David M. Blitzer

David M. Blitzer Ph.D, is the chairman and managing director at S&P Dow Jones Indices, where he is head of the index committee that determines which stocks are added to the stock market indices calculated by the company. Blitzer serves as managing director and chairman of the Index Committee at S&P/Dow Jones Indices LLC with overall responsibility for index security selection, as well as index analysis and management. Blitzer served as Standard & Poor's Chief Economist.

He was corporate economist at The McGraw-Hill Companies, S&P's parent corporation. Prior to that, he was a senior economic analyst with National Economic Research Associates, Inc. and did consulting work for various government and private sector agencies, including the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, the National Commission on Materials Policy and Natural Resources Defense Council. Blitzer served as chief economist and equity analyst at S&P Capital IQ Equity Research and S&P Credit Research. He is the author of Outpacing the Pros: Using Indices to Beat Wall Street’s Savviest Money Managers, (McGraw-Hill, 2001) and What’s the Economy Trying to Tell You? Everyone’s Guide to Understanding and Profiting from the Economy, (McGraw-Hill, 1997). In 2000, he was named to SmartMoney magazine’s distinguished list of the 30 most influential people in the world of investing, which ranked him seventh, and in the year 1998, he was named the Nation’s top economist, receiving the Blue Chip Economic Forecasting Award for most accurately predicting the country’s leading economic indicators for four years in a row. A well-known speaker at investing and indexing conferences, Blitzer is often quoted in the national business press, including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Financial Times, and various other financial and industry publications.

Education

Blitzer has a B.S. in engineering from Cornell University, an M.A. in economics from George Washington University, and a Ph.D. in economics from Columbia University.