Meet Christina Romer
Posted on November 24th, 2008 in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »
The well-regarded UC-Berkeley economist is the new chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers.
And here’s another interesting thing about her: She was supposed to leave Berkeley for Harvard, until Drew Faust mysteriously rescinded Romer’s tenure offer.
As the Times puts it,
There was never any public explanation for Harvard’s decision.
There rarely is. Anyone out there know what happened? Did Drew Faust, Harvard’s first female president, really nix Romer because, as David Warsh argues, Romer had been a member of a visiting committee that criticized Harvard’s economics department for its disinclination to hire women?
Whatever happened privately, publicly Drew Faust and the Harvard economics department look silly on this one. They lost an opportunity to have signed on another economist now snapped up by the president-elect.
One Response
11/24/2008 8:36 pm
Christina Romer’s appointment means that we will have at the Council of Economic Advisers an economist with a background in highly relevant economic history and with moderate Keynesian sympathies - just what we need. It is to be hoped that she underatands that one of the key lessons of Keynes is the importance of constructive US leadership in international economic cooperation - including in the international coordination of key economic policies, in building up effective international economic institutions, and in safeguarding free trade. She will be familiar with literature like Donald Moggridge’s biography of Keynes and Donald Markwell’s “John Maynard Keynes and International Relations”, which I think are very helpful in thinking and working our way - nationally and globally - through the present muddle.