Economic Leader

President Barack Obama today announced his plan to nominate Alan Krueger '83 to the White House Council of Economic Advisers.

After U.S. Senate confirmation, Krueger is slated to become chairman of the group, expected to drive economic growth steps being proposed next week by the president.

Calling the Princeton University professor "one of the leaders of my economic team," Obama announced his intention with Krueger at his side in the White House Rose Garden.

The president also referred to the plan he expects to unveil next week.

"I will be laying out a series of steps that Congress can take immediately to put more money in the pockets of working families and middle-class families, to make it easier for small businesses to hire people, to put construction crews to work rebuilding our nation's roads and railways and airports and all the other measures that can help to grow this economy," Obama said.

According to The New York Times, Krueger is considered "a liberal-moderate economist, but has supporters on both sides of the aisle."

He is known, the newspaper said, as a "voracious data hound, using surveys and natural experiments to find empirical results. As a result, most of his research is directly tied to real-world policy problems."

He served in the Obama administration during 2009-2010 as the U.S. Department of the Treasury assistant secretary for economic policy.

The president referred to that work by saying, "… As we were dealing with the effects of a complex and fast-moving financial crisis, a crisis that threatened a second Great Depression, Alan's counsel as chief economist at the Treasury Department proved invaluable."

About a year ago, Krueger resumed his post as the Bendheim Professor of Economics and Public Affairs at Princeton, where he has held a joint appointment in the university's Economics Department and Woodrow Wilson School since 1987.

In 1994-95, Krueger served as chief economist at the U.S. Department of Labor.

Published on the minimum wage, the economics of education, unemployment, income distribution, social insurance, regulation, terrorism, the environment and other issues, Krueger received a doctorate from Harvard University in 1987.

More information about the Council of Economic Advisers can be seen at http://www.whitehouse.gov/administration/eop/cea.