Janet Yellen: An Economist Who Explains It All

When Janet L. Yellen was a graduate student in economics at Yale University, classmates quickly figured out that the best way to decipher Professor James Tobin's lectures was to borrow her notes. And long after Yellen received her PhD in 1971, the Yellen Notes--as they became known--served as the unofficial textbook for generations of graduate students. "She has a genius for expressing complicated arguments simply and clearly," says Nobel winner Tobin.

Yellen's talent for penetrating arcane issues has served her well--as an economics professor at the University of California at Berkeley and as a Federal Reserve Board governor. Now, those synthesizing skills will be tested in her biggest assignment yet: chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers. And Yellen brings another resource to the job as well, her Berkeley economist husband, George A. Akerlof, a former CEA staffer who is widely perceived as a future Nobel laureate.