Josh Barro, Columnist

For Top Economist, Obama Chooses an Actual Economist

This is a hopeful sign that the administration will engage more productively on economic policy for the next three years.

May 29, 2013 at 5:12 PM UTC

By Josh Barro

Josh Barro is the lead writer for the Ticker, Bloomberg View's blog on economics, finance and politics. His primary areas of interest include tax and fiscal policy, state and local government, and planning and land use. Previously, Barro was a Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research and a commercial real estate banker at Wells Fargo. He holds a bachelor's degree in psychology from Harvard and lives in Queens, New York.

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As first reported by Bloomberg yesterday, President Barack Obama is expected to choose Jason Furman, currently the deputy director of the National Economic Council, to be the next Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors. This is a hopeful sign that the administration will engage more productively on economic policy for the next three years.

Furman is a bit of a hybrid pick: He's an economist with a Ph.D. from Harvard, but he's spent most of his career working in think tanks, political campaigns and the government. That combined resume positions him well. Unlike most academic economists, he understands how policy gets made, and he'll likely be able to make the council more effective at influencing policy.