Brookings Appoints Romer, Wolfers as New Editors for Brookings Papers on Economic Activity

The Brookings Institution has named economists David Romer and Justin Wolfers as co-editors of the Brookings Papers on Economic Activity (BPEA), the flagship economic journal of the Institution, Brookings President Strobe Talbott announced today. The new co-editors, whose first volume will appear in mid-2009, will also both become Brookings nonresident senior fellows.

Romer is the Herman Royer Professor of Political Economy at the University of California, Berkeley and is currently a senior resident scholar at the International Monetary Fund. He has extensively studied monetary policy and fiscal policy, economic growth, political economy, microeconomic foundations of Keynesian economics, inflation, and stock market volatility. Romer is director of the Program in Monetary Economics at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), a member of the NBER Business Cycle Dating Committee, and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Wolfers is associate professor in the Business and Public Policy Department at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He is also a faculty research fellow with the NBER, a research affiliate of the Centre for Economic Policy Research, a research fellow of the German Institute for the Study of Labor, and a visiting scholar with the San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank. His current research fields include labor economics, macroeconomics, political economy, public economics, and behavioral economics. He is a contributor to the Freakonomics website and was named one of the 13 top young economists to watch by the New York Times.

“David and Justin will bring a lot of energy and new ideas to the process, and I am confident they will take the Brookings Papers on Economic Activity in interesting and important directions,” said William G. Gale, Brookings vice president and director of the Economic Studies program. “They bring a history of outstanding economic scholarship to BPEA, and I know they will attract some of the best minds in the economic profession to write thoughtful analyses about these most important and trying economic times.”

Founded in 1970 by Arthur Okun and George Perry, the Brookings Papers on Economic Activity journal contains research papers presented at twice-yearly conferences organized at the Brookings Institution. The authors and discussants of the articles are distinguished economists from leading universities and institutions. The journal’s audience includes academic economists, government officials, and members of the financial and business communities.

The journal was most recently edited by Brookings Senior Fellow Douglas W. Elmendorf, who stepped down to become the director of the Congressional Budget Office; N. Gregory Mankiw, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President George W. Bush and now the Robert M. Beren Professor of Economics at Harvard University; and Lawrence H. Summers, former Treasury Secretary, who is now President Obama’s director of the National Economic Council.

“Doug, Greg and Larry helped push BPEA in new and exciting directions,” said Gale. “We thank them for their service to one of Brookings’s signature publications.”

The new editorial team will retain BPEA’s focus on empirical research of current issues in macroeconomics and economic policy, emphasizing real-world events and institutions. The journal will uphold its tradition of excellence in areas such as macroeconomic fluctuations, fiscal and monetary policy, labor markets, wages and prices, the distribution of income and wealth, international capital flows, and international trade and development.