Last year's drain of prospective graduate students in Economics from Harvard to MIT appears to be diminishing, or may even have reversed itself, according to the number of this year's National Science Foundation (NSF) fellows who have listed Harvard as their first preference.

Of the 29 NSF fellowships awarded this year, 12 fellows have indicated that the Economics program of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences was their first choice.

Zvi Griliches, professor of Economics and director of admissions for the Economics Department, said yesterday that only 10 NSF fellows preferred MIT over Harvard for next year.

Last year 12 fellows listed MIT as their first choice while ten preferred Harvard, the reverse of this year's figures.

Griliches added that the small size of the numbers involved make it difficult to draw conclusions from them. However, he said that only seven NSF fellows in Economics ended up at the GSAS for the current academic year.

"I think the department has been improving significantly, but the publicity from the Brimmer report hurt us last year," Griliches said.

The Overseers' Visiting Committee, chaired by Andrew F. Brimmer, Visiting Professor at the Business School, criticized the Economics Department of the GSAS in its 1974 report for its poor student faculty relations and its emphasis on research at the expense of teaching.

The report was obtained by The New York Times and became the subject of a front-page article last spring.

However, Griliches said that in retrospect, the effects of the publicity from the Brimmer report "weren't that bad." He cited recent improvements in the Economics Department in the area of mathematical theory and in the new appointments made to the department's faculty.

Martin Feldstein, professor of Economics, described the Brimmer report yesterday as "harsh and out of date" and said the number of NSF fellows who came to Harvard's graduate Economics program was "abnormally low" last year because of the publicity from the report.