James Bradford "Brad" DeLong (born June 24, 1960) is an American

economic historian Economic history is the study of history using methodological tools from economics or with a special attention to economic phenomena. Research is conducted using a combination of historical methods, statistical methods and the application of ...

who has been a professor of economics at the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after t ...

, since 1993.

Early life and education

DeLong was born in

Boston, Massachusetts Boston is the capital and most populous city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Massachusetts in the United States. The city serves as the cultural and Financial centre, financial center of New England, a region of the Northeas ...

, on June 24, 1960. He received a BA in

social studies In many countries' curricula, social studies is the combined study of humanities, the arts, and social sciences, mainly including history, economics, and civics. The term was coined by American educators around the turn of the twentieth century as ...

from

Harvard University Harvard University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan clergyma ...

in 1982, and a

PhD A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of graduate study and original research. The name of the deg ...

economics Economics () is a behavioral science that studies the Production (economics), production, distribution (economics), distribution, and Consumption (economics), consumption of goods and services. Economics focuses on the behaviour and interac ...

from Harvard in 1987. From 1986 to 1987, he was an instructor at

MIT The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of modern technology and sc ...

, and he taught economics at Harvard and

Boston University Boston University (BU) is a Private university, private research university in Boston, Massachusetts, United States. BU was founded in 1839 by a group of Boston Methodism, Methodists with its original campus in Newbury (town), Vermont, Newbur ...

from 1987 to 1993. In 1991–1992, he was a

John M. Olin John Merrill Olin (November 10, 1892 – September 8, 1982) was an American businessman and philanthropist. He was the son of Franklin W. Olin. Early life and education Born in Alton, Illinois, Olin graduated from Cornell University with a B.S ...

Fellow at the

National Bureau of Economic Research The National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) is an American private nonprofit research organization "committed to undertaking and disseminating unbiased economic research among public policymakers, business professionals, and the academic co ...

, where he has also been a research associate since 1995.

Career

DeLong joined Berkeley as an associate professor in 1993. From April 1993 to May 1995, he served as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Economic Policy at the Treasury Department in Washington, D.C. As an official in the Treasury Department in the

Clinton administration Bill Clinton's tenure as the 42nd president of the United States began with his first inauguration on January 20, 1993, and ended on January 20, 2001. Clinton, a Democrat from Arkansas, took office following his victory over Republican in ...

, he worked on the 1993 federal budget, the unsuccessful health care reform effort, and other policies, and on several

trade Trade involves the transfer of goods and services from one person or entity to another, often in exchange for money. Economists refer to a system or network that allows trade as a market. Traders generally negotiate through a medium of cr ...

issues, including the

Uruguay Round The Uruguay Round was the 8th round of multilateral trade negotiations (MTN) conducted within the framework of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), spanning from 1986 to 1993 and embracing 123 countries as "contracting parties". The ...

of the

General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) is a legal agreement between many countries, whose overall purpose was to promote international trade by reducing or eliminating trade barriers such as tariffs or quotas. According to its p ...

and the

North American Free Trade Agreement The North American Free Trade Agreement (, TLCAN; , ALÉNA), referred to colloquially in the Anglosphere as NAFTA, ( ) was an agreement signed by Canada, Mexico, and the United States that created a trilateral trade bloc in North America. The ...

. He became a full professor at Berkeley in 1997 and has been there ever since. DeLong has been a

research associate Research associates are researchers (scholars and professionals) that usually have an advanced degree beyond a Bachelor's degree such as a master's degree or a PhD. In some universities/research institutes, such as Harvard/Harvard Medical Scho ...

of the

(NBER), a visiting scholar at the

Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco The Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco (informally referred to as the San Francisco Fed) is the Federal Reserve, federal bank for the twelfth district in the United States. The twelfth district is made up of nine western U.S. state, states— ...

, and an

Alfred P. Sloan Alfred Pritchard Sloan Jr. ( ; May 23, 1875February 17, 1966) was an American business executive in the automotive industry. He was a longtime president, chairman and CEO of General Motors Corporation. First as a senior executive and later as ...

Research Fellow. Along with

Joseph Stiglitz Joseph Eugene Stiglitz (; born February 9, 1943) is an American New Keynesian economist, a public policy analyst, political activist, and a professor at Columbia University. He is a recipient of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences (2 ...

and

Aaron Edlin Aaron S. Edlin (born 1967) is an American economist and lawyer specializing in antitrust and competition policy. In 1997–1998, he served in the Clinton White House as Senior Economist within the Council of Economic Advisers focusing on the ar ...

, DeLong is co-editor of ''

The Economists' Voice The Economists' Voice is a publishing forum for professional economists that seeks to fill the gap between op-ed pages of newspapers and scholarly journal articles. Published by Walter de Gruyter, the forum brings to bear scholarly work and academ ...

'', and has been co-editor of the ''

Journal of Economic Perspectives The ''Journal of Economic Perspectives'' (''JEP'') is an economic journal published by the American Economic Association. The journal was established in 1987. The JEP was founded by Joseph Stiglitz, Carl Shapiro, and Timothy Taylor. It is orien ...

''. He is the author of a textbook, ''Macroeconomics'', the second edition of which he coauthored with Martha Olney. With

Heather Boushey Heather Marie Boushey (born 1970) is an American economist who served as a member of President Joe Biden's Council of Economic Advisers and the Chief Economist for the Invest in America Cabinet at the White House. Prior to joining the Biden-Harr ...

and Marshall Steinbaum, he co-edited the book '' After Piketty: The Agenda for Economics and Inequality'' (2017), a volume of 22 essays about how to integrate inequality into economic thinking. He also contributes to

Project Syndicate ''Project Syndicate'' is an international nonprofit media organization that publishes and syndicates commentary and analysis on a variety of global topics. All opinion pieces are published on the ''Project Syndicate'' website, and also distribu ...

. In 1990 and 1991, DeLong and Lawrence Summers co-wrote two theoretical papers that became critical theoretical underpinnings for the financial deregulation put in place when Summers was Secretary of the Treasury under

Bill Clinton William Jefferson Clinton (né Blythe III; born August 19, 1946) is an American politician and lawyer who was the 42nd president of the United States from 1993 to 2001. A member of the Democratic Party (United States), Democratic Party, ...

. In 2019, DeLong said that he and other neoliberals had been "certainly wrong, 100 percent, on the politics" of economic policies. While he continued to believe that "good incremental policies" might be superior, he concluded that they were politically unattainable because of the lack of

Republicans Republican can refer to: Political ideology * An advocate of a republic, a type of government that is not a monarchy or dictatorship, and is usually associated with the rule of law. ** Republicanism, the ideology in support of republics or agains ...

willing to work toward such goals. Instead, DeLong said that he favored "

Medicare for all Single-payer healthcare is a type of universal healthcare, in which the costs of essential healthcare for all residents are covered by a single public system (hence "single-payer"). Single-payer systems may contract for healthcare services from pr ...

, funded by a

carbon tax A carbon tax is a tax levied on the carbon emissions from producing goods and services. Carbon taxes are intended to make visible the hidden Social cost of carbon, social costs of carbon emissions. They are designed to reduce greenhouse gas emis ...

, with a whole bunch of

Universal Basic Income Universal basic income (UBI) is a social welfare proposal in which all citizens of a given population regularly receive a minimum income in the form of an unconditional transfer payment, i.e., without a means test or need to perform Work (hu ...

rebates for the poor and public investment in green technologies." He concluded, "The world appears to be more like what lefties thought it was than what I thought it was for the last 10 or 15 years." DeLong is an active

blogger A blog (a Clipping (morphology), truncation of "weblog") is an informational website consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries also known as posts. Posts are typically displayed in Reverse chronology, reverse chronologic ...

on political and economic issues and media criticism. In 2022, he published ''Slouching Towards Utopia,'' an economic history of the 20th century from a

Keynesian Keynesian economics ( ; sometimes Keynesianism, named after British economist John Maynard Keynes) are the various macroeconomic theories and models of how aggregate demand (total spending in the economy) strongly influences economic output an ...

perspective.

Personal life

DeLong lives in

Berkeley, California Berkeley ( ) is a city on the eastern shore of San Francisco Bay in northern Alameda County, California, United States. It is named after the 18th-century Anglo-Irish bishop and philosopher George Berkeley. It borders the cities of Oakland, Cali ...

, with his wife, Ann Marie Marciarille, a professor of law (specializing in healthcare law) at the

University of Missouri-Kansas City A university () is an institution of tertiary education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. ''University'' is derived from the Latin phrase , which roughly means "community of teachers and scholars". Univ ...

Publications

* ''Slouching Towards Utopia'' (2022 Basic Books -- 605 pp economic history from 1870 through 2010 detailing phenomenal growth in wealth and failure to achieve social justice.)
"Noise Trader Risk in Financial Markets"
(''Journal of Political Economy'', 1990; co-authored with Andrei Shleifer, Lawrence Summers, and Robert Waldmann)

(''Quarterly Journal of Economics'', May 1991; co-authored with Lawrence Summers)

(''Foreign Affairs'', 1996; co-authored with Christopher DeLong and Sherman Robinson)

(''Journal of Law and Economics'' 1993; co-authored with

Andrei Shleifer Andrei Shleifer ( ; born February 20, 1961) is a Russian-American economist and Professor of Economics at Harvard University, where he has taught since 1991. Shleifer was awarded the biennial John Bates Clark Medal in 1999 for his seminal works ...

) * "The Marshall Plan: History's Most Successful Structural Adjustment Programme" (in R. Dornbusch et al., eds., ''Postwar Economic Reconstruction and Lessons for the East'', Cambridge: M.I.T., 1993; co-authored with Barry Eichengreen)
"Between Meltdown and Moral Hazard: The International Monetary and Financial Policy of the Clinton Administration"
(co-authored with Barry J. Eichengreen)
"Review of ''Robert Skidelsky (2000), John Maynard Keynes, volume 3, Fighting for Britain''"
(''Journal of Economic Literature'', 2002)
"The Triumph of Monetarism?"
(''

'', 2000)
"Asset Returns and Economic Growth"
(''Brookings Papers on Economic Activity'', 2005; co-authored with

Dean Baker Dean Baker (born July 13, 1958) is an American macroeconomist who co-founded the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) with Mark Weisbrot. Baker has been credited as one of the first economists to have identified the 2007–08 United S ...

and

Paul Krugman Paul Robin Krugman ( ; born February 28, 1953) is an American New Keynesian economics, New Keynesian economist who is the Distinguished Professor of Economics at the CUNY Graduate Center, Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He ...

)
"Productivity Growth in the 2000s"
(''NBER Macroeconomics Annual'' 2003)
"The New Economy: Background, Questions, Speculations"
(''Economic Policies for the Information Age'', 2002; co-authored with

Lawrence Summers Lawrence Henry Summers (born November 30, 1954) is an American economist who served as United States Secretary of the Treasury from 1999 to 2001 and as the director of the National Economic Council from 2009 to 2010. He also served as presiden ...

)
"Speculative Microeconomics for Tomorrow's Economy"
(''First Monday'', 2000; co-authored with

Michael Froomkin A. Michael Froomkin is the Laurie Silvers & Mitchell Rubenstein Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Florida. His work on technology law since the mid-1990s spans Internet governance and Internet regulation, ...

)
"America's Peacetime Inflation"
(in ''Reducing Inflation'', 1998)

(''Journal of Economic Perspectives'', 1996)

(''Journal of Economic History'', June 1992)

(''Journal of Economic History'', September 1991; co-authored with Andrei Shleifer)

References

External links

"Brad DeLong's Egregious Moderation"

''Journal of Economic Perspectives''

''The Economists' Voice''

"The Order of the Shrill"

Brad DeLong's Grasping Reality
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Delong, J. Bradford 1960 births 20th-century American economists 21st-century American economists 21st-century American non-fiction writers American bloggers American male bloggers Boston University faculty Clinton administration personnel Economic historians Economists from California Economists from Massachusetts Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences alumni Harvard University faculty Living people New Keynesian economists People from Contra Costa County, California University of California, Berkeley College of Letters and Science faculty Writers from Boston