NEWS RELEASE, 12/20/96 UC Berkeley Professor Janet Yellen named new chair of Clinton's Council of Economic Advisers

by Gretchen Kell

Janet Yellen, a professor on leave from the University of California at Berkeley's Haas School of Business, is President Clinton's designee for chair of the Council of Economic Advisors, Clinton announced today (12/20) in Washington, D.C. Yellen, 50, currently serves as governor of the Federal Reserve Board in Washington, D.C., and has been on leave from UC Berkeley since 1994. She is the Bernard T. Rocca Professor of International Trade at the Haas School. Yellen, who has accepted the job, must be confirmed by Congress to become chair of the three-member council. As head of the Council of Economic Advisers, she would follow in the footsteps of another UC Berkeley professor, Laura D'Andrea Tyson, who was Clinton's first chair of the council. Tyson went on to become chair of the National Economic Council and will return to UC Berkeley in January as professor of business and economics. Yellen's work includes major contributions in international economics, macroeconomics, microeconomics, labor economics and the economics of social policy, including crime. Her writing often has focused on federal economic policy issues. Her three years at the Federal Reserve have increased her already considerable knowledge of international monetary and financial markets. "The Council of Economic Advisers has the responsibility to advise the president across a vast array of economic policy areas," said David Levine, a professor at the Haas School who is a former senior economist on the council. "Few economists have contributed so much toward understanding so many key policy issues." Yellen's style is described by her UC Berkeley colleague Andrew Rose, a professor of business administration, as "collegial, persuasive and effective. She is very low-key, but impresses people quickly with the depth of her understanding and the sincerity of her views." "She already knows all the key players on the President's economic team," he said. "I know she made a great impression as Federal Reserve governor, and I'm sure her light will shine even more brightly at the council. It's truly an inspired choice." Yellen will succeed Joseph Stiglitz, who is leaving to become the chief economist at the World Bank. This is the 12th appointment by Clinton of a UC Berkeley faculty member to a senior economic policy position in his administration. Yellen has received two of those appointments. A former faculty member at Harvard University and the London School of Economics, Yellen twice has won the Haas School's award for outstanding teaching. She graduated summa cum laude from Brown University in economics in 1967 and received her PhD in economics from Yale in 1971.