Alan Krueger facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Alan Krueger
|
|
|---|---|
.jpg) |
|
| 27th Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers | |
| In office November 7, 2011 – August 2, 2013 |
|
| President | Barack Obama |
| Preceded by | Austan Goolsbee |
| Succeeded by | Jason Furman |
| Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy | |
| In office May 7, 2009 – October 16, 2010 |
|
| President | Barack Obama |
| Preceded by | Phillip Swagel |
| Succeeded by | Janice Eberly |
| Personal details | |
| Born |
Alan Bennett Krueger
September 17, 1960 Livingston, New Jersey, U.S. |
| Died | March 16, 2019 (aged 58) Princeton, New Jersey, U.S. |
| Political party | Democratic |
| Spouse | Lisa Simon |
| Children | 2 |
| Education | Cornell University (BS) Harvard University (MA, PhD) |
| Academic career | |
| Institutions | Princeton University U.S. Department of Labor |
| Field | Labor economics Macroeconomics Public finance |
| Doctoral advisor |
Lawrence Summers Richard B. Freeman |
| Information at IDEAS / RePEc | |
Alan Bennett Krueger (September 17, 1960 – March 16, 2019) was an important American economist. He was a professor at Princeton University and a researcher at the National Bureau of Economic Research. He also worked for the U.S. government.
President Barack Obama chose him to be the Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy from May 2009 to October 2010. Later, in 2011, Obama nominated him to lead the White House Council of Economic Advisers. He held this role from November 2011 to August 2013. Alan Krueger was considered one of the top 50 economists in the world.
Early Life and Education
Alan Krueger grew up in Livingston, New Jersey. He finished high school there in 1979.
He earned his first degree, a Bachelor of Science (B.S.), from Cornell University. Then, he went to Harvard University. He received his Master of Arts (A.M.) and his Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) in Economics from Harvard in the mid-1980s.
Career Highlights
Krueger started teaching at Princeton University in 1987. He held important positions there, like the James Madison Professorship in Political Economy.
He was known for using a method called "natural experiments." This is a way to study how things affect people in real life. For example, he looked at how education affects how much money people earn. He also studied how a higher minimum wage might affect jobs.
One famous study compared restaurant jobs in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. New Jersey raised its minimum wage, but Pennsylvania did not. Krueger found that restaurant jobs in New Jersey actually increased, while they went down in Pennsylvania. This study changed how many economists thought about the minimum wage.
Krueger wrote books about important topics. In Education Matters, he explored how investing in education, especially for children from poorer families, helps all of society.
In his book, What Makes a Terrorist (2007), he shared an interesting idea. He found that terrorists often come from middle-class, educated backgrounds, not always from very poor or uneducated places.
From 1994 to 1995, he was the Chief Economist at the United States Department of Labor. He won several awards for his work, including the Kershaw Prize and the IZA Prize. He was also a member of important academic groups.
In 2009, President Obama asked him to be the Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy. He worked in this role until October 2010, when he went back to Princeton.
Then, in 2011, President Obama nominated him again. This time, it was to lead the White House Council of Economic Advisers. The Senate approved his nomination, and he served until 2013.
He also wrote for The New York Times in their Economic Scene column from 2000 to 2006.
Personal Life
Alan Krueger was married to Lisa Simon. They had two children together.
Legacy
Alan Krueger passed away on March 16, 2019. Former President Obama said that Alan "saw economic policy not as a matter of abstract theories, but as a way to make people's lives better."
David Card, another famous economist, worked with Krueger on a key study about the minimum wage in 1994. Card later won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 2021. He said that if Krueger were still alive, he would have shared in that Nobel Prize.
See also
In Spanish: Alan B. Krueger para niños
