Best Forecaster, BE Award Winners, Fellows Honored

Richard Berner and David Greenlaw of Morgan Stanley received NABE’s Outlook Award as the most accurate forecasters of gross domestic product and Treasury note yield estimates for 2008-2009.  The presentation was made at the 51st Annual Meeting in St. Louis in October.

The NABE Outlook is a quarterly survey that provides forecasts of macroeconomic variables made by a panel of professional economic forecasters. The first NABE Outlook Award was delivered at the 2000 NABE Annual Meeting, and the award has been given every year since.

Abramson Awards for Exceptional Articles in Business Economics

NABE conferred the 2009 Abramson Award to William C. Dunkelberg, National Federation of Independent Business, and Jonathan A. Scott, Temple University, for their article "The Response of Small Business Owners to Changes in Monetary Policy," published in the January 2009 issue of Business Economics.

Established in 1986, the Abramson Awards and Scrolls confer special recognition on exceptional feature articles published in NABE’s quarterly research journal Business Economics.  The Editorial Board of Business Economics selected this year’s winning article from those published between October 2008 and July 2009. The awards are given in honor of Adolph Abramson, the founder and first president of NABE, and are presented by the NABE Board of Directors.

Two authors received 2009 Abramson Scrolls: William Poole, CATO Institute, for his article "The Credit Crunch of 2007-08: Lessons Private and Public," published in the January 2009 issue of Business Economics; and Patrick L. Anderson, Anderson Economics Group, LLC, for his article  "The Value of Private Businesses in the United States," published in the April 2009 issue of Business Economics.

James A. Wilcox, University of California, Berkeley, received the Edmund A. Mennis Contributed Paper Award for his article  "Underwriting Mortgage Lending, and House Prices: 1996-2008."

NABE Contributed Paper Awards were presented to four authors:  Rani Isaac, California State Library, and Dan Hamilton and Kirk Lesh, California Lutheran University, for their paper  "Using Aggregate Time Series Variables to Forecast Notices of Default.”  Gad Levanon, The Conference Board, received a Contributed Paper Award for his article  "Evaluating and Comparing Leading and Coincident Economic Indicators."

Varvares, Doolittle Named Fellows

Chris Varvares, president of Macroeconomic Advisers in St. Louis, and NABE's immediate past president, and Susan Doolittle, who retired as NABE executive director at the close of the annual meeting, have been named NABE Fellows for 2009. 

NABE’s Board of Directors selects Fellows each year. Selection criteria include service as a professional business economist, contributions to the field of business economics, and outstanding contributions to NABE.

Varvares co-founded Macroeconomic Advisers with Joel Prakken and Laurence Meyer as Laurence H. Meyer & Associates in 1982. In June 1996, the firm became Macroeconomic Advisers when Meyer joined the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System.  Varvares has over 25 years of macroeconomic forecasting and policy analysis experience, and served as a member of the staff of the President's Council of Economic Advisers from 1981-1982. While at the council, he served as a member of the U.S. delegation to the OECD in April 1982. A former director of NABE, he has also served as president of NABE's St. Louis Chapter, and is a member of the American Economic Association. He is a member of Time magazine's Board of Economists, is a member of the New York State Economic and Revenue Advisory Board, serves on the Bureau of the Census Advisory Committee for Economic Programs, and has been a panelist for the World Economic Forum. He holds a BA in economics from George Washington University and received his graduate training in economics from Washington University in St. Louis.
                                                                                                           
Doolittle became NABE's executive director in October 1993, and retired on October 13.  She joined NABE in 1979, soon after completing graduate studies in finance and economics, and while working as an economist for Rainier National Bank in Seattle. She was elected to NABE's Board of Directors in 1986, when she was working for the Port of Seattle. When NABE's headquarters were relocated from Cleveland to Washington, DC, in 1994, she became the first executive director to head the Washington office. 

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