Minutes of the
Meeting of the Executive Committee in San Diego, CA, January 2, 2004
The second
meeting of the 2003 Executive Committee was called to order at 10:07 A.M.
January 2, 2004 in the Cardiff Room of the San Diego Marriott Hotel in San
Diego, CA. Members Present were:
Marianne Baxter, Ben Bernanke, Peter Diamond, Jonathan Eaton, Martin Feldstein,
Ellen McGrattan, Robert Lucas, John McMillan, Maurice Obstfeld, James Poterba,
Christina Romer, Mark Rozenzweig, Andrei Shleifer, John Shoven, and John
Siegfried. Attending as guests were
Daniel McFadden, newly elected President-Elect; Angus Deaton and Janet Yellen,
newly elected Vice-Presidents; and Janet Currie and Olivia Mitchell, newly elected
members of the Executive Committee. Attending parts of the meeting in order to give committee reports
were: Robert Pollak, chair of the Search Committee for Editor of the American
Economic Review, John Rust, Chair of the Committee on Electronic
Publishing, and Drucilla Ekwurzel and William Goffe, members of the Committee
on Electronic Publishing. Executive
Director William Damon and General Counsel Terry Calvani also attended.
Diamond
welcomed the newly elected guests and noted that this was the last meeting for
Jonathan Eaton, John Shoven, James Poterba, and Christina Romer. He thanked them for their service to the
Association. Diamond presented Robert
Lucas with his AEA Distinguished Fellow Award.
He then asked for approval of the minutes of the previous meeting (April
25, 2003) which had been circulated in advance. The minutes were approved without change.
Report
of the Secretary (Siegfried).
Siegfried reviewed the schedule for sites and dates of future
meetings: Philadelphia, January 7-9,
2005 (Friday, Saturday, and Sunday); Boston, January 6-8, 2006 (Friday,
Saturday, and Sunday); Chicago, January 5-7, 2007 (Friday, Saturday, and
Sunday); and New Orleans, January 4-6, 2008 (Friday, Saturday, and
Sunday). The Executive Committee meets
the day prior to the beginning of the regular meeting each year.
After
noting that San Francisco dominated other locations in the 2003 survey of AEA
members about site preferences, Siegfried recommended that the Association
attempt to meet in San Francisco in 2009.
It was VOTED to authorize the Secretary to negotiate with San Francisco
hotels for a meeting on January 3-5, 2009.
There
followed a discussion of possible sites for the 2010 and 2011 meetings
(Anaheim, Atlanta, Chicago, Denver, and Orlando all expressed interest) and the
advantages of booking more than five years forward (including competitive room
rates and more site options). After
deciding that it would be wise to book meeting sites more than five years out,
it was VOTED to override a decision of the 1975 Executive Committee limiting
annual meeting bookings to less than five years forward. The remainder of that
1975 Executive Committee decision was not disturbed, namely that: The Executive
Committee should set general guidelines the Secretary should consider in
proposing dates and places of the annual meetings. Working within these guidelines the Secretary should make
specific recommendations regarding future meeting times. Once approved by the
Executive Committee, the place and dates of a particular annual meeting cannot
be changed except under unusual circumstances, and a positive vote of
two-thirds of the voting members of the Executive Committee would be required
to effect a change.
The annual
program for the 2005 meeting in Philadelphia will include about six field-based
poster sessions of 20 presentations each in addition to the usual three-paper
sessions. This should open more slots
on the program for AEA members, increasing accessibility for those who submit
individual papers.
Siegfried
reported that the editorial offices of the JEL and the AER will
be consolidated with the Association's existing JEL/EconLit office in
Pittsburgh during 2004. The move is
made possible by technological advances that no longer require staff and
editors to work at the same location. The consolidation will relieve the
editors of office management responsibilities, reduce transition costs when
editors change, enhance reliability of editorial services, and allow the
Association to exploit some scale economies.
The Pittsburgh office will move to larger facilities and be renamed to
reflect its responsibilities for producing the AER, the JEL, and EconLit. The editorial office of the Journal of
Economic Perspectives will remain in St. Paul, MN.
On
behalf of the Committee on Minority Groups in the Economics Profession
(CSMGEP), Siegfried reported the outcome of a meeting in Durham, NC among
himself, the Association's General Counsel, Terry Calvani, the Director of the
Summer Program, Charles Becker, the Chair of Duke's Department of Economics,
Thomas Nechyba, and the Chair of CSMGEP, Patrick Mason, who participated by
telephone. The meeting considered admissions and scholarship eligibility for
the Program. The Summer Program is open
at their home institution’s tuition to minorities and to any student, minority
or not, enrolled at Duke, North Carolina-Chapel Hill, North Carolina State, and
North Carolina Central Universities. It
is also open at Duke’s tuition to non-minority students from other
universities. Recruitment is aimed at historically
black and Hispanic institutions.
Need-based scholarships are awarded only to minorities. Not all minorities admitted to the Program
receive a scholarship. Current funding
is secure through 2004.
Responding
to an inquiry from the Executive Committee, the Secretary compared rates for
AEA sponsored New York Life term life insurance offered members via Seabury
& Smith with alternatives.
Depending on age and lifestyle, AEA insurance is priced attractively for
some members, but not for others.
Because it competes with other life insurance options available to
members, and because the number of members holding policies has been constant,
it was decided that the market test was sufficient to insure the program was
competitive.
A proposal
from Seabury & Smith to offer travel insurance for overseas members
traveling to the U.S. and U.S. residents traveling overseas was
considered. Because travel insurance is
conveniently available from other sources, and the proposal did not offer
significant advantages, it was VOTED to decline the opportunity to sponsor
travel insurance.
The
Association currently has the e-mail address of about 16,000 members. These addresses are used to send information
to members no more frequently than four times annually. The complete list is shared with no
one. Special purpose opt-in lists are
available for distribution. Currently
9,972 members are signed up to receive e-mail announcements about public policy
affecting economists or the economics profession, 6,349 for surveys of
economists for research purposes, and 2,473 for commercial advertising.
The
Association's first exclusively electronic Directory was "published"
in December 2002. It includes Directory
information for about 11,500 members.
"Publication" of the Directory, which is now a perpetual
electronic file, consists of an effort to remind members to enter or update
their Directory information and the printing and archiving of Directory entries
on a particular date.
A member
submitted a resolution for the Annual Business meeting asking that the
Association: (1) resume the collection of directory information by mail, and
(2) publish a printed directory that is mailed to all members. The complete resolution is in the Minutes of
the Annual Business Meeting of January 4, 2004, included in this issue of the AER.
The electronic directory currently in use was substituted for the traditional
printed directory because the cost of collecting the information for it and the
cost of distributing it are less, and it can be updated as individuals'
directory information changes. Three
copies of the unedited electronic directory file on January 1 each year are
printed for the archives. To
accommodate some of the member's concerns, it was decided to accept pre-print
orders for the annual printout of the unedited January 1 file, and also to
install on the Association's website periodic directories as of a date
certain. Because the mail collection of
directory data and production of print copies mailed to all members is
estimated to cost over $200 thousand, the Executive Committee VOTED to exercise
its option under the Bylaws to put the resolution to a mail ballot of the full
membership if it were to pass at the January 4, 2002 Annual Business Meeting.
(It did not pass.)
Siegfried
announced that the first meeting of the 2004 Executive Committee would be held
in New York City on April 16, 2004.
Search
Committee for Journal of Economic Literature Editor (Currie). The ad hoc Search Committee for Editor of
the JEL consisted of Judith Chevalier, Janet Currie (chair), William
Darity, James Heckman, Therese McGuire, Maurice Obstfeld, John Pencavel,
Bernard Saffran, and Frank Wycoff. The
Committee's charge was to identify a nominee to succeed John McMillan as Editor
of the JEL.
Currie
reported that the Committee developed a job description for JEL Editor,
and then solicited recommendations by means of notices in the Association's
journals and a broadcast e-mail delivered to Association members. The Committee narrowed the suggestions to
nine economists who they contacted about the appointment. Four were sufficiently interested to write a
brief statement about goals and opportunities for the JEL. After
reviewing the potential candidates, the Committee nominated Roger Gordon to
succeed McMillan as Editor of the JEL.
The Executive Committee VOTED to appoint Roger Gordon Editor of the JEL
for a term extending through December 2006.
Search
Committee for Editor of the American Economic Review (Pollak). Upon receiving nomination to a 14 year term
as a member of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, Ben
Bernanke asked in September 2003 to be relieved of his duties as Editor of the AER
as soon as possible. Shortly
thereafter, President Diamond appointed a search committee consisting of V. V.
Chari, Susan Collins, Preston McAfee, Olivia Mitchell, Robert Pollak (chair),
Christina Romer, Bernard Saffran, Christopher Udry, Robert Willis, and John D.
Wilson. A broadcast e-mail to
Association members announced the search committee and solicited
recommendations in early December, 2003.
Pollak
reported that the Committee received over 50 recommendations and had begun to
screen them. He indicated that the
Committee recognizes the advantages of diversity among economics subfields and
institutional affiliations of the AER Editor and Co-editors, and that
candidates would not be excluded because of affiliation with an institution
that publishes one of the primary competitors to the AER. He expected to have a recommendation for the
Executive Committee by April 2004.
Report
of the Editor of the American Economic Review (Bernanke). Bernanke commented on his written report,
which is published elsewhere in this issue of the AER. The AER began to accept electronic
submission of manuscripts in early 2003; by the end of the year about 80
percent of new submissions were electronic.
The remainder are scanned and subsequently processed electronically. This has reduced mailing costs, and also may
have contributed to the 20 percent increase in submissions in 2004. The electronic management of manuscripts has
helped to reduce the on-site staff costs for co-editors, and permits the
consolidation of the AER production staff with the Pittsburgh
office. The online manuscript
management system has also helped to broaden the referee base. In 2003 1,955 different referees were used,
in contrast to about 1,000 in prior years.
Because submissions increased substantially in 2003, the acceptance rate
fell below 10 percent again even though the number of pages published rose.
Median time to first response has been lowered. At this point 75 percent of submissions receive a first response
in 26 or fewer weeks. Because of the
growth in the number of pages published, the lag between acceptance and
publication has declined substantially.
It is now about as short as can be managed practically--approximately
five to six months.
The AER
Editor assigns each submission to one of five co-editors. In addition to seeking referees more
generally, each co-editor relies on eight to ten members of the AER
Board of Editors to referee about one paper per month. Acting on Bernanke's recommendation, the
Executive Committee VOTED to reappoint Craig Burnside, Anne Case, Robert
Feenstra, Daniel Friedman, Benjamin Hermalin, Peter Ireland, Rachel Kranton,
Enrique Mendoza, Stephen Morris, Thomas Nechyba, and Carmen Reinhart to terms
on the Board of Editors ending December 2006, and to appoint Thomas Lemieux,
Lones Smith, and Giovanni Maggi to terms on the Board of Editors ending
December 2006.
There
followed the routine discussion of the extended time referees take to report
and how to reduce it. It was suggested
that personal reminders to delinquent referees sometimes work. Overall, the period between initial
submission to the AER and publication of accepted articles has been
reduced from about three years to two years by compressing multiple revisions
into one careful revision, and reducing the time between acceptance and
publication by expanding the size of issues.
Referee lags, in contrast, have remained constant.
Report
of the Editor of the Journal of Economic Literature (McMillan). McMillan reviewed the main points of his
written report, which is published elsewhere in this issue of the AER. He reported that the editorial staff for
articles and book reviews would be consolidated with the remainder of the JEL
and EconLit staff in Pittsburgh during 2004.
McMillan
announced that the transition between himself and Roger Gordon would occur on
April 1, 2004. He thanked Drucilla
Ekwurzel and Alexander Field, Associate Editors of the JEL for their
help throughout his term as Editor.
Acting on McMillan's recommendation, with consultation and advice of
Editor-elect Roger Gordon, the Executive Committee VOTED to appoint Daron
Acemoglu, Abhijit Banerjee, Richard Blundell, Severin Borenstein, A. Lans
Bovenberg, V. V. Chari, Janet Currie, Gene Grossman, Gordon Hanson, Dani
Rodrik, Julio Rotemberg, Mark Watson, Jeff Wooldridge, and Luigi Zingales to
the Board of Editors for three-year terms ending December 2006.
Diamond
then, on behalf of the Association, presented McMillan with a crystal bowl in
appreciation for his years of distinguished service from 1998 through 2004 as
Editor of The Journal of Economic Literature.
Report
of the Editor of the Journal of Economic Perspectives (Shleifer). Shleifer summarized his written report,
which is published elsewhere in this issue of the AER. He indicated that he hoped to publish more
articles on controversial topics, such as the recent one on obesity, and work
in progress on terrorism and Iraq. He
thanked Timothy Taylor, Managing Editor of the JEP, and co-editor J.
Bradford DeLong, whose term ended in December, 2003. James Hines was appointed in April 2003 to succeed DeLong.
Acting on
Shleifer's recommendation, the Executive Committee VOTED to reappoint Michael
Waldman to a three year term as Co-Editor of the JEP ending in December
2006, and to appoint Esther Duflo, Paul Mahoney, Paul Portney, and Michelle
White as Associate Editors for three year terms ending December 2006.
Personal
information about economists has traditionally been published nine categories
in a "Notes" section at the end of JEP: deaths, retirements,
foreign scholars visiting the U.S. and Canada, promotions, administrative
appointments, new appointments, leaves for special appointments, resignations,
and miscellaneous. Few such
announcements are received and published.
Therefore, they are not informative about the profession as a
whole. After discussing the usefulness
of various categories to the profession, it was VOTED to discontinue publishing
all of the categories except deaths, retirements, and leaves for special appointments.
Report
of the Director of Job Openings for Economists (Siegfried). Siegfried
reviewed his written report, which is published elsewhere in this issue of the AER. He reported that new jobs listed in JOE
decreased by 3 percent from 2002 to 2003.
In 2003 JOE moved from the University of Texas to the
Association's facilities in Pittsburgh,
<http://www.aeaweb.org/joe/>. The
Association thanks the University of Texas, especially Peter Wilcoxen, for
hosting JOE on its website through June 2003.
Siegfried
reported the Budget Committee decided to increase the fee for listing jobs in
JOE from $150 per listing to $250 per listing, effective in July 2004. JOE continues to follow a policy
prohibiting listings that express discrimination on the basis of race, color,
religion, gender, sexual preference, or physical handicap as adopted by the
Executive Committee in 1986.
The 2004
Program (Feldstein). Feldstein
thanked the members of his program committee for helping him organize the
sessions for the annual meeting. He
noted that the program committee is now listed at the front of the Program
book.
The
2005 Program (McFadden). McFadden
reported that he had assembled a program committee, and that he planned to
revive the tradition of including on the program a series of lectures or panel
discussions on new methodologies, literature reviews, and contemporary issues
that had occurred for a few years in the 1990s. He also announced plans for a series of poster sessions in order
to increase the prospects for individual paper submissions making the program.
Term
Limits for JEL Editor (Diamond).
Diamond noted that the Search Committee for Editor of the AER
three years prior was asked to make a recommendation concerning term limits for
the editors of both the AER and JEL, but apparently overlooked
the JEL editor when it recommended a three-term (nine year) limit on the
AER editor. He also asked
whether the Associate Editor of the JEL responsible for book reviews
should be subject to a term limit.
After a brief discussion, Diamond asked the Advisory Committee on
Editorial Appointments to consider the question of term limits for JEL
editors and make a recommendation to the Executive Committee at the next
meeting.
Economists'
Database (Diamond). Diamond introduced a proposal from the Econometric
Society that the AEA join it in developing a searchable multi-society database
of economists identified by narrow fields of interest for the purpose of
finding referees for submitted manuscripts. The idea would be to delineate a
set of field categories that are more detailed than JEL classification
codes, which is the basis for the existing large database linked to Editorial
Express, the manuscript management program used by AER.
Bernanke
commented that in order to be useful the field identifications would have to be
fairly finely drawn, and what he finds most useful in identifying referees for
the AER are quick links to economists' curriculum vitae, from which he
can determine if the prospective reviewer's interests are matched fairly
closely to the specific topic of a paper. It was decided not to participate in
what was envisioned as a costly effort with marginal benefits.
Electronic
Working Paper Archive (McFadden and Rust).
Diamond asked McFadden and the
Committee on Electronic Publishing, chaired by Rust, to assess a
proposal from the Econometric Society (ES) suggesting collaboration among the
AEA, ES, and European Economic Association (EEA) to create a working paper
archive that emulates the Los Alamos physics archive. The Committee concluded that the ES proposal was redundant
because working paper archives of the type envisioned and large scale
distributed databases such as Research Papers in Economics (RePEc) and Social
Science Research network (SSRN) already exist.
It was concluded that improving search capabilities over existing
working papers would add more value than increasing the number of working
papers available. The Committee,
however, offered several alternative electronic publishing initiatives and
forms of cooperation that might be valuable.
EconLit
indexes numerous working papers series and includes links to the papers’ full
text when available. These citations
had been provided to the Association by Cambridge University Press Abstracts
(CUPA) until December 2003, when the Association terminated its contract with
CUPA because the cost was high, and delivery of citations tardy. The plan is to continue to include citations
to working papers in EconLit, but to do the work at the Association's
Pittsburgh office. After a discussion
of the pros and cons of including as many working papers as possible in EconLit
versus including only working papers thought to be of higher quality, it was
decided to advise the JEL/EconLit staff to maintain and possibly
increase quality controls on the working papers included in EconLit by
limiting the working paper series that are included to those known to be of
high quality. The Executive Committee
asked the EconLit staff to report back to it a list of the working paper
series that will be included in EconLit in the future.
A
discussion of whether the Association should collect pre-print working papers
of a broad array of published economics articles and make them broadly
available evolved into a decision to collect electronic files of papers
presented at the AEA annual meeting and install them on an Association server,
commencing with the 2005 meetings.
Whether access to the annual meeting papers would be open to everyone or
limited to Association members was not resolved.
The AER
currently requires authors of empirical papers to archive their data on the
password protected AER website (except in cases where practical issues,
such as proprietary data or very large data sets, make this impossible); so far
only a few have done so because only a few papers have been published since the
policy was adopted. Many of the
forthcoming papers will include such data appendixes. After discussing the trade-off between the cost imposed on
authors of empirical work by asking them to prepare their data so that a
variety of users can access them effectively, and the benefits of replication
and scientific understanding that arise from broad data dissemination, it was
decided to endorse the AER’s existing policy of asking authors of
empirical papers for their data before the paper is published, and posting the
data on the website when practical.
Regarding papers published before this policy was introduced, it was
suggested that the AER help encourage compliance with requests for data
pertaining to papers published before the data-posting policy was
introduced. To allow the AER to
do this, people requesting data underlying published articles are encouraged to
copy the AER Editor when writing to an author with a data request.
Finally,
it was agreed that Diamond would explore with ES and EEA whether the three
Associations might wish to cooperate further with RePEc, including possibly
subsidizing it, and/or providing RePEc links to the papers presented at the
annual AEA meetings (which would imply that they are not password
protected). RePEc is an informal
voluntary organization that collects links to a wide array of databases of
varying quality, including many working papers.
Report
of the Treasurer (Siegfried).
Siegfried presented the proposed 2004 budget, which is published in
Table 1 accompanying his report in this issue of the AER. It projects an operating surplus of $9
thousand, investment income of $574 thousand, and an overall surplus for 2002
of $583 thousand. It was VOTED to
approve the budget. The Association's
net unrestricted assets on September 30, 2003 were $8.1 million, up $1.6
million from September 30, 2002.
The
breakeven operating budget proposed for 2004 reflects a two year effort to
boost Association revenues and control costs.
From 2002 through 2004 we have increased the price of library
subscriptions to our journals by $100 per year, increased EconLit prices
by about 25 percent, and began charging employers for listing jobs in JOE. Together these three price changes have
boosted revenues by about $1 million per year.
-----Thereupon, at 3:46 pm it was VOTED to enter into Executive Session.
There
being no further business to conduct, it was VOTED to adjourn at 4:35 pm.
Respectfully
submitted,
JOHN J. SIEGFRIED, Secretary