In this paper, an orbital-dependent Kohn-Sham exchange-correlation potential, the so-called statistical average of (model) orbital potentials, is applied to the calculation of nuclear magnetic resonance chemical shifts of a series of simple molecules containing H, C, N, O, and F. It is shown that the use of this model potential leads to isotropic chemical shifts which are substantially improved over both local and gradient-corrected functionals, especially for nitrogen and oxygen atoms. This improvement in the chemical shift calculations can be attributed to the increase in the gap between highest occupied and lowest unoccupied orbitals, thus correcting the excessively large paramagnetic contributions, which have been identified to give deficient chemical shifts with both the local-density approximation and with gradient-corrected functionals. This is in keeping with the improvement by the statitical average of orbital model potentials for response properties in general and for excitation energies in particular. The present results are comparable in accuracy to those previously reported with self-interaction corrected functionals by Patchovskii , but still inferior to those obtained with accurate Kohn-Sham potentials by Wilson and Tozer. However, the present approach is computationally expedient and routinely applicable to all systems, requiring virtually the same computational effort as local-density and generalized-gradient calculations. (C) 2003 American Institute of Physics.