NBER Summer Institute, 2016-2018

Project Outcomes Statement

This project supported three large economic research conferences held under the auspices of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) in 2016, 2017, and 2018. Each of these conferences involved more than 2,500 participants over the course of a three week period. There were roughly 50 sub-meetings each year that together constituted the NBER Summer Institute. These meetings, which brought together economists from colleges and universities, government agencies, think tanks, central banks, and international organizations, involved formal presentations of new research findings but also allowed time for informal interaction that could include planning future projects and carrying out collaborative work. Roughly 500 research papers were presented each year, and the meeting organizers sought to highlight the work of early-career scholars. Approximately one fifth of the meeting participants were first-time Summer Institute attendees. The topics of the meetings spanned most fields in applied economics, ranging from macroeconomic issues such as the impact of monetary and fiscal policy on economic activity, to labor market topics involving employment, unemployment, and the determination of wages, to questions about trade and capital flows in international economics, to microeconomic questions about firm competition, corporate finance, and asset pricing.

This project also supported, through a series of supplements, specific research projects on energy and transportation economics. The first initiative focused on energy use in the transportation sector, with particular emphasis on the light-duty fleet and trucking. It emphasized the role of technological innovation, for example the emergence of new battery technologies that reduce costs, and other economic considerations such as tax incentives in the decarbonization of the transportation sector. The NBER convened a series of research conferences on this subject. The second initiative, which involved three supplements, focused on “Transportation Economics in the 21st Century.” It focused on the role of innovation in transportation markets, such as the rise of ride-sharing companies, the technological emergence of autonomous vehicles, and the growing capacity for tracking vehicles and collecting data on the movements of goods and people, in contributing to economic growth and affecting the consumption of transportation services. This initiative has also considered the role of transportation in supply chain resilience, and the sensitivity of transportation networks to both economic and other shocks.