Conference Date: November 15, 2024

About: Discovering and nurturing individuals with high potential to excel in STEM fields is critical to scientific progress, innovation, and growth. To showcase and promote research on economic aspects of this process, the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) will convene a hybrid conference on the economics of talent, with presenters in-person in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on Friday, November 15, 2024. The conference, which will feature seven research presentations, will be co-organized by Ruchir Agarwal (Harvard Kennedy School), Glenn Ellison (MIT and NBER), and Patrick Gaule (University of Bristol).

Research topics that may be examined at the conference include, but are not limited to:

• How to identify at an early stage individuals with potential to excel in STEM (“talent”)

• Measuring the effectiveness of interventions to nurture talent

• Participation, persistence and excellence in high-school STEM competitions

• The role of high-talent individuals in contributing to science and innovation

• The interplay between talent and human capital accumulation

• Migration patterns of talented individuals and the factors that affect them

• How talented individuals are allocated across different sectors of the economy

• Barriers that may prevent talented individuals from realizing their potential

Original research papers and overview papers that offer a research agenda will both be considered for presentation.  The organizers welcome empirical and theoretical research, as well as submissions by scholars who are early in their careers, are not NBER affiliates, and are members of groups that are under-represented in the economics profession.  In keeping with NBER protocols, papers may not make policy recommendations.

Sumbit papers here.

Last Workshop: Friday, November 3, 2023

About: This workshop brings together economists interested in science, innovation, productivity, and technological change to present their research findings and discuss each other's work. Themes discussed recently include the consequences of racial diversity among patent inventors, gender gaps in academia, and spillovers from public labs to private firms.

Read more here.