By DAVID WESSEL/ Wall Street Journal
President Barack Obama has chosen Princeton University's Alan Krueger to be chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers.
"As one of this country's leading economists, Alan has been a key voice on a vast array of economic issues for more than two decades," Mr. Obama said Monday in a statement. He continued, "Alan understands the difficult challenges our country faces, and I have confidence that he will help us meet those challenges as one of the leaders on my economic team."
If confirmed by the Senate, Mr. Krueger, a labor economist, is likely to provide a voice inside the administration for more-aggressive government action to bring down unemployment and, particularly, to address long-term joblessness.
Mr. Krueger, 50 years old, returned to Princeton a year ago after serving as assistant Treasury secretary for economic policy during the first two years of the Obama administration—which means he has recently cleared the sometimes treacherous Senate confirmation process.
He would succeed Austan Goolsbee, who left earlier this month to reclaim his teaching post at the University of Chicago.
Mr. Krueger has been on Princeton's faculty since 1987, the year he earned his Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University. He did a stint as chief economist at the Labor Department during the Clinton administration.
The work he has done in academia ranges from attempts to explain why job growth wasn't stronger during the 2000s, to findings that increases in the minimum wage don't depress employment, to a work showing that terrorists often come from middle-class—and often college-educated—backgrounds.
While at Treasury, Mr. Krueger worked on analyses of a variety of programs, including tax incentives to encourage employers to hire the employed, the "cash for clunkers" initiative to jump-start auto purchases and Build America taxable municipal bonds.
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, through a spokeswoman, said that "given his expertise in labor economics, he is precisely the right choice to lead the CEA at this moment in history."
Martin Feldstein, who was CEA chairman in the Reagan White House, praised the choice. "His experience at the Treasury will give him a running start in his new job," he said. "Alan is an expert in labor-market problems, taxation and the economics of terrorism. I hope the president listens to him."
The council's members generally are drawn from academia, and they often serve for only two years. Their influence has waxed and waned over time, depending on the internal dynamics of the particular White House economic team, the relationship between the president and the CEA chairman and the political agility of the council members.
Like those who previously held the post in the Obama administration, Mr. Goolsbee and Christina Romer of the University of California at Berkeley, Mr. Kreuger is likely to be part of the public face of the president's economic team.
The other two members of the CEA, both of whom have been confirmed by the Senate, are labor economist Katharine Abraham and antitrust specialist Carl Shapiro.
Among the other candidates for the CEA chairmanship considered by the White House were Rebecca Blank, currently acting Commerce secretary, and Alan Auerbach, a pubic-finance specialist at UC-Berkeley.
The three-member council was created by Congress in 1946 to advise the president and evaluate government policies. Each member, by law, is to be a person "who, as a result of his training, experience, and attainments, is exceptionally qualified to analyze and interpret economic developments, to appraise programs and activities of the government…and to formulate and recommend national economic policy to promote employment, production, and purchasing power under free competitive enterprise."
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