The Scientific Advisory Committee (SAC) is an independent body of senior economists who are not themselves deeply involved in CEPR and can therefore take a detached view, advising the Executive Committee and the officers of the Centre on the activities of the Research Programmes. The Committee plays an essential role in the Centre’s efforts to maintain high professional standards and meets every two years with the Directors of each Programme Area to discuss the activities of their Programme over the preceding two years, and to discuss future directions and strategy.

A list of current SAC members can be found here.

In preparing their SAC Report, the Programme Directors are provided with the following information by CEPR staff:

• activities (conferences, workshops, public discussion meetings) held under the auspices of the programme area
• Discussion Papers produced in the programme area and the journals in which they have been published subsequently
• Research Fellows, Affiliates and Associates in the programme area, along with their dates of appointment and reappointment
• meetings attended by each researcher
• Discussion Papers submitted by each researcher

This information is also made available to the SAC. In addition, Programme Directors and members of the SAC can at any time view this information via the website.

In evaluating the programmes, the SAC members take into account:

• value added to the field by the programme and by CEPR more generally (where does it add value by doing what would not otherwise done?)
• coordination/direction of the Research Fellows and Affiliates (is it effective?)
• research priorities (and how much these are supply or demand driven)
• quality control (is there an effective mechanism in place)