Nationality American Influenced by Martin Feldstein Role Economist | Name James Poterba Influences Martin Feldstein Fields Public economics | |
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Born July 13, 1958 (age 65) ( 1958-07-13 ) Institution Massachusetts Institute of Technology Alma mater University of Oxford
Harvard University Awards NAS Award for Scientific Reviewing (1997) Books Fiscal rules and state borrowing costs Education Harvard University, University of Oxford Influenced Amy Finkelstein, Austan Goolsbee, Steven Levitt, Emmanuel Saez, David Cutler, Caroline Hoxby People also search for Joel Slemrod, Rudi Dornbusch, Richard Miller Bird | ||
James Poterba
James Michael "Jim" Poterba, FBA (born July 13, 1958) is an American economist, Mitsui Professor of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and current NBER president and chief executive officer.
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Early years
Poterba was born in New York City. He completed his A.B., summa cum laude, in 1980 from Harvard University and completed his Ph.D. in 1983 from University of Oxford. He was a Marshall Scholar.
Academic career
Poterba started his career as an Instructor in Economics at MIT. He became Professor of Economics at MIT in 1988. Today, he is the Mitsui Professor of Economics and the Head of the MIT Economics Department. He became the president of the National Bureau of Economic Research on July 1, 2008.
Research
Poterba is known for his research on how taxation affects the economic decisions of households and firms. His research has emphasized the effect of taxation on the financial behavior of households, particularly their saving and portfolio decisions. He is also interested in the analysis of tax-deferred retirement saving programs such as 401(k) plans and in the role of annuities in financing retirement consumption.
He has also been Director of the NBER Public Economics Research Program since 1991. He has served as a member of the President's Advisory Panel on Federal Tax Reform and edited the Journal of Public Economics, the leading international journal for research on taxation and government spending, between 1997 and 2006. He has edited several economics journals.
Honours
He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1996. In 1999 Poterba was awarded the NAS Award for Scientific Reviewing from the National Academy of Sciences.
In July 2017, Poterba was elected a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy (FBA), the United Kingdom's national academy for the humanities and social sciences.