Council Of Economic Advisors
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The Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) is a United States agency within the
Executive Office of the President The Executive Office of the President of the United States (EOP) comprises the offices and agencies that support the work of the president at the center of the executive branch of the United States federal government. The office consists o ...
established in 1946, which advises the
president of the United States The president of the United States (POTUS) is the head of state and head of government of the United States. The president directs the Federal government of the United States#Executive branch, executive branch of the Federal government of t ...
on economic policy. The CEA provides much of the empirical research for the
White House The White House is the official residence and workplace of the president of the United States. Located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue Northwest (Washington, D.C.), NW in Washington, D.C., it has served as the residence of every U.S. president ...
and prepares the publicly-available annual Economic Report of the President. The council is made up of its chairperson and generally two to three additional member economists. Its chairperson requires appointment and Senate confirmation, and its other members are appointed by the President.


Activities


Economic Report of the President

The report is published by the CEA annually in February, no later than 10 days after the Budget of the US Government is submitted. The president typically writes a letter introducing the report, serving as an executive summary. The report proceeds with several hundred pages of qualitative and quantitative research reviewing the impact of
economic An economy is an area of the Production (economics), production, Distribution (economics), distribution and trade, as well as Consumption (economics), consumption of Goods (economics), goods and Service (economics), services. In general, it is ...
activity in the previous year, outlining economic goals for the coming year (based on the President's economic agenda), and making numerical projections of economic performance and outcomes. The data referenced or used in the report are from the
Bureau of Economic Analysis The Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) of the United States Department of Commerce is a U.S. government agency that provides official macroeconomic and industry statistics, most notably reports about the gross domestic product (GDP) of the United ...
and U.S.
Bureau of Labor Statistics The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) is a unit of the United States Department of Labor. It is the principal fact-finding agency for the government of the United States, U.S. government in the broad field of labor economics, labor economics and ...
.


History


Establishment

The Truman administration established the Council of Economic Advisers via the Employment Act of 1946 to provide presidents with objective economic analysis and advice on the development and implementation of a wide range of domestic and international economic policy issues. It was a step from an "ad hoc style of economic policy-making to a more institutionalized and focused process". The act gave the council the following goals: In 1949 Chairman Edwin Nourse and member Leon Keyserling argued about whether the advice should be private or public and about the role of government in economic stabilization.Remarks by Chairman Alan Greenspan. Receipt of the Truman Medal for Economic Policy. Before the Truman Medal Award and Economics Conference, Kansas City, Missouri
October 26, 2005, Council of Economic Advisers website under President Bush
Nourse believed a choice had to be made between " guns or butter" but Keyserling argued for
deficit spending Within the budgetary process, deficit spending is the amount by which spending exceeds revenue over a particular period of time, also called simply deficit, or budget deficit, the opposite of budget surplus. The term may be applied to the budg ...
, asserting that an expanding economy could afford large defense expenditures without sacrificing an increased
standard of living Standard of living is the level of income, comforts and services available to an individual, community or society. A contributing factor to an individual's quality of life, standard of living is generally concerned with objective metrics outsid ...
. In 1949, Keyserling gained support from Truman advisors
Dean Acheson Dean Gooderham Acheson ( ; April 11, 1893October 12, 1971) was an American politician and lawyer. As the 51st United States Secretary of State, U.S. Secretary of State, he set the foreign policy of the Harry S. Truman administration from 1949 to ...
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 NSC 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".


1950s–80s

During the 1953–54 recession, the CEA, headed by Arthur Burns, deployed non-traditional neo-Keynesian interventions, which provided results later called the "steady fifties" wherein many families stayed in the economic "
middle class The middle class refers to a class of people in the middle of a social hierarchy, often defined by occupation, income, education, or social status. The term has historically been associated with modernity, capitalism and political debate. C ...
" with just one family wage-earner. The Eisenhower Administration supported an activist contracyclical approach that helped to establish
Keynesianism Keynesian economics ( ; sometimes Keynesianism, named after British economist John Maynard Keynes) are the various macroeconomics, macroeconomic theories and Economic model, models of how aggregate demand (total spending in the economy) strongl ...
as a possible bipartisan economic policy for the nation. Especially important in formulating the CEA response to the recession—accelerating
public works Public works are a broad category of infrastructure projects, financed and procured by a government body for recreational, employment, and health and safety uses in the greater community. They include public buildings ( municipal buildings, ...
programs, easing credit, and reducing taxes—were Arthur F. Burns and Neil H. Jacoby. Until 1963, during its first seven years the CEA made five technical advances in policy making, including the replacement of a "cyclical model" of the economy by a "growth model", the setting of quantitative targets for the economy, use of the theories of fiscal drag and full-employment budget, recognition of the need for greater flexibility in taxation, and replacement of the notion of unemployment as a structural problem by a realization of a low aggregate demand. The 1978 Humphrey–Hawkins Full Employment Act required each administration to move toward
full employment Full employment is an economic situation in which there is no cyclical or deficient-demand unemployment. Full employment does not entail the disappearance of all unemployment, as other kinds of unemployment, namely structural and frictional, may ...
and reasonable price stability within a specific time period. It has been criticized for making 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.


1980–present

Since 1980, the CEA has focused on sources of economic growth, the supply side of the economy, and on international issues. In the wake of the
Great Recession The Great Recession was a period of market decline in economies around the world that occurred from late 2007 to mid-2009.
of 2008–09, the Council of Economic Advisers played a significant role in supporting the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. On March 12, 2025, Stephen Miran was confirmed as President Trump's nominee to be the Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers.


Organization

The council's chairman is nominated by the president and confirmed by the
United States Senate The United States Senate is a chamber of the Bicameralism, bicameral United States Congress; it is the upper house, with the United States House of Representatives, U.S. House of Representatives being the lower house. Together, the Senate and ...
. The members are appointed by the president. As of July 2017, the council's eighteen person staff consisted of a chief of staff (Director of Macroeconomic Forecasting), fifteen economists (five senior, four research, four staff economists, two economic statisticians) and two operations staff. Many of the staff economists are academics on leave or government economists on temporary assignment from other agencies.


Composition


Chairs


Chief Advisers

* Matthew Fiedler 2015-2017 * Casey Mulligan 2018-2019 * Joshua D. Rauh 2019–2020 * Kevin Corinth 2020–2021 * Ernie Tedeschi 2023–2024 * Aaron Hedlund 2025-present


Members

* John D. Clark 1946–1953 * Roy Blough 1950–1952 * Leon Keyserling 1950–1953 * Robert C. Turner 1952–1953 * Karl A. Fox 1953–1955 * Neil H. Jacoby 1953–1955 * Asher Achinstein 1954–1956 * Walter W. Stewart 1953–1955 * Joseph S. Davis 1955–1958 * Paul W. McCracken 1956–1959 * Karl Brandt 1958–1961 * Henry C. Wallich 1959–1961 *
James Tobin James Tobin (March 5, 1918 – March 11, 2002) was an American economist who served on the Council of Economic Advisers and consulted with the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, and taught at Harvard University, Harvard and Yale Uni ...
1961–1962 * Kermit Gordon 1961–1962 * John P. Lewis 1963–1964 * Otto Eckstein 1964–1966 * James S. Duesenberry 1966–1968 * Merton J. Peck 1968–1969 * Warren L. Smith 1968–1969 * Paul Wonnacott 1968-1970, 1991-1993 * Hendrik S. Houthakker 1969–1971 *
Herbert Stein Herbert Stein (August 27, 1916 – September 8, 1999) was an American economist, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and a member of the board of contributors of ''The Wall Street Journal''. He was the chairman of the Council o ...
1969–1971 * Ezra Solomon 1971–1973 * Marina von Neumann Whitman 1972–1973 * Gary L. Seevers 1973–1975 * William J. Fellner 1973–1975 * Paul. W. MacAvoy 1975–1976 * Burton G. Malkiel 1975–1977 * William D. Nordhaus 1977–1979 * Lyle E. Gramley 1977–1980 * George C. Eads 1979–1981 * Stephen Goldfeld 1980–1981 * William A. Niskanen 1981–1985 * Jerry L. Jordan 1981–1982 * William Poole 1982–1985 * Thomas Gale Moore 1985–1989 * Michael L. Mussa 1986–1988 * John B. Taylor 1989–1991 * Richard L. Schmalensee 1989–1991 * David F. Bradford 1991–1993 * Paul Wonnacott 1991–1993 * Alan S. Blinder 1993–1994 * Carolyn Fischer 1994-1995 * Joseph Stiglitz 1993–1995 * Martin N. Baily 1995–1996 * Alicia H. Munnell 1996–1997 * Jeffrey A. Frankel 1997–1999 * Rebecca Blank 1998–1999 * Yu-Chin Chen 1999–2000 * Robert Z. Lawrence 1999–2001 * Kathryn L. Shaw 2000–2001 * Mark B. McClellan 2001–2002 * Randall S. Kroszner 2001–2003 * Kristin Forbes 2003–2005 * Harvey S. Rosen 2003–2005 * Katherine Baicker 2005–2007 * Matthew J. Slaughter 2005–2007 * Donald B. Marron Jr. 2008–2009 * Cecilia Rouse 2009–2011 *
Carl Shapiro Carl Shapiro (born March 20, 1955) is an American economist and professor at the University of California, Berkeley, Haas School of Business. He is the co-author, along with Hal Varian of ''Information Rules, Information Rules: A Strategic Guide ...
2011–2012 * Katharine Abraham 2011–2013 * James H. Stock 2013–2014 * Betsey Stevenson 2013–2015 * Maurice Obstfeld 2014–2015 * Jay Shambaugh 2015–2017 * Sandra Black 2015–2017 * Richard Burkhauser 2017–2019 * Tomas J. Philipson 2017–2020 * Tyler Goodspeed 2019–2021 * Heather Boushey 2021–2025 * Jared Bernstein 2021–2023 * Kirabo Jackson 2023–2025 * Pierre Yared 2025–present * Kim Ruhl 2025–present


References


Sources

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *


External links

*
List of reports by the Council of Economic Advisors
2017-2021

1953–61 * ttp://eisenhower.archives.gov/Research/Finding_Aids/B.html Papers of Arthur F. Burns, Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library
Papers of Raymond J. Saulnier, Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library
*Economic Report of the President:
Economic Report of the President
2009–2017
Economic Reports 1947 to present
on
FRASER Fraser may refer to: Places Antarctica * Fraser Point, South Orkney Islands Australia * Fraser, Australian Capital Territory, a suburb in the Canberra district of Belconnen * Division of Fraser (Australian Capital Territory), a former federal ...
, St. Louis Federal Reserve
U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA)
'
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics

Economic Report of the President (1995–present)
United States Government Publishing Office {{Authority control Executive Office of the President of the United States * United States economic policy United States national commissions 1946 establishments in the United States Government agencies established in 1946