Janet Yellen

Janet Louise Yellen
President of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco
Incumbent
Assumed office  June 14, 2004
Preceded by	Robert T. Parry
18th Chair of the Council of Economic Advisors
In office 1997 – 1999
President	Bill Clinton
Preceded by	Joseph Stiglitz
Succeeded by	Martin N. Baily
Born	August 13, 1946 (1946-08-13) (age 63) Brooklyn, New York
Spouse(s)	George Akerlof
Alma mater	Yale University (Ph.D.) Pembroke College (A.B.)

Janet Louise Yellen (born August 13, 1946) is an American economist and president of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. She is also a voting member of the Federal Open Market Committee in 2009. Dr. Yellen is Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley's Haas School of Business, where she was the Eugene E. and Catherine M. Trefethen Professor of Business and Professor of Economics and has been a faculty member since 1980.

Life and career

Yellen was born in Brooklyn, New York. She graduated magna cum laude from Pembroke College (Brown University) with a degree in economics in 1967, and received her Ph.D. in economics from Yale University in 1971. She received the Wilbur Cross Medal from Yale in 1997, an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from Brown in 1998, and an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from Bard College in 2000.

Since 1980, she has been conducting research at the Haas School and teaching macroeconomics to full-time and part-time MBA students. Twice she has been awarded the Haas School's outstanding teaching award. In addition, she served as chair of the President's Council of Economic Advisers from 1997 to 1999, and was a member of the Federal Reserve System's Board of Governors from 1994 to 1997. She has taught at Harvard University and at the London School of Economics. Yellen serves as president of the Western Economic Association International and is a former vice president of the American Economic Association. She is a fellow of the Yale Corporation.

Yellen is considered by many on Wall Street to be an Inflation Dove (as concerned with unemployment as inflation) and as such is less likely to advocate Federal Reserve interest rate hikes, as compared, for example, to William Poole (St. Louis Fed President) an Inflation Hawk (see definitions under Inflation).^{[citation needed]}

As of July 2009^[update], Yellen is mentioned as a potential successor to Ben Bernanke as chairman of the Federal Reserve System.^[1]

She is married to George Akerlof, a Nobel prize-winning economist and professor emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley.

Positions held

• 2004–present, President and CEO, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco
• 1997–1999 Chair, President's Council of Economic Advisors
• 1994–1997 Member, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System
• 1985–present Professor, Haas School of Business, UC Berkeley
• 1982–1985 Associate Professor, Haas School of Business, UC Berkeley
• 1980–1982 Assistant Professor, Haas School of Business, UC Berkeley
• 1978–1980 Lecturer, London School of Economics and Political Science
• 1977–1978 Economist, Division of International Finance, Trade and Financial Studies Section, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System
• 1971–1976 Assistant Professor, Department of Economics, Harvard University
• 1974 Research Fellow, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

External Service and Assignments

• President and CEO, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco
• Fellow, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2001
• Vice President, Western Economics Association, 2001
• Fellow, Yale Corporation 2000-
• Member, National Academy of Sciences Panel on Ensuring the Best Presidential Science and Technology Appointments, 2000
• Research Associate, National Bureau of Economic Research, 1999-
• Advisory Board, Center for International Political Economy, 1999-
• Advisory Board, Brookings Panel on Economic Activity, 1999
• Chair: Economic Policy Committee of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development 1997-1999
• President's Interagency Committee on Women's Business Enterprise (1997)
• Member and adviser: Brookings Panel on Economic Activity (senior advisor); Advisor Panel in Economics, National Science Foundation;
• Advisor: Congressional Budget Office
• Research fellow: Yale University, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• Trustee of the Economists for Peace and Security

Current Research and Interests

• Unemployment and labor markets
• Monetary and fiscal policies
• International trade and investment policy

Selected Papers and Publications

• "The Fabulous Decade: macroeconomic Lessons from the 1990s" (with Alan Binder), The Century Foundation Press, New York, 2001
• "Trends in Income Inequality and Policy Responses," Looking Ahead, October 1997 and James Auerbach and Richard Belous, eds., "The Inequality Paradox: Growth of Income Disparity," National Policy Association, 1998
• "The Continuing Importance of Trade Liberalization," Business Economics (1998).
• "Monetary Policy: Goals and Strategy," Business Economics (July 1996).
• "An Analysis of Out-of-Wedlock Childbearing in the United States," (with George Akerlof and Michael Katz). Journal of Economics (May 1996).
• "East Germany In From the Cold: The Economic Aftermath of Currency Union" (with George Akerlof, Andrew Rose, and Helga Hessenius), Brookings Papers on Economic Activity 1991:1.
• "How Large are the Losses from Rule of Thumb Behavior in Models of the Business Cycle?" (with George Akerlof) in Willima Brainard, William Nordhaus, and Harold Watts, eds. Money, Macroeconomics and Economic Policy: Essays in Honor of James Tobin, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press (1991).

References

External links

• San Francisco Fed biography
• Federal Reserve System biography