The 1920 foundation of the U.S. National Bureau of Economic Research marked the beginning of a boom for macro-economist who used atheoretical, statistical models of economic fluctuation, models based on cycles and trends instead of economic theory.
The National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) is a United States private nonprofit research organization. It is considered one of the most influential domestic economic policy think tanks in the United States, and is also famous for announcing the start and end dates for recessions in the United States.
NBER is currently located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and has a branch office in New York City.
Establishment
The National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) was founded in 1920. The United States economists Wesley Clair Mitchell was one of the co-founders, and also served at NBER´s first staff economist and director of research. In 1922, one of the other co-founders, Malcolm C. Rorty, became president of NBER. Mitchell remained as adirector of research until 1945.
The National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)
A century of empirical economics, national income accounting, and business cycle dating (1920 – Present)
Economist Wesley Clair Mitchell and social reformer Nahum I. Stone establish the NBER as a private, non-partisan research organization in New York. Founded on the principle that contentious economic debates require objective statistical facts rather than speculative ideology, Mitchell sets out to systematically quantify national output and economic fluctuations.
The Bureau publishes its inaugural landmark study, Income in the United States: Its Amount and Distribution, 1909–1919. It provides the nation’s first scientifically measured estimate of total aggregate income, laying the ground for modern macroeconomic statistics.
Commissioned by the US Senate during the Great Depression, NBER researcher Simon Kuznets presents the first comprehensive standardized framework for measuring Gross National Product (GNP). Kuznets’ work at the NBER becomes the basis for the US National Income and Product Accounts (NIPA) and earns him the 1971 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences.
Arthur F. Burns and Wesley Clair Mitchell publish their defining treatise, Measuring Business Cycles. The book formalizes empirical criteria for identifying turning points in economic activity, turning the NBER into the primary authority on recessions and expansions.
Under research directorships expanding into human capital, scholars like Gary Becker and Jacob Mincer conduct foundation research at the Bureau on education investments, wage differentials, and household economics, dramatically expanding the scope of empirical economics.
Under the leadership of Harvard professor Martin Feldstein, the NBER establishes the formal Business Cycle Dating Committee. Rather than adhering to the popular rule of thumb (“two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth”), the committee adopts a multi-metric approach tracking real personal income, nonfarm payrolls, industrial production, and real retail sales.
Feldstein relocates the NBER headquarters to Cambridge, Massachusetts, and shifts the Bureau from a centralized institute with in-house staff to a decentralized national network of university faculty. The NBER Working Paper Series is expanded, becoming the preeminent pipeline for cutting-edge economic research prior to academic peer review.
The Business Cycle Dating Committee dates the Great Recession from December 2007 to June 2009 (18 months, the longest since WWII). In 2020, following pandemic lockdowns, the committee designates February 2020 as the business peak and April 2020 as the trough, confirming the sharpest and shortest recession in US history (2 months).
With more than 1,700 Research Associates and Faculty Research Fellows across top universities, the NBER distributes over 1,200 working papers annually. Its network includes 38 Nobel Memorial Prize laureates and 13 past chairs of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers.
Research programs and working groups
NBER is running 20 research programs and 14 working groups.
The research programs are for the fields Aging, Asset Pricing, Behavioral/Macro, Capital Markets and the Economy, Children, Corporate Finance, Development of the American Economy, Economics of Education, Economic Fluctuations and Growth, Energy and the Environment, Health Care, Health Economics, Industrial Organization, International Finance and Macroeconomics, International Trade and Investment, Labor Studies, Law and Economics, Monetary Economics, Political Economy, Productivity, and Public Economics.
Start and end dates for US recessions
NBER is renowned for announcing the start and end dates of United States recessions.
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”.
It should be noted that United States newspapers typically define a recession as a two consecutive quarters of shrinking gross domestic product (GDP), so NBER declarations can differ from what the media is reporting.
Business cycle dates are determined by the NBER dating committee, which is under contract with the United States Department of Commerce.
Dates for the 2007 – 2009 recession
According to NBER, the United States 2007-2009 recession began in December 2007 and ended in June 2009. This was announced in September 2010, when the country was still struggling with fairly high unemployment numbers.
“In determining that a trough occurred in June 2009, the committee did not conclude that economic conditions since that month have been favorable or that the economy has returned to operating at normal capacity. Rather, the committee determined only that the recession ended and a recovery began in that month. A recession is a period of falling 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. The trough marks the end of the declining phase and the start of the rising phase of the business cycle.” – NBER
Examples of notable NBER members
- Daron Acemoglu
- Alberto Alesina
- Robert Barro
- Arthur Burns
- Aaron Edlin
- John Lipsky
- Francis Longstaff
- Alan Marcus
- Anna Schwartz
- James Alan Robinson
- Richard N. Rosett
- Eduardo Schwartz
- Andrei Shleifer
- Richard Zeckhauser
- Joshua Angrist, 2021
- David Card, 2021
- Guido Imbens, 2021
- Abhijit Banerjee, 2019
- Esther Duflo, 2019
- Michael Kremer, 2019
- Paul Romer, 2018
- William Nordhaus, 2018
- Richard Thaler, 2017
- Bengt Holmström, 2016
- Oliver Hart, 2016
- Angus Deaton, 2015
- Lars Peter Hansen, 2013
- Robert J. Shiller, 2013
- Alvin E. Roth, 2012
- Christopher Sims, 2011
- Thomas Sargent, 2010
- Peter Diamond, 2010
- Dale Mortensen, 2010
- Paul Krugman, 2008
- Edward C. Prescott, 2004
- Finn Kydland, 2004
- Robert F. Engle, 2003
- Joseph Stiglitz, 2001
- George Akerlof, 2001
- James J. Heckman, 2000
- Daniel L. McFadden, 2000
- Robert C. Merton, 1997
- Myron S. Scholes, 1997
- Robert E. Lucas, 1995
- Robert W. Fogel, 1993
- Gary S. Becker, 1992
- George J. Stigler, 1982
- Theodore W. Schultz, 1979
- Milton Friedman, 1976
- Wassily Leontief, 1973
- Simon Kuznets, 1971
Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) Chairmen
- Alan Krueger 2011–2013
- Austan Goolsbee 2010–2011
- Christina Romer 2009–2010
- Edward Lazear 2006–2009
- Ben Bernanke 2005–2006
- Harvey Rosen 2005–2005
- N. Gregory Mankiw 2003–2005
- R. Glenn Hubbard 2001–2003
- Janet Yellen 1997–1999
- Joseph Stiglitz 1995–1997
- Michael Boskin 1989–1993
- Martin Feldstein 1982–1984
This article was last updated on: September 14, 2026