Council of Economic Advisers

For the body which advises the Scottish Government, see Council of Economic Advisers (Scotland).

Council of Economic Advisers
Agency overview
Formed	1946
Headquarters	Eisenhower Executive Office Building
Employees	About 27
Agency executives	Alan Krueger, Chairperson Katharine Abraham, Member Carl Shapiro, Member
Parent agency	Executive Office of the President of the United States
Website
Council of Economic Advisers

The Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) is an agency within the Executive Office of the President that advises the President of the United States on economic policy.^[1] The CEA provides much of the objective empirical research for the White House and prepares the annual Economic Report of the President.

Organization

The current Chairman (designate) of the CEA is Alan Krueger, who was appointed by President Obama on August 29, 2011. The two other current Members of the CEA are Katharine Abraham and Carl Shapiro, who were confirmed on April 14, 2011.^[2][3] The previous Chair, Christina Romer, resigned her post in September 2010.^[4]

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: Alan Krueger (Designate)
• Members: Katharine Abraham, Carl Shapiro
• Chief Economist: Judy Hellerstein
• Director of Macroeconomic Forecasting: Steven N. Braun
• Senior Economists:^[5]
  • Gene Amromin: Housing, Tax, and Budget
  • Lee Branstetter: International Trade
  • Tom Buchmueller: Health
  • Lisa D. Cook: International Finance, Entrepreneurship, and Innovation
  • Benjamin Harris: Tax, Budget, and Retirement
  • Rob Johansson: Environment, Energy, and Agriculture
  • Craig Peters: Innovation, Regulation, and Industry
  • Chuck Pierret: Labor
  • Daniel Vine: Macroeconomics
• Staff Economists:
  • Jeff Borowitz
  • Colleen Carey
  • David Cho
  • Judd Cramer
  • Reid Stevens
• Research Economists:
  • Julia Yoo
  • Pedro Spivakovsky-Gonzalez
• Research Assistants
  • Matt Aks
  • Sandra Levy
  • Carter Mundell
  • Seth Werfel

• Statistical Office
  • Adrienne T. Pilot, Director
  • Statistical Office Analysts: Brian Amorosi & Lindsay Kuberka

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.^[6]

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." ^[7]

During the 1953-54 recession, the CEA, headed by Arthur Burns deployed non-traditional neo-keynesian interventions, which provided results later called the "steady fifties" wherein many families stayed in the economic "middleclass" with just one family wage-earner. The Eisenhower Administration supported an activist contracyclical approach that helped to establish Keynesianism as a possible 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.^[8]

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.^[9]

Past chairs and members

Past chairs include:

• Austan Goolsbee 2010-2011
• Christina Romer 2009-2010
• 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 from 1993-1995)
• 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:^{[list membership disputed]}

• Karl M. Arndt^[10]
• 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
• Paul Krugman Early 1980s

References

1. ^ Council of Economic Advisers, http://http://www.whitehouse.gov/administration/eop/cea/about 
2. ^ Wessel, David (2011-08-29), Obama Taps Krueger as Top Economist, Wall Street Journal, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904332804576538200563908180.html 
3. ^ Allen, JoAnne (2011-04-15), Senate confirms two members of Obama economic team, Reuters, http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/15/economy-obama-advisors-idUSN1412130420110415, retrieved 2011-04-27 
4. ^ Mullany, Gerry (2010-08-05). "Romer Leaves as Head of Council of Economic Advisers". The New York Times. http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/05/romer-leaves-as-head-of-council-of-economic-advisers/?partner=rss&emc=rss. Retrieved 2010-08-05. 
5. ^ Council of Economic Advisers Staff, http://www.whitehouse.gov/administration/eop/cea/about/staff-members 
6. ^ [Salant 1973]
7. ^ [Brune 1989]
8. ^ [Engelbourg 1980]
9. ^ [Cimbala and Stout 1983]
10. ^ "Karl M. Arndt, 54". Associated Press in New York Times. February 23, 1956. http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F10F12FD3D5510728FDDAA0A94DA405B8689F1D3. Retrieved 2008-06-17. "Karl M. Arndt, former top staff man of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, died in Taipei yesterday after a brief illness. His age was 54." 

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", The American Journal of Economics and Sociology 48 (3): 357–371, doi:10.1111/j.1536-7150.1989.tb03189.x, 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, doi:10.2307/3114480, ISSN 0007-6805, JSTOR 3114480 
• Leeson, Robert (1997), "The Political Economy of the Inflation-unemployment Trade-off", History of Political Economy 29 (1): 117–156, doi:10.1215/00182702-29-1-117, 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, doi:10.1215/00182702-5-1-36, ISSN 0018-2702 
• Sobel, Robert (1988), Biographical Directory of the Council of Economic A dvisers, 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, doi:10.1111/j.1540-6563.2004.00094.x, 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