The NBER Reporter 2010 Number 4: News

NBER Research Associates Peter A. Diamond of MIT and Dale T. Mortensen of Northwestern University shared the 2010 Nobel Prize in Economics with Christopher Pissarides of the London School of Economics. Both Diamond and Mortensen are members of the NBER's Program on Economic Fluctuations and Growth; Diamond is also a member of the Public Economics Program.

The award citation prepared by the Prize Committee of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences highlighted the three researchers' analysis of "markets with search frictions." Their research has found broad application in the study of markets for labor, housing, and many other commodities. A particularly current application is to an understanding of how unemployment can remain high in the United States and other developed countries despite the presence of a substantial number of job vacancies.

Diamond and Mortensen join a long list of current and past NBER affiliates who have received the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, which is better known as the Nobel Prize in Economics. Past NBER-affiliated winners include: Paul R. Krugman, 2008; Edward C. Prescott and Finn Kydland, 2004; Robert F. Engle, 2003; George Akerlof and Joseph E. Stiglitz (shared with Michael Spence), 2001; James J. Heckman and Daniel L. McFadden, 2000; Robert C. Merton and Myron S. Scholes, 1997; Robert E. Lucas, Jr., 1995; Robert W. Fogel, 1993; Gary S. Becker, 1992; and the late George J. Stigler, 1982, Theodore W. Schultz, 1979, Milton Friedman, 1976, and Simon Kuznets, 1971.

Robert Mednick, a member of the NBER's Board of Directors since 1998 and the organization's Treasurer, was recently honored by the International Federation of Accountants (IFAC) with its prestigious Sempier Award. This award, which is presented every four years, recognizes outstanding contributions to the accounting profession over a period of many years. The IFAC award citation recognized Mednick's contributions to the development of the accountancy profession internationally, including his two terms as the chair of the IFAC Compliance Advisory Panel and his role in IFAC's Accountants' Legal Liability Task Force, as particularly noteworthy.

Eli Shapiro, who served as NBER President between 1982 and 1984, passed away in early December at the age of 94. He was the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Management, Emeritus, at MIT. In the course of his academic career, he taught at the University of Chicago, the Harvard Business School, and the MIT Sloan School of Management.

A graduate of Brooklyn College, Shapiro received his Ph.D. from Columbia in 1939. He joined the NBER in 1938 as a research economist and, with some interruptions, was a member of the Bureau's research staff until the early 1960s. His research focused on corporate finance and the links between financial and real activity -- topics that are as relevant today as they were when he began studying them more than seventy years ago.

Shapiro was elected to NBER's Board of Directors in 1974, and became Chairman of the Board in 1980. He relinquished that position when he became NBER President in 1982, but returned to the Board when he stepped down as President in 1984. In 1993, he became a director emeritus.

The NBER's Board of Directors has elected seven new members:

Alan V. Deardorff, who is the John W. Sweetland Professor of International Economics and Professor of Economics and Policy at the University of Michigan, is the representative of the University of Michigan. He succeeds Saul H. Hymans in this role. Deardorff received his Ph.D. in economics from Cornell University in 1971 and has been on the faculty at the University of Michigan since 1970.

John P. Gould was elected as the representative of the University of Chicago. He succeeds the late Arnold Zellner. Gould is the Steven G. Rothmeier Professor and Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business. From 1983 to 1993, Gould served as dean of Chicago's Graduate School of Business. He received his MBA in 1963 and PhD in 1966 from the University of Chicago.

Peter Blair Henry was elected as an NBER Director-at-Large. Henry is the Dean of New York University's Leonard N. Stern School of Business, where he also holds the Dean Richard West Professorship of Business and the William Berkely Professorship of Economics and Business. He received his PhD from MIT, and was the Konosuke Matsushita Professor of International Economics at Stanford University's Graduate School of Business prior to moving to NYU.

Ellen Hughes-Cromwick, the Chief Economist of Ford Motor Company, will represent the National Association for Business Economics on the NBER Board, succeeding Harvey Rosenblum. She has just completed a six-year term on the NABE Board, including one-year as President, and is a member of the Board of Directors of the NABE Foundation. Hughes-Cromwick received her Bachelor's degree from the University of Notre Dame and a Master's degree in International Development and Ph.D. in Economics from Clark University in Worcester, MA.

Alan L. Olmstead, who is Director of the Institute of Governmental Affairs and Distinguished Professor of Economics at the University of California, Davis, was elected as the representative of the Economic History Association. He succeeds Timothy W. Guinane in representing this organization. Olmstead received his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin in 1970 and has been on the faculty at UC-Davis since 1969.

Gregor W. Smith, the Douglas D. Purvis Professor of Economics and Associate Head of the Department of Economics at Queen's University, is the newly-elected representative of the Canadian Economics Association. He received his D.Phil. from Oxford University, and is a past president of the Canadian Economics Association. He succeeds Angelo Melino as the CEA's representative.

Finally, Bart van Ark, Senior Vice President and Chief Economist of The Conference Board, was elected as the representative of that organization. He succeeds Gail Fosler, who stepped down from the NBER Board of Directors in December 2009. Van Ark received his Ph.D. from, and is currently a Professor of Economic Development, Technological Change, and Growth at, the University of Groningen in the Netherlands.

Three former directors have been elected to Director Emeritus status: Saul H. Hymans, formerly the representative of the University of Michigan; Rudolph A. Oswald, a former Director-at-Large; and Nathan Rosenberg, who represented Stanford University. All are long-serving members of the NBER Board of Directors.

The NBER's Working Group on Household Finance has a new co-director: Brigitte Madrian of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government has joined Nicholas S. Souleles of the Wharton School and Peter Tufano of the Harvard Business School to co-direct that group. Madrian's profile appeared in the 2010 Number 3 Issue of the NBER Reporter

Christina D. Romer, who resigned from the NBER when she became chair of the President's Council of Economic Advisers in early 2009, has now returned to the economics faculty at the University of California, Berkeley. She was re-elected an NBER Research Associate by NBER's Board of Directors at their September 2010 meeting, and she re-joins David H. Romer, also of Berkeley, as co-director of the NBER's Monetary Economics Program.

In January, 2011, Raghuram Rajan of the Booth School of Business at the University of Chicago, who has led the NBER's Program on Corporate Finance since 1998, will be succeeded by Malcolm Baker of Harvard Business School. At the same time, Ernst R. Berndt of the MIT Sloan School of Management, who has led the NBER's Productivity & Technological Change Program since 2000, will be succeeded by co-directors Nicholas Bloom of Stanford University and Josh Lerner of the Harvard Business School. When Lerner becomes co-director of the Productivity Program, he will step down from his roles as co-director of the Entrepreneurship and Innovation Policy Working Groups. Current co-directors Antoinette Schoar and Scott Stern, both of MIT's Sloan School of Management, will become the sole directors of the NBER's Entrepreneurship and Innovation Policy Working Groups, respectively.