39th annual NBER Summer Institute.

• Position: NBER News

The NBER hosted its 39th annual Summer Institute during a three-week period in July 2016. There were 2,763 registered participants, taking part in 54 distinct meetings led by 124 organizers. About one in five participants--554 researchers--were attending their first Summer Institute. There were 169 graduate student participants. Two thirds of the participants were not NBER affiliates.

Caroline Hoxby, who is the Scott and Donya Bommer Professor of Economics at Stanford University and the director of the NBER's Education Program, delivered the 2016 Martin Feldstein Lecture on "The Dramatic Economics of the U.S. Market for Higher Education." Her talk described the heterogeneity in the cost of delivering undergraduate education at different institutions, the differences in student test scores across schools, and the correlation between educational resources and student scores. Her analysis suggested that for a broad range of selective colleges and universities, the marginal productivity of additional resources devoted to undergraduate education is similar. An edited text of the lecture appears earlier in this issue of The NBER Reporter.

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