Chicago Fed selects macroeconomist Austan Goolsbee as next president

The Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago has named Chicago Booth professor Austan Goolsbee as its next president.

He takes up the new role in January, and will be a voting member of the institution’s Federal Open Market Committee.

Goolsbee is the Robert P. Gwinn professor of economics at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business, and is also a research associate in the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) public economics program. He will resign his NBER affiliation following the new Chicago Fed appointment.

Between 2010 and 2011 he chaired the President’s Council of Economic Advisers and was a member of the Chicago Board of Education between 2018 and 2019.

Goolsbee has held a number of other key public policy advisory roles, including at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the Panel of Economic Advisers to the Congressional Budget Office, the US Census Advisory Commission, and as a special consultant for internet policy to the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice.

He received his undergraduate and master’s degrees from Yale University and his PhD from MIT, all in economics.