Campbell Chosen To Chair Economics Department

Long-time Harvard economics Professor John Y. Campbell will take over as chair of the Department of Economics on July 1—taking the helm in the midst of an economic downturn that has made its mark on the department.

Campbell will replace the current chair, economics professor James H. Stock, who has served out his three year term.

In his 15th year at the University, Campbell specializes in asset pricing and macroeconomics. Since 2004, he has also served on the board of Harvard Management Company—the organization charged with managing Harvard’s endowment.

Campbell spent this academic year on leave, though he remained in Cambridge for most of the year researching housing foreclosures.

Campbell’s popular undergraduate offering “Economics 1763: Capital Markets” will be taught by a visiting professor next year in order to lighten the incoming chair’s teaching duties as he assumes his new role.

Several members of the economics department interviewed yesterday said they supported Social Sciences Dean Steven M. Kosslyn’s decision to appoint Campbell as chair, which was announced to the department in an e-mail Wednesday.

“My sense is that he will be very, very good at the helm, particularly with dealing with difficult problems in a difficult period,” said economics professor Claudia Goldin.

As chair, Campbell will inherit a challenge that his predecessor Stock has been wrestling with for much of the year–decreasing budgets while managing a department with one of the lowest student to faculty ratios at Harvard. With the Faculty of Arts and Sciences facing down a $220 million budget deficit over the next two years, economic strain has already caused the department to cancel its junior seminars for next year.

“We need to review everything we are doing in light of the tough budget decision that FAS is facing,” Campbell said.

Stock said his successor was a “terrific choice” to take the reins. “[Campbell] has a deep understanding of FAS and University finances, he is creative and will bring that strength to bear as we look for constructive solutions to the FAS budget problems,” he said.

Campbell said he sees his two main tasks as chair to be “ensuring the vitality of the faculty in a time when resources are tight” and “mak[ing] sure that economics at Harvard is a meaningful intellectual experience and that it isn’t just a set of large impersonal lectures.”

But in light of the difficult times, Campbell said that he “take[s] over as chair of a department that I think has been very well run.”

“There is no one concrete thing that I think—or that is generally agreed to need—changing,” Campbell said.

Campbell, who grew up in England, attended Corpus Christi College at Oxford for his undergraduate years and Yale for his Ph.D. From 1984 to 1994 he taught at Princeton, before coming to Harvard.

Campbell also serves on Harvard’s Debt-Asset Management Committee and is a partner at the hedge-fund Arrowstreet Capital, L.P.

Professor N. Gregory Mankiw, who was on the hiring committee that chose Campbell in the early 1990s, announced Campbell’s appointment on his blog.

“I have long thought that my biggest contribution to Harvard was being part of the team that recruited John to the university,” he wrote on his blog. “I am delighted that the leadership of our department will be in such capable hands over the next few years.”

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

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