Feldstein Joins Recovery

Economics professor Martin S. Feldstein ’61, President of the Harvard Board of Overseers Roger W. Ferguson Jr. ’73, and Penny S. Pritzker ’81, a former Overseer, were named as advisors to president Barack Obama’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board in a press conference held in Washington on Friday.

Feldstein, a former Reagan administration economist, served as President of the National Bureau of Economic Research from 1977 to 2008. NBER studies the U.S. economy and is the well-respected authority on markers of recessions.

Ferguson was the vice-chairman of the Federal Reserve Board from 1999 to 2006 and is currently serving in his final year as a member of the University’s governing body.

Pritzker, an heiress to the Hyatt dynasty, is the founder and CEO of Hyatt Classic Residence, and was named as one of the wealthiest people in the United States by Forbes Magazine. Pritzker served on the Board of Overseers, the University’s second highest governing body, for a six-year term that began in 2002.

The Economic Recovery Advisory Board, which Obama first announced in Nov. 2008, will be headed by former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul A. Volcker. Volcker’s supporting cast is a collection of premier economists from academia and Washington, as well as wealthy Wall Street representatives.

“We’re tapping a broad and diverse range of opinion from across the country, because an historic crisis demands an historic response,” Obama said according to a posted transcript of the Friday press conference.

Feldstein will maintain his Harvard teaching duties while advising the president.

He is one of several board members whose economic views may conflict with dominant policy-makers in the Democratic administration.

“Not everyone is going to agree with each other, and not all of them are going to agree with me—and that’s precisely the point,” said Obama, according to his transcribed remarks.

Feldstein also serves as a director of American International Group, an international insurance company which received billions in government funding from the TARP bailout approved by Congress last summer.

—Staff writer Elyssa A. L. Spitzer can be reached at spitzer@fas.harvard.edu.

—Staff writer Noah S. Rayman can be reached at nrayman@fas.harvard.edu.