Adam Smith Award

The National Association for Business Economics (NABE) is the largest international association of applied economists, strategists, academics, and policy-makers committed to the application of economics. Founded in 1959, it is one of the member organizations of the Allied Social Sciences Association. According to the association's website, "NABE's mission is to provide leadership in the use and understanding of economics.".

The association's membership is divided into subject-oriented subdivisions or roundtables including: Financial, Health Economics, International, Manufacturing, Real Estate/Construction, Regional/Utility, Small Business/Entrepreneurship, Technology, and Transfer Pricing. Each roundtable plans and executes webinars and sessions at NABE meetings each year. NABE also has local and student chapters in many cities and much of the United States.

Past presidents of the NABE include former Chairman of the Federal Reserve Alan Greenspan. Since 2009, NABE's Executive Director has been Tom Beers, former Chief Economist of the Manufactured Housing Institute and Economist with the National Association of Realtors and the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

NABE is the publisher of Business Economics, a scholarly journal that covers different aspects of applied economics and is published quarterly. The journal serves as an essential resource and provides practical information for people who apply economics in the workplace. It is the leading forum for debating solutions to critical business problems, analyzing key business and economic issues, and sharing of best-practice models, tools, and hands-on techniques from practitioners in the field of economics.

Since 1982, NABE has awarded the Adam Smith Award to prominent economists and policy makers that have contributed to business economics. Just some of the recipients of the award include former Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke in 2014, CEO and President of TIAA-CREF Roger Ferguson in 2013, Vice Chair of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System Janet Yellen in 2010, former Director of the National Economic Council Lawrence Summers in 2009, Chief Executive of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis William Poole in 2006, Professor of Economics at Princeton University Paul Krugman in 1995, and influential economist and recipient of the Nobel Prize in Economics Milton Friedman in 1989.