Noam Scheiber reports on Obama's domestic and foreign policy advisors in the New Republic: The Audacity of Data (March 12).
The economists are described as first-rate academic economists, experts, non-ideological, pragmatic, inductive, fact-driven, incremental rather than radical, modest, heavily influenced by behavioral economics, and as having ambitious plans for the nation.
We're talking about:
... [Austin] Goolsbee, one of the profession's most respected tax experts. A Harvard economist named Jeff Liebman has been influential in helping Obama think through budget and retirement issues; another, David Cutler, helped shape his views on health care. Goolsbee, in particular, is an almost unprecedented figure in Democratic politics: an academic economist with a top campaign position and the candidate's ear.
The economists in this list are described as tax, budget, health care, and retirement experts. This article doesn't address Obama's macroeconomic or international economic advisors.
H/T to Greg Mankiw: Will the real Obamanomics please stand up? (Feb 26)
Minor edit (2004 BLS jobs est. not preliminary) Fed 29; addition of text from Hufbauer and Schott on March 1. There are more posts on the 2008 election here: Election 2008 or over here at the International Economic Law and Policy Blog.
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