Alan Krueger
Photo: Jon Roemer
NOTE: Krueger's appointment was confirmed by the U.S. Senate on May 6.
Princeton Professor Alan Krueger has been nominated to serve as assistant U.S. treasury secretary for economic policy, the White House announced March 8.
Krueger, who has held a joint appointment since 1987 in Princeton's Department of Economics and Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, was chief economist at the U.S. Department of Labor from 1994 to 1995. His nomination is subject to U.S. Senate confirmation. If confirmed, Krueger would take a leave from the University for government service, as he did during his time with the Department of Labor.
Krueger, who currently is serving as a counselor to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, also will hold the title of chief economist of the department.
Krueger was one of three nominees announced by President Barack Obama, along with David Cohen to serve as assistant treasury secretary in dealing with terrorist financing and Kim Wallace to serve as assistant treasury secretary for legislative affairs.
"With the leadership of these accomplished individuals and our whole economic team, I am absolutely confident that we will turn around this economy and seize this opportunity to secure a more prosperous future," Obama said in a statement.
David Dobkin, Princeton's dean of the faculty, said, "Alan is a valued member of our faculty. His previous experience in Washington has served him well during his time on our faculty. We are happy to see him recognized with this position and look forward to his good work in Washington, and then to having those experiences be a positive influence on our campus."
Krueger is the Lynn Bendheim Thoman, Class of 1976, and Robert Bendheim, Class of 1937, Professor in Economics and Public Policy. He has published widely on the economics of education, unemployment, income distribution, social insurance, regulation, terrorism and the environment. He is the founding director of the Princeton University Survey Research Center and a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER).
Krueger is the author of "What Makes a Terrorist: Economics and the Roots of Terrorism" and "Education Matters: A Selection of Essays on Education," and the co-author of "Myth and Measurement: The New Economics of the Minimum Wage" and of "Inequality in America: What Role for Human Capital Policies?" A member of the editorial board of Science, he was editor of the Journal of Economic Perspectives from 1996 to 2002 and co-editor of the Journal of the European Economic Association from 2003 to 2005.
He is a member of the board of directors of the Russell Sage Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation and the American Institutes for Research. He also is a member of the executive committee of the International Economic Association and serves as chief economist for the Council for Economic Education.
Krueger was named a Sloan Fellow in Economics in 1992 and an NBER Olin Fellow in 1989. He was elected a fellow of the Econometric Society in 1996, a fellow of the Society of Labor Economists in 2005 and a member of the executive committee of the American Economic Association in 2004.
He was awarded the Kershaw Prize by the Association for Public Policy and Management in 1997 for distinguished contributions to public policy analysis by someone under the age of 40 and the Mahalanobis Memorial Medal by the Indian Econometric Society in 2001. In 2002 he was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and in 2003 he was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. He was awarded (with David Card) the IZA Prize in Labor Economics by the Institute for the Study of Labor in 2006. From March 2000 to March 2006 he was a regular contributor to the "Economic Scene" column in The New York Times.
