I happen to be watching Fox News at 11:20pm on Monday, August 29th, 2011.
Correspondents are discussing the new Obama appointment of Alan B. Krueger as a member of the Council of Economic Advisers (CEA).
Alan is the Bendheim Professor of Economics and Public Affairs at Princeton University.
In addition, he has published widely on the economics of education, unemployment, labor demand, income distribution, social insurance, labor market regulation, terrorism and environmental economics. Since 1987 he has held a joint appointment in the Economics Department and Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University.
He is the founding Director of the Princeton University Survey Research Center. He is the author of What Makes A Terrorist: Economics and the Roots of Terrorism and Education Matters: A Selection of Essays on Education, and co-author of Myth and Measurement: The New Economics of the Minimum Wage, and co-author of Inequality in America: What Role for Human Capital Policies? He has been a member of the Board of Directors of the Russell Sage Foundation, MacArthur Foundation, and the American Institutes for Research, as well as a member of the editorial board of Science (2001-09), editor of the Journal of Economic Perspectives (1996-2002) and co-editor of the Journal of the European Economic Association (2003-05).
Professor Krueger served as Assistant Secretary for Economic Policy and Chief Economist of the U.S. Department of the Treasury in 2009-10. In 1994-95 he served as Chief Economist at the U.S. Department of Labor.
He has been a member of the Executive Committee of the American Economic Association (2005-07) and International Economic Association, and Chief Economist for the National Council on Economic Education (2003-09). He was named a Sloan Fellow in Economics in 1992 and an NBER Olin Fellow in 1989-90. He was elected a Fellow of the Econometric Society in 1996 and a fellow of the Society of Labor Economists in 2005. He was awarded the Kershaw Prize by the Association for Public Policy and Management in 1997 and Mahalanobis Memorial Medal by the Indian Econometric Society in 2001. In 2002 he was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, and in 2003 he was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. He was awarded the IZA Prize in Labor Economics with David Card in 2006. From 2000 to 2006 he was a regular contributor to the "Economic Scene" column in the New York Times. He received a B.S. degree (with honors) from Cornell University's School of Industrial & Labor Relations in 1983, an A.M. in Economics from Harvard University in 1985, and a Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard University in 1987.
Yet all the pundits are talking about is the fact that ANOTHER ACADEMIC has been appointed to an influential post. What, may I ask is wrong with appointing a person that has devoted his life to studying economics at this level to such a post. What would make people happy? Why are academics so unqualified for such positions?
Baffled...
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I think you answered your question with your first line:
ReplyDelete"I happen to be watching Fox News..."
Don't cloud opinions and pundit-polls by involving thinking people asking for facts, who can debate without name-calling and can update their opinions when faced with logic.
ReplyDeleteWhat Sarah said. It's something I've been thinking about lately. The whole Ivory Tower cliche annoys me on two levels. First, my tower is made of corn and nursing uniforms, thank you. Second, it's based on a time when academics lived on campus, and thus really didn't have to worry about the "real world." Now, we have mortgages and electric bills and kids in public schools and aging parents just like everyone else. What kind of tower is that? How are we not qualified to talk both about theory and practice?
ReplyDeleteI can see both sides. As I read Alan B. Krueger's impressive record, I can see that he has been published multiple times and served on multiple boards and such. It's all very impressive, but what I see lacking is business experience. He didn't create and maintain a business...ever. I think what people are wanting to see in the Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) is someone who has practical, proven experience building businesses and creating jobs. I'm not taking sides. I'm just saying that's the one thing missing in Mr. Krueger's impressive resume. It's one thing to study and write about economic theories...it's a whole other thing to show that they work.
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