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National Bureau of Economic Research
 
 
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The National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) is a private, nonprofit research organization dedicated to studying the science and empirics of economics
Economics

File:Ballard Farmers' Market - vegetables.jpgEconomics is the Social sciences that studies the Production theory basics, Distribution , and Consumption of Good and Service ....
, especially the American economy
Economy of the United States

The economy of the United States is the List of countries by GDP in the world. Its gross domestic product was estimated as $14.2 trillion in 2008....
. It is "committed to undertaking and disseminating unbiased economic research among public policymakers, business professionals, and the academic community." It publishes NBER Working Papers and books. The NBER is located in Cambridge, Massachusetts
Cambridge, Massachusetts

Cambridge is a city in the Greater Boston area of Massachusetts, United States. It was named in honor of the University of Cambridge in England....
 with branch offices in Palo Alto, California
California

California is a U.S. state on the West Coast of the United States of the United States, along the Pacific Ocean. It is bordered by Oregon to the north, Nevada to the east, Arizona to the southeast, and to the south the Mexico state of Baja California....
, and New York City
New York City

The City of New York is the List of United States cities by population in the United States, while the New York metropolitan area ranks among the List of urban areas by population....
.

The NBER was founded in 1920.






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The National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) is a private, nonprofit research organization dedicated to studying the science and empirics of economics
Economics

File:Ballard Farmers' Market - vegetables.jpgEconomics is the Social sciences that studies the Production theory basics, Distribution , and Consumption of Good and Service ....
, especially the American economy
Economy of the United States

The economy of the United States is the List of countries by GDP in the world. Its gross domestic product was estimated as $14.2 trillion in 2008....
. It is "committed to undertaking and disseminating unbiased economic research among public policymakers, business professionals, and the academic community." It publishes NBER Working Papers and books. The NBER is located in Cambridge, Massachusetts
Cambridge, Massachusetts

Cambridge is a city in the Greater Boston area of Massachusetts, United States. It was named in honor of the University of Cambridge in England....
 with branch offices in Palo Alto, California
California

California is a U.S. state on the West Coast of the United States of the United States, along the Pacific Ocean. It is bordered by Oregon to the north, Nevada to the east, Arizona to the southeast, and to the south the Mexico state of Baja California....
, and New York City
New York City

The City of New York is the List of United States cities by population in the United States, while the New York metropolitan area ranks among the List of urban areas by population....
.

The NBER was founded in 1920. Its first staff economist and Director of Research was Wesley Mitchell. Simon Kuznets
Simon Kuznets

Simon Smith Kuznets was an American economist at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvaniawho won the 1971 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences "for his empirically founded interpretation of economic growth which has led to new and deepened insight into the economic and social structure and process of development"....
 was working at the NBER when the U.S. government asked him to help organize a system of national accounts
National accounts

National accounts or national account systems provide a complete and consistent conceptual framework for measuring the economic activity of a nation ....
 in 1930, which was the beginning of the official measurement of GDP and other related indices of economic activity. Due to its work on national accounts and business cycle
Business cycle

The term business cycle or economic cycle refers to economy-wide fluctuations in production or economic activity over several months or years, around a long-term growth trend....
s, the NBER is well-known for providing start and end dates for recession
Recession

In economics, the term recession describes the reduction of a country's gross domestic product for at least two Calendar_year#Quarters. The usual dictionary definition is "a period of reduced economic activity", a business cycle contraction....
s in the United States.

The NBER is the largest economics research organization in the United States. Sixteen of the thirty-one American winners of the Nobel Prize in Economics have been NBER associates, as well as three of the past Chairmen of the Council of Economic Advisers
Council of Economic Advisers

The Council of Economic Advisers is a group of three respected economists who advise the President of the United States on economic policy. It is a part of the Executive Office of the President of the United States, and provides much of the economics policy of the White House....
, including the former NBER president, Martin Feldstein
Martin Feldstein

Martin Stuart "Marty" Feldstein is a Conservatism in the United States United States of America economics. He is currently the George F. Baker Professor of Economics at Harvard University, and the president and CEO of the National Bureau of Economic Research ....
. NBER research is published by the University of Chicago Press
University of Chicago Press

The University of Chicago Press is the largest university press in the United States. It is operated by the University of Chicago and publishes a wide variety of academic titles, including The Chicago Manual of Style, dozens of academic journals, including Critical Inquiry, and a wide array of advanced monographs in the academic field...
.

Notable members

  • Milton Friedman
    Milton Friedman

    Milton Friedman was an United States economist, statistician and public intellectual, and a recipient of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences....
  • Ludwig von Mises
    Ludwig von Mises

    Ludwig Heinrich Edler von Mises was an Austrian economics, philosopher, and liberalism who had a major influence on the modern libertarianism movement....
  • Simon Kuznets
    Simon Kuznets

    Simon Smith Kuznets was an American economist at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvaniawho won the 1971 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences "for his empirically founded interpretation of economic growth which has led to new and deepened insight into the economic and social structure and process of development"....
  • Alberto Alesina
    Alberto Alesina

    Alberto Francesco Alesina is an Italian political economics and has published extensively in major academic journals in economics....
  • Robert Barro
    Robert Barro

    Robert Joseph Barro is an United States classical liberal macroeconomist and the Paul M. Warburg Professor of Economics at Harvard University. He is among the most influential economists in the world according to RePEc....
  • Anna Schwartz
    Anna Schwartz

    Anna Jacobson Schwartz is an economist at the National Bureau of Economic Research in New York City. She is a past president of the Western Economic Association ....
  • Aaron Edlin
    Aaron Edlin

    Professor and author Aaron S. Edlin is a noted expert in law and economics, specializing in antitrust. In 1997–1998, he served in the Bill Clinton White House as Senior Economist within the Council of Economic Advisers focusing on the areas of industrial organization, regulation and antitrust....


Recession markers

The NBER uses a broader definition of a recession
Recession

In economics, the term recession describes the reduction of a country's gross domestic product for at least two Calendar_year#Quarters. The usual dictionary definition is "a period of reduced economic activity", a business cycle contraction....
 than do many economists. The traditional definition of a recession is two consecutive quarters of a shrinking gross domestic product
Gross domestic product

File:GDP nominal per capita world map IMF 2008.pngThe gross domestic product or gross domestic income is one of the measures of national income and output for a given country's economy....
 (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.". Dates of recessions are determined by identifying the date of the most recent peak in GDP to the most recent trough in GDP. The duration of this negative trend in GDP is the length of the recession. Dates of economic expansion can be similarly determined.

The NBER prefers this method for a variety of reasons. First, they feel 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 the gross domestic income (GDI). Second, since the NBER wishes to measure the duration of economic expansion and recession at a fine grain, they place emphasis on monthly rather than quarterly economic indicators. Finally, by using a looser definition, they 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 an economic stagnation
Economic stagnation

Economic stagnation, often called simply stagnation, is a prolonged period of slow economic growth . Under some definitions, "slow" means significantly slower than potential growth as estimated by experts in macroeconomics....
.

Though not listed by the NBER, 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 the dot-com bubble
Dot-com bubble

The "dot-com bubble" was a economic bubble covering roughly 1995?2001 during which stock markets in Western world saw their value increase rapidly from growth in the new quaternary sector of industry and related fields....
. For example, a repeated sequence of quarters with significant negative growth followed by a quarter of no or slight positive growth would not meet the traditional definition of a recession, even though the nation would be undergoing continuous economic decline.

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