Janice Eberly Confirmed by Senate as Treasury’s Chief Economist

Janice Eberly, a finance professor at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, was confirmed by the Senate to be the Treasury Department’s chief economist.

Eberly will be assistant secretary for economic policy and lead the office responsible for analyzing U.S. and global economic developments, the Treasury said in a statement today. She replaces Alan Krueger, who left in November and has since been nominated to lead the White House Council of Economic Advisers.

Eberly, 48, joins the Treasury as the Obama administration tries to reduce an unemployment rate that has been stuck close to 9 percent or higher for 30 months. Republicans in Congress have blocked President Barack Obama’s $447 billion package of tax cuts and government spending aimed at reigniting growth and hiring.

At Kellogg, where she has been a faculty member since 1997, Eberly focused on finance and macroeconomics, including studies on investment decisions by businesses and families, according to the school’s website. She also researched the difficulties of reallocating capital across sectors.

Eberly was previously a staff member on the Council of Economic Advisers and on advisory panels of the Bureau of Economic Analysis and the Congressional Budget Office. She has a bachelor’s degree from the University of California, Davis, and a Ph.D. in economics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

To contact the reporter on this story: Ian Katz in Washington at ikatz2@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Christopher Wellisz at cwellisz@bloomberg.net