Column: Economic voices behind the candidates
Published Oct. 12, 2007
The following is a brief look at the economists and policy wonks advising the candidates in this year's primary:
Greg Mankiw (Mitt Romney) — Mankiw is notorious among those in our demographic for his textbooks, often featured in introductory economics classes (at MU, Doug Miller and Micheal Podgursky, among others, have used his texts). He has a Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, attended Harvard Law School for two years and is a professor at Harvard. He's worked for the Bush administration, a tenure notable for his strong advocacy of tax cuts. His prior work has been in great part focused on price stickiness, or the resistance of prices to change in response to changed economic conditions. In my opinion, one of Mankiw's greatest contributions to the public discourse is his extremely accessible and informative blog at http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/.
Michael Boskin (Rudy Giuliani) — He has a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, is professor at Stanford, is a fellow at the Hoover Institution and is also the director of several corporations, most notably Exxon Mobil and Oracle Corporation. His research deals with what demographic, geopolitical and technological trends mean to processes such as globalization and the markets for capital, labor and more. He is probably most famous in the popular press for arguing that the way in which the Consumer Price Index was calculated was outdated and that updating the relevant methodology would enable us to combat inflation much more effectively. As an advisor to Bush the first, he tried to convince others in the administration that the '90-'91 recession should be taken seriously.
Austan Goolsbee (Barack Obama) — Goolsbee has a Ph.D. from MIT and is a professor at the University of Chicago. He has been associated with Obama since Obama's senatorial campaign. His work has been primarily on taxation, the Internet economy and policymaking. Specifically, he notes that globalization is the response to a much smaller amount of income disparity than one would believe and that its effects are concentrated a great deal in the technological sector. Some hypothesize that the reason he's working for Obama is that most economists with Democratic sympathies are already loyal to Hillary Clinton. Even if that's true, I don't believe that one should discount Goolsbee's intellectual capabilities; he's certainly an exceptional economist.
Gene Sperling (Hillary Clinton) — Space constraints and my own desire to discuss (at least in a cursory fashion) prevent me from discussing all of the economic advisors working for Clinton, who include Roger Altman, an investment banker, and former U.S. Rep. Dick Gephardt, D-Mo. Sperling is a graduate of Wharton Business School. He served as the national economic advisor to President Clinton, and his work focuses on the economics of education, advocating, among other things, global commitments to providing educational opportunities. With another Clinton White House, look for a return to the focus on balanced budgets and a strong commitment to free trade regimes.
Robert Gordon (John Edwards) — A graduate of Harvard undergrad, Gordon formerly clerked for Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and was the director for domestic policy for Kerry-Edwards '04. He is involved with the Center for American Progress, a progressive think tank. Edwards, under Gordon's guidance, has tried since the last campaign to distinguish himself from Clinton economic policy, specifically advocating health care reform at the expense of deficit reduction and with a deeper skepticism of free trade agreements, particularly with China.
avtty5@mizzou.edu