News: Summer, 2001

Hoxby to Head Education Program

NBER Faculty Research Fellow Caroline Hoxby, a professor of economics at Harvard University, is the first Director of the NBER's new Program on the Economics of Education. She received her A.B. in Economics from Harvard in 1988, an M.Phil. in Economics from the University of Oxford in 1990, and a Ph.D. in Economics from MIT in 1994.

Hoxby has written on the effects of class size on student achievement, issues surrounding school finance, the effects of immigrants on affirmative action in American college education, and the industrial organization of the market for higher education in the United States. She has also worked on a nation-wide charter school evaluation project.

More NBER Researchers Head to Washington

NBER Research Associate Anne O. Krueger, a professor of economics at Stanford University, has been named First Deputy Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund. Krueger served as Chief Economist of the World Bank in the Reagan Administration. She succeeds NBER Research Associate Stanley Fischer, former head of MIT's Economics Department, who has held the position for the past seven years.

NBER Research Associate Kenneth S. Rogoff, a professor of economics at Harvard University, will succeed NBER Research Associate Michael Mussa as the International Monetary Fund's chief economist. Rogoff worked at the IMF in the early 1980s; he also has worked in the International Finance Division of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors.

NBER Faculty Research Fellow Kent Smetters, an assistant professor of insurance and risk management at The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, heads to Washington soon to become Deputy Assistant Secretary for Economics at the U.S. Department of Treasury. Smetters, who had been a visiting faculty member at Stanford University during the past academic year, was an economist with the Congressional Budget Office from 1995 to 1998.

Moskow Replaces Cooper as Board Vice Chair

NBER Director Kathleen B. Cooper, who had been serving as the Board's Vice Chairman, has been confirmed as Undersecretary of Commerce for Economic Affairs. Director-at-large Michael H. Moskow, President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, will succeed Cooper as Vice Chair.

Cooper was most recently chief economist and manager of the economics and energy division of Exxon Mobil Corporation in Irving, Texas. Before joining Exxon, she was executive vice president and chief economist at Security Pacific Bank. Cooper received her undergraduate and masters degrees from the University of Texas and her Ph.D. from the University of Colorado.

Moskow had been teaching at Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management just prior to becoming President of the Chicago Fed in 1994. He began his career teaching economics and management, served in a number of senior government positions from 1969 to 1977, then joined the private sector where he held a number of senior management positions for more than a decade.

Moskow received his undergraduate degree from Lafayette College and his Ph. D. from the University of Pennsylvania.