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Information About

Council Of Economic Advisers




The current chairman of the Council is Edward Lazear , on leave of absence from Stanford University; the other members are Katherine Baicker of UCLA and Matthew Slaughter of Dartmouth .

The recent past chairs of the Council are:


Other influential past members include:


Every year the Council prepares the Economic Report Of The President . The staff of the council includes about 20 academic economists, plus four permanent economic statisticians.

HISTORY

The Council was established by the Employment Act Of 1946 to provide the President with objective economic analysis and advice on the development and implementation of a wide range of domestic and international economic policy issues. In its first 7 years the CEA made five technical advances in policy making: 1) the replacement of a "cyclical model" of the economy by a "growth model," 2) the setting of quantitative targets for the economy, 3) use of the theories of fiscal drag and full-employment budget, 4) recognition of the need for greater flexibility in taxation, and 5) replacement of the notion of unemployment as a structural problem by a realization of a low aggregate demand. 1973

In 1949 a dispute broke out between chairman Edwin Nourse and member Leon Keyserling . Nourse believed a choice had to be made between "guns or butter" but Keyserling argued that an expanding economy permitted large defense expenditures without sacrificing an increased standard of living. In 1949 Keyserling gained support from powerful Truman advisors Dean Acheson and Clark Clifford . Nourse resigned as chairman, warning about the dangers of budget deficits and increased funding of "wasteful" defense costs. Keyserling succeeded to the chairmanship and influenced Truman's Fair Deal proposals and the economic sections of National Security Council Resolution 68 that, in April 1950, asserted that the larger armed forces America needed would not affect living standards or risk the "transformation of the free character of our economy." 1989

During the 1953-54 Recession , the CEA, headed by Arthur Burns deployed traditional Republican rhetoric. However it supported an activist contracyclical approach that helped to establish Keynesianism as a bipartisan economic policy for the nation. Especially important in formulating the CEA response to the recession - accelerating public works programs, easing credit, and reducing taxes - were Arthur F. Burns and Neil H. Jacoby. 1980

The 1978 Humphrey-Hawkins Act required each administration to move toward full employment and reasonable price stability within a specific time period. It has had the effect of making the CEA's annual economic report highly political in nature, as well as highly unreliable and inaccurate over the standard two or five year projection periods. and Stout 1983


REFERENCES

  • Brazelton, W. Robert. ''Designing U.S. Economic Policy: An Analytical Biography of Leon H. Keyserling'' Palgrave, 2001.

  • Brazelton, W. Robert. "The Economics of Leon Hirsch Keyserling" ''Journal of Economic Perspectives'' 1997 11(4): 189-197.

  • Brune, Lester H. "Guns and Butter: the Pre-korean War Dispute over Budget Allocations: Nourse's Conservative Keynesianism Loses Favor Against Keyserling's Economic Expansion Plan." ''American Journal of Economics and Sociology'' 1989 48(3): 357-371. ISSN 0002-9246

  • Cimbala, Stephen J. and Stout, Robert L. "The Economic Report of the President: Before and after the Full Employment and Balanced Growth Act of 1978" ''Presidential Studies Quarterly'' 1983 13(1): 50-61.

  • Eizenstat, Stuart E. "Economists and White House Decisions" ''Journal of Economic Perspectives'' 1992 6(3): 65-71.

  • Engelbourg, Saul. "The Council of Economic Advisers and the Recession of 1953-1954" ''Business History Review'' 1980 54(2): 192-214.

  • Leeson, Robert. "The Political Economy of the Inflation-unemployment Trade-off" ''History of Political Economy'' 1997 29(1): 117-156. ISSN 0018-2702

  • McCaleb, Thomas S. "The Council of Economic Advisers after Forty Years" ''Cato Journal'' 1986 6(2): 685-693. ISSN 0273-3072

  • Norton, Hugh S. ''The Employment Act and the Council of Economic Advisers, 1946-1976'' (1977)

  • Salant, Walter S. "Some Intellectual Contributions of the Truman Council of Economic Advisers to Policy-making" ''History of Political Economy'' 1973 5(1): 36-49.

  • Sobel, Robert. ''Biographical Directory of the Council of Economic Advisers'' (1988)

  • Tobin, James and Weidenbaum, Murray, ed. ''Two Revolutions in Economic Policy: The First Economic Reports of Presidents Kennedy and Reagan.'' M. I. T. Press 1988.

  • Wehrle, Edmund F. "Guns, Butter, Leon Keyserling, the AFL-CIO, and the Fate of Full-employment Economics." ''Historian'' 2004 66(4): 730-748.



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