Martin Feldstein
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Martin Stuart Feldstein (born November 25, 1939) is an American economist. He is currently the George F. Baker Professor of Economics at Harvard University, and the president and CEO of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER). From 1982 to 1984, Feldstein served as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers and as chief economic advisor to President Ronald Reagan (where his deficit hawk views clashed with Reagan administration economic policies).
Feldstein was born in New York City and graduated from South Side High School in Rockville Centre, New York. He completed his undergraduate education at Harvard (B.A., Summa Cum Laude, 1961) and then attended Oxford University (B.Litt., 1963; D.Phil., 1967). In 1977, he received the John Bates Clark Medal of the American Economic Association, a prize awarded every two years to the economist under the age of 40 who is judged to have made the greatest contribution to economic science. He is the author of more than 300 research articles in economics and is known primarily for his work on macroeconomics and public finance. He has pioneered much of the research on the working mechanism and sustainability of public pension systems. Feldstein is an avid advocate of Social Security reform and has been a main driving force behind President George W. Bush's initiative of partial privatization of the Social Security system. Aside from his contributions to the field of public sector economics, he has also authored other important macroeconomics papers. One of his more well-known papers in this field was his influential investigation with Charles Horioka have investment behavior in countries. He and Horioka found that in the long run, capital tends to stay in its home country--that is to say, a nation's savings is used to fund its investment opportunities.
In 2005, Feldstein was widely considered a leading candidate to succeed chairman Alan Greenspan as Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board. This was in part due to his prominence in the Reagan administration and his position as an economic advisor for the Bush presidential campaign. The New York Times wrote an editorial advocating that Bush choose either Feldstein or Ben Bernanke due to their credentials, and the week of the nomination The Economist predicted that the two men had the greatest probability of selection out of the field of candidates.[1] Ultimately, the position went to Bernanke, possibly because Feldstein was a board member of AIG, which announced the same year that it would restate five years of past financial reports by $2.7 billion. Although Feldstein was not linked to the accounting practices in question, he had served as a Director of AIG since 1988, and the Harvard Crimson saw Bush as wanting to avoid a confirmation battle.[2] In March 2007, the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation announced that one of four 2007 Bradley Prizes to honor outstanding achievement will be awarded to Feldstein.link
A well-known figure on the Harvard campus, Feldstein taught the introductory economics class "Social Analysis 10: Principles of Economics" (referred to as "Ec10" by Harvard students) for twenty years. Ec10 was routinely, and remains, the largest class at Harvard, despite accusations of being ideologically slanted. He currently teaches courses in American economic policy and public sector economics at Harvard College.
Ultimately, Feldstein may have made one of his greatest impacts through the remarkable concentration of his students in top echelons of government and academia. These include: Lawrence H. Summers, former Harvard president and US Treasury secretary; David Ellwood, dean of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government; and James Poterba, MIT professor and member of Bush's tax reform advisory panel. Lawrence Lindsey, formerly Bush's top economic adviser, wrote his doctoral thesis under Feldstein, as did Harvey Rosen, the previous chairman of the president's Council of Economic Advisers, and R. Glenn Hubbard, Bush's first chairman of the council and now dean of the Columbia Business School.[3]
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[edit] References
- ^ Editorial, The Next Alan Greenspan. The New York Times, October 6, 2005. http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F30611FE35540C758CDDA90994DD404482
- ^ Hernandez, J.C. AIG accounting scandal could reduce Feldstein’s chances of chairing the Fed. The Harvard Crimson, May 13, 2005. http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=507736
- ^ Gavin, Robert. A principal of economics: Martin Feldstein. The Boston Globe, June 26, 2005. http://www.boston.com/business/articles/2005/06/26/a_principal_of_economics/
