As Mitch mentioned, the American Economic Association (AEA) holds an annual convention to showcase the best economic work that has recently been done. A lot of time and effort go into getting your work recognized at one of these conventions. Not only do you have to think up an original idea, create a model, and then get that model published, but your work must be considered “significant” enough to be eligible for recognition at the AEA convention.
The 1996 convention was the first time Romer’s “Endogenous Technological Change” was introduced in front of an audience. In a field traditionally dominated by men, this year’s convention was organized by a woman, Anne Krueger. Other notables attending were John Nash, Stephen Ross, Martin Feldstein, and Walter Oi. Other worthwhile events at the ’96 convention were the transgendered economist having the most attended session, colleagues fabricating evidence to sue one another, and men being ambushed for their somewhat controversial ideas. And while Romer’s ideas would later have the greatest effect on the economic discipline, his sessions were ignored by most, being overlooked amid big names and controversies.
A for Jane, but if you're going to name drop, you should provide links to all of them. That way the other students might recognize, say, Stephen Ross, as the author of the finance text you all probably used.
ReplyDeleteI would add to the first paragraph, that the AEA is exclusive enough that you need to be involved in a couple of the 4 institutions that Mitch mentioned to get your paper accepted for the AEA meetings.
The significance of Romer's 1990 work at the 1996 meetings was that enough time had passed for people to digest it and organize a complete session around it: to see the big picture after a few years of getting lost in the details.