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Past Event

The Council of Economic Advisers: 70 years of advising the president

Past Event

Panel 1: The CEA in Moments of Crisis

The White House Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) was created by Congress in 1946 to advise the president on ways “to foster and promote free competitive enterprise” and “to promote maximum employment, production and purchasing power.” President Truman, who signed the Employment Act of 1946 into law, was unenthusiastic about the Council and didn’t nominate members for nearly six months. Yet the CEA, comprised of three individuals whom Congress says are to be “exceptionally qualified,” has not only survived but also prospered for 70 years and remains an important part of the president’s economic policy decision making.

On February 11, the Hutchins Center on Fiscal and Monetary Policy at Brookings marked this anniversary by examining the ways the CEA and other economists succeed and fail when they set out to advise elected politicians and tap the expertise of some of the “exceptionally qualified” economists who have chaired the Council over the past four decades.

>> Read Roger Porter’s remarks.

former CEA chairs and members

Agenda

Welcome

Jason Furman

Former Brookings Expert

Aetna Professor of the Practice of Economic Policy - Harvard University

Nonresident Senior Fellow - Peterson Institute for International Economics

Opening Remarks

Roger Porter

IBM Professor of Business and Government, Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government - Harvard Kennedy School of Government

Panel 1: The CEA in Moments of Crisis

R. Glenn Hubbard

Dean and Russell L. Carson Professor of Finance and Economics - Columbia Business School

Alan B. Krueger

Bendheim Professor of Economics and Public Affairs - Princeton University

Break

Panel 2: The CEA and Policymaking

Martin Feldstein

George F. Baker Professor of Economics - Harvard University

President Emeritus - National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)

Randall Kroszner

Deputy Dean for Executive Programs; Norman R. Bobins Professor of Economics - University of Chicago Booth School of Business

Panel 3: Current Economic Policy Issues

Concluding Comments

Jason Furman

Former Brookings Expert

Aetna Professor of the Practice of Economic Policy - Harvard University

Nonresident Senior Fellow - Peterson Institute for International Economics

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