The Most Important Nondescript Office Building Anywhere
This is the exterior of the building that houses the National Bureau of Economic Research. You are probably familiar with their work by now, since they were the folks who called the recession “official” yesterday.
But who are they, and why are they located in a rather drab office building on Mass. Ave between The People’s Republik and Harvard Square?
The first part first:
Founded in 1920, the National Bureau of Economic Research is a private, nonprofit, nonpartisan research organization dedicated to promoting a greater understanding of how the economy works. The NBER is committed to undertaking and disseminating unbiased economic research among public policymakers, business professionals, and the academic community.
The Bureau is made up over 1,000 academics who publish over 700 “working papers” each year, spokeswoman Donna Zerwitz tells Boston Daily. Around 1961, the Commerce Department sent word that they planned to publish NBER’s table of dates, which made their findings “official.”
As for the second…
The Bureau actually has three offices with one in New York and another in Palo Alto, Calif., but their main branch is in Cambridge. Zerwitz says that the Bureau moved to Cambridge in the 1970’s, first to Kendall Square to accommodate a director from MIT, and then to its current home among the furniture outlets on Mass. Ave. in 1978.
Although their work generates considerable interest among economists and academics on a regular basis, “Nothing generates the intensity,” Zerwitz says, like yesterday’s announcement.
Images by Emily Brown
