained. For instance, the NBER considers not only the product-side estimates like GDP, but also income-side estimates such as thegross domestic income (GDI). Second, since the NBER attempts to measure the duration of economic expansion and recession at a fine grain, it emphasized monthly, rather than quarterly, economic indicators. Finally, by using a looser definition, the NBER can take into account the depth of decline in economic activity. For example, the NBER may declare not a recession simply because of two quarters of very slight negative growth, but rather aneconomic stagnation.[20] However, the NBER does not precisely define what is meant by "a significant decline", but rather determines if one has existed on a case by case basis after examining catalogued factors that have no defined grade scale or weighting factors. The subjectivity of the determination has led to criticism and accusations committee members can "play politics" in their determinations.[21] Another factor in favor of this alternate definition is that a long-term economic contraction may not always have two consecutive quarters of negative growth, as was the case in the recession following the bursting of thedot-com bubble.[20]
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Academics | |
| People | |
| Other | |
