Council of Economic Advisers

Council of Economic Advisers
Agency overview
Formed	1946
Headquarters	Old Executive Office Building
Employees	About 27
Agency executives	Christina Romer, Chair Austan Goolsbee, Member Cecilia Rouse, Member
Parent agency	Executive Office of the President of the United States
Website
Council of Economic Advisers

The Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) is a group of three respected economists who advise the President of the United States on economic policy.^[1] It is a part of the Executive Office of the President of the United States, and provides much of the economic policy of the White House. The council prepares the annual Economic Report of the President.

Organization

The current Chair of the CEA is Christina Romer, the two other current members of the CEA are Austan Goolsbee and Cecilia Rouse. The two nominees were confirmed on March 10, 2009.^[2]

The council's three members are nominated by the president and approved by the United States Senate. The staff of the council includes about 20 academic economists, plus three permanent economic statisticians.

Current Staff

• Chair: Christina Romer
• Members: Austan Goolsbee and Cecilia Rouse
• Chief of Staff: Karen Anderson
• Chief Economist: Michael B. Greenstone
• Director of Macroeconomic Forecasting: Steven N. Braun
• Senior Economists:
  • Christopher Carroll: Macroeconomics
  • Mark G. Duggan: Health Care
  • Wendy M. Edelberg: Macroeconomics
  • Adam Looney: Public Finance and Tax Policy
  • Andrew Metrick: Finance
  • Jesse M. Rothstein: Labor, Education, and Welfare
  • Jay C. Shambaugh: International Finance and Trade; International Macroeconomics
  • Ann Wolverton: Energy, Environment, and Natural Resources.
• Staff Economists
  • Sharon Boyd
  • Gabriel Chodorow-Reich
  • Laura Feiveson
  • Josh Goldman
  • Sarena Goodman
  • Zachary Liscow
  • William Gui Woolston
• Statistical Office
  • Adrienne T. Pilot, Director
  • Statistical Office Analysts: Brian Amorosi & Dagmara Mocala

History

The council was established by the Employment Act of 1946 to provide presidents with objective economic analysis and advice on the development and implementation of a wide range of domestic and international economic policy issues. In its first seven years the CEA made five technical advances in policy making, including the replacement of a "cyclical model" of the economy by a "growth model," the setting of quantitative targets for the economy, use of the theories of fiscal drag and full-employment budget, recognition of the need for greater flexibility in taxation, and replacement of the notion of unemployment as a structural problem by a realization of a low aggregate demand. ^[3]

In 1949 a dispute broke out between Chairman Edwin Nourse and member Leon Keyserling. Nourse believed a choice had to be made between "guns or butter" but Keyserling argued that an expanding economy permitted large defense expenditures without sacrificing an increased standard of living. In 1949 Keyserling gained support from powerful Truman advisors Dean Acheson and Clark Clifford. Nourse resigned as chairman, warning about the dangers of budget deficits and increased funding of "wasteful" defense costs. Keyserling succeeded to the chairmanship and influenced Truman's Fair Deal proposals and the economic sections of National Security Council Resolution 68 that, in April 1950, asserted that the larger armed forces America needed would not affect living standards or risk the "transformation of the free character of our economy." ^[4]

During the 1953-54 recession, the CEA, headed by Arthur Burns deployed traditional Republican rhetoric. However it supported an activist contracyclical approach that helped to establish Keynesianism as a bipartisan economic policy for the nation. Especially important in formulating the CEA response to the recession—accelerating public works programs, easing credit, and reducing taxes—were Arthur F. Burns and Neil H. Jacoby. ^[5]

The 1978 Humphrey-Hawkins Act required each administration to move toward full employment and reasonable price stability within a specific time period. It has had the effect of making the CEA's annual economic report highly political in nature, as well as highly unreliable and inaccurate over the standard two or five year projection periods. ^[6]

Past chairs and members

Past chairs include:

• Edward Lazear 2006-2009
• Ben S. Bernanke 2005-2006
• Harvey S. Rosen 2005
• N. Gregory Mankiw 2003-2005
• R. Glenn Hubbard 2001-2003
• Martin Neil Baily 1999-2001
• Janet Yellen 1997-1999
• Joseph E. Stiglitz 1995-1997 (member since 1993)
• Laura D'Andrea Tyson 1993-1995
• Michael J. Boskin 1989-1993
• Beryl W. Sprinkel 1985-1989
• Martin Feldstein 1982-1984
• Murray L. Weidenbaum 1981-1982
• Charles L. Schultze 1977-1981
• Alan Greenspan 1974-1977
• Herbert Stein 1972-1974
• Paul W. McCracken 1956-1959 (member); 1969-1971
• Arthur M. Okun 1968-1969
• Gardner Ackley 1964-1968
• Walter W. Heller 1961-1964
• Raymond J. Saulnier 1956-1961
• Arthur F. Burns 1953-1956
• Leon H. Keyserling 1949-1950 (acting chair); 1950-1953
• Edwin G. Nourse 1946-1949

Other influential past members include:

• Karl M. Arndt^[7]
• John D. Clark 1946-1953
• Otto Eckstein 1964-1966
• Hendrik S. Houthakker 1969-1971
• Robert Z. Lawrence 1999-2001
• William D. Nordhaus 1977-1979
• James Tobin 1961-1962

References

Sources

• Brazelton, W. Robert (2001), Designing U.S. Economic Policy: An Analytical Biography of Leon H. Keyserling, New York: Palgrave, ISBN 0333775759 
• Brazelton, W. Robert (1997), "The Economics of Leon Hirsch Keyserling", Journal of Economic Perspectives 11 (4): 189–197, ISSN 0895-3309 
• Brune, Lester H. (1989), "Guns and Butter: the Pre-Korean War Dispute over Budget Allocations: Nourse's Conservative Keynesianism Loses Favor Against Keyserling's Economic Expansion Plan", American Journal of Economics and Sociology 48 (3): 357–371, ISSN 0002-9246 
• Cimbala, Stephen J.; Stout, Robert L. (1983), "The Economic Report of the President: Before and after the Full Employment and Balanced Growth Act of 1978", Presidential Studies Quarterly 13 (1): 50–61, ISSN 0360-4918 
• Eizenstat, Stuart E. (1992), "Economists and White House Decisions", Journal of Economic Perspectives 6 (3): 65–71, ISSN 0895-3309 
• Engelbourg, Saul (1980), "The Council of Economic Advisers and the Recession of 1953-1954", Business History Review 54 (2): 192–214, ISSN 0007-6805 
• Leeson, Robert (1997), "The Political Economy of the Inflation-unemployment Trade-off", History of Political Economy 29 (1): 117–156, ISSN 0018-2702 
• McCaleb, Thomas S. (1986), "The Council of Economic Advisers after Forty Years", Cato Journal 6 (2): 685–693, ISSN 0273-3072 
• Norton, Hugh S. (1977), The Employment Act and the Council of Economic Advisers, 1946-1976, Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, ISBN 0872492966 
• Salant, Walter S. (1973), "Some Intellectual Contributions of the Truman Council of Economic Advisers to Policy-making", History of Political Economy 5 (1): 36–49, ISSN 0018-2702 
• Sobel, Robert (1988), Biographical Directory of the Council of Economic Advisers, New York: Greenwood Press, ISBN 0313225540 
• Tobin, James; Weidenbaum, Murray, eds. (1988), Two Revolutions in Economic Policy: The First Economic Reports of Presidents Kennedy and Reagan, Cambridge: MIT Press, ISBN 0262700344 
• Wehrle, Edmund F. (2004), "Guns, Butter, Leon Keyserling, the AFL-CIO, and the Fate of Full-employment Economics", Historian 66 (4): 730–748, ISSN 0018-2370 

External links

• Council of Economic Advisers home page
• Wall Street Journal report on forthcoming nominations
• Records of the Office of the Council of Economic Advisors, 1953-61, Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library
• Papers of Arthur F. Burns, Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library
• Papers of Raymond J. Saulnier, Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library

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