Janet Yellen

Janet Yellen
Vice Chairman of the Federal Reserve System
Incumbent
Assumed office October 4, 2010
Preceded by	Donald Kohn
President of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco
In office June 14, 2004 – October 4, 2010
Preceded by	Robert T. Parry
Succeeded by	John C. Williams
18th Chair of the Council of Economic Advisors
In office February 13, 1997 – 1999
President	Bill Clinton
Preceded by	Joseph Stiglitz
Succeeded by	Martin N. Baily
Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System
In office August 12, 1994 – February 17, 1997
Nominated by	Bill Clinton
Personal details
Born	Janet Louise Yellen (1946-08-13) August 13, 1946 Brooklyn, New York
Spouse	George Akerlof
Alma mater	Yale University (Ph.D.) Brown University (A.B.)

Janet Louise Yellen (born August 13, 1946) is an American economist and professor, who is currently the Vice Chair of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. Previously, she was President and Chief Executive Officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, Chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers under President Bill Clinton, and Professor Emerita at the University of California, Berkeley's Haas School of Business.

Early life and education

Yellen was born in Brooklyn, New York, the daughter of Anna (née Blumenthal) and Julius Yellen, a doctor. She graduated from Fort Hamilton High School in the Bay Ridge section of Brooklyn. She graduated summa cum laude from Brown University with a degree in economics in 1967, and received her Ph.D. in economics from Yale University in 1971.

Career

Beginning in 1980, Yellen has been conducting research at the Haas School and teaching macroeconomics to full-time and part-time MBA students. She is now a Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley's Haas School of Business, where she was the Eugene E. and Catherine M. Trefethen Professor of Business and Professor of Economics. Twice she has been awarded the Haas School's outstanding teaching award.

Yellen served as chair of President Bill Clinton's Council of Economic Advisers from February 13, 1997 to 1999, and was appointed as a member of the Federal Reserve System's Board of Governors from 1994 to 1997. She has taught at Harvard University and at the London School of Economics. Yellen serves as president of the Western Economic Association International and is a former vice president of the American Economic Association. She is a fellow of the Yale Corporation.

On June 14, 2004, Yellen became the President and Chief Executive Officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. She was a voting member of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) in 2009.

Yellen is considered by many on Wall Street to be a "dove" (more concerned with unemployment than with inflation) and as such to be less likely to advocate Federal Reserve interest rate hikes, as compared, for example, to William Poole (former St. Louis Fed president) a "hawk" (see definitions under Inflation).

In July 2009, Yellen was mentioned as a potential successor to Ben Bernanke as chairman of the Federal Reserve System, before he was renominated by Barack Obama.

According to Fed Salary figures released for 2009, Yellen earned $410,000 that year as San Francisco Fed President, more than twice Chairman Ben Bernanke ($199,700) whose pay is limited by law.

Vice Chairmanship

Yellen sworn in by Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke in October 2010.

On April 28, 2010, President Obama nominated Yellen to succeed Donald Kohn as vice-chairman of the Federal Reserve System. In July, "[t]he Senate Banking Committee voted 17 to 6 to confirm her, though the top Republican on the panel, Senator Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, voted no, saying he believed Ms. Yellen had an 'inflationary bias.'" At the same time, on the heels of concerned testimony by Fed chair Bernanke, FOMC voting member James B. Bullard of the St. Louis Fed made a statement that the U.S. economy was "at risk of becoming 'enmeshed in a Japanese-style deflationary outcome within the next several years.'" Bullard's statement was interpreted as a possible shift within the FOMC balance between inflation hawks and doves. Yellen's pending confirmation, along with those of Peter A. Diamond and Sarah Bloom Raskin to fill vacancies, was seen as possibly furthering such a shift in the FOMC. All three nominations were seen as "on track to be confirmed by the Senate."

On October 4, 2010, Yellen was sworn in for a 4-year term ending October 4, 2014. Dr. Yellen simultaneously began a 14-year term as a member of the Federal Reserve Board that will expire January 31, 2024.

On October 11, 2010, in her first public speech as Vice Chair, Yellen stepped away from dovish rhetoric with respect to low interest rates. She stated, "It is conceivable that accommodative monetary policy could provide tinder for a buildup of leverage and excessive risk-taking in the financial system."

Personal life

Yellen is Jewish, and is married to George Akerlof, a Nobel prize-winning economist and professor emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley. Her son, Robert Akerlof was a postdoctoral associate in Applied Economics at the MIT Sloan School of Management. He is now an assistant professor at the University of Warwick.

Honors and awards

Yellen received the Wilbur Cross Medal from Yale in 1997, an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from Brown in 1998, and an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from Bard College in 2000. In October 2010, she received the prestigious Adam Smith Award from the National Association for Business Economics (NABE). In 2012, she was elected Distinguished Fellow of the American Economic Association.

Positions held

• 2004–present, President and CEO, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco
• 1997–1999 Chair, President's Council of Economic Advisors
• 1994–1997 Member, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System
• 1985–present Professor, Haas School of Business, UC Berkeley
• 1982–1985 Associate Professor, Haas School of Business, UC Berkeley
• 1980–1982 Assistant Professor, Haas School of Business, UC Berkeley
• 1978–1980 Lecturer, London School of Economics and Political Science
• 1977–1978 Economist, Division of International Finance, Trade and Financial Studies Section, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System
• 1971–1976 Assistant Professor, Department of Economics, Harvard University
• 1974 Research Fellow, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

External service and assignments

• President and CEO, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco
• Fellow, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2001
• Vice President, Western Economics Association, 2001
• Fellow, Yale Corporation 2000–
• Member, National Academy of Sciences Panel on Ensuring the Best Presidential Science and Technology Appointments, 2000
• Research Associate, National Bureau of Economic Research, 1999–
• Advisory Board, Center for International Political Economy, 1999–
• Advisory Board, Brookings Panel on Economic Activity, 1999
• Chair: Economic Policy Committee of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development 1997–1999
• President's Interagency Committee on Women's Business Enterprise (1997)
• Member and adviser: Brookings Panel on Economic Activity (senior advisor); Advisor Panel in Economics, National Science Foundation;
• Advisor: Congressional Budget Office
• Research fellow: Yale University, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• Trustee of the Economists for Peace and Security

Current research and interests

• Unemployment and labor markets
• Monetary and fiscal policies
• International trade and investment policy

Selected papers and publications

• "The Fabulous Decade: macroeconomic Lessons from the 1990s" (with Alan Binder), The Century Foundation Press, New York, 2001
• "Trends in Income Inequality and Policy Responses," Looking Ahead, October 1997 and James Auerbach and Richard Belous, eds., "The Inequality Paradox: Growth of Income Disparity," National Policy Association, 1998
• "The Continuing Importance of Trade Liberalization," Business Economics (1998).
• "Monetary Policy: Goals and Strategy," Business Economics (July 1996).
• "An Analysis of Out-of-Wedlock Childbearing in the United States," (with George Akerlof and Michael Katz). Quarterly Journal of Economics (May 1996).
• "East Germany In From the Cold: The Economic Aftermath of Currency Union" (with George Akerlof, Andrew Rose, and Helga Hessenius), Brookings Papers on Economic Activity 1991:1.
• "How Large are the Losses from Rule of Thumb Behavior in Models of the Business Cycle?" (with George Akerlof) in Willima Brainard, William Nordhaus, and Harold Watts, eds. Money, Macroeconomics and Economic Policy: Essays in Honor of James Tobin, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press (1991).

External links

• San Francisco Fed biography
• Federal Reserve System biography