Funds from this grant provide support to the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) to holds its annual Summer Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The NBER Summer Institute has become the most important meeting of its kind in the world, attracting, in recent years, nearly 2,000 participants over the course of four weeks to present and discuss the latest empirical research in all fields of economics. This makes the Summer Institute one of the best platforms to highlight and publicize Sloan Foundation research activities in economics and finance. More than 40 different Institute workshops are scheduled to overlap in ways that facilitate interactions among related fields and researchers and special efforts are being instituted to include a younger and more diverse crowd in addition to established scholars. The 400 or so papers presented are available online both to participants and to other researchers. Recent Institute programs specifically developed with Sloan support have focused on the financial crisis generally and on credit rating agencies in particular. Core support provided by this grant will not only fund participation in workshops, it will also help carry forward innovations such as the prestigious Feldstein Lectures, methodological courses, and a new workshop on the "Conduct of Research."