Narayana Kocherlakota
   HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

Narayana Rao Kocherlakota (born October 12, 1963) is an
American American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, pe ...
economist and the Lionel W. McKenzie Professor of Economics at the University of
Rochester Rochester may refer to: Places Australia * Rochester, Victoria Canada * Rochester, Alberta United Kingdom *Rochester, Kent ** City of Rochester-upon-Medway (1982–1998), district council area ** History of Rochester, Kent ** HM Prison ...
. Previously, he served as the 12th president of the
Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis Federal or foederal (archaic) may refer to: Politics General *Federal monarchy, a federation of monarchies *Federation, or ''Federal state'' (federal system), a type of government characterized by both a central (federal) government and states or ...
until December 31, 2015. Appointed in 2009, he joined the Federal Open Markets Committee in 2011. In 2012, he was named one of the top 100 Global Thinkers by ''
Foreign Policy A State (polity), state's foreign policy or external policy (as opposed to internal or domestic policy) is its objectives and activities in relation to its interactions with other states, unions, and other political entities, whether bilaterall ...
'' magazine.


Early life and education

Kocherlakota was born in
Baltimore Baltimore ( , locally: or ) is the List of municipalities in Maryland, most populous city in the U.S. state of Maryland, fourth most populous city in the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic, and List of United States cities by popula ...
,
Maryland Maryland ( ) is a state in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. It shares borders with Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia to its south and west; Pennsylvania to its north; and Delaware and the Atlantic Ocean to ...
, to a
European American European Americans (also referred to as Euro-Americans) are Americans of European ancestry. This term includes people who are descended from the first European settlers in the United States as well as people who are descended from more recent Eu ...
mother and a
Telugu Telugu may refer to: * Telugu language, a major Dravidian language of India *Telugu people, an ethno-linguistic group of India * Telugu script, used to write the Telugu language ** Telugu (Unicode block), a block of Telugu characters in Unicode S ...
-speaking
Hindu Hindus (; ) are people who religiously adhere to Hinduism.Jeffery D. Long (2007), A Vision for Hinduism, IB Tauris, , pages 35–37 Historically, the term has also been used as a geographical, cultural, and later religious identifier for ...
father originally from the
Coastal Andhra Coastal Andhra (South costal Andhra) also known as Kostha Andhra is a region in the state of Andhra Pradesh, India. Vijayawada is the largest city in this region. It was part of Madras State before 1953 and Andhra State from 1953 to 1956. ...
region of southern India. Both of his parents earned PhDs in
statistics Statistics (from German language, German: ''wikt:Statistik#German, Statistik'', "description of a State (polity), state, a country") is the discipline that concerns the collection, organization, analysis, interpretation, and presentation of ...
from
Johns Hopkins University Johns Hopkins University (Johns Hopkins, Hopkins, or JHU) is a private university, private research university in Baltimore, Maryland. Founded in 1876, Johns Hopkins is the oldest research university in the United States and in the western hem ...
. They taught at the
University of Manitoba The University of Manitoba (U of M, UManitoba, or UM) is a Canadian public research university in the province of Manitoba.Winnipeg Winnipeg () is the capital and largest city of the province of Manitoba in Canada. It is centred on the confluence of the Red and Assiniboine rivers, near the longitudinal centre of North America. , Winnipeg had a city population of 749,6 ...
,
Manitoba Manitoba ( ) is a Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Canada at the Centre of Canada, longitudinal centre of the country. It is Canada's Population of Canada by province and territory, fifth-most populous province, with a population o ...
,
Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...
, where Kocherlakota spent most of his childhood. He entered
Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial Colleges, fourth-oldest ins ...
at age 15 and graduated with an
A.B. Bachelor of arts (BA or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree course is generally completed in three or four yea ...
in Mathematics in 1983 after completing a senior thesis titled "Optimal income taxation" under the supervision of Robert M. Anderson. He earned a
Ph.D. A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Because it is ...
in economics from the
University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the b ...
in 1987.


Career


Academic

Kocherlakota's first faculty position was at the
Kellogg School of Management The Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University (also known as Kellogg) is the business school of Northwestern University, a private research university in Evanston, Illinois. Founded in 1908, Kellogg is one of the oldest and most p ...
at
Northwestern University Northwestern University is a private research university in Evanston, Illinois. Founded in 1851, Northwestern is the oldest chartered university in Illinois and is ranked among the most prestigious academic institutions in the world. Charte ...
. He subsequently was a professor of economics at the
University of Iowa The University of Iowa (UI, U of I, UIowa, or simply Iowa) is a public university, public research university in Iowa City, Iowa, United States. Founded in 1847, it is the oldest and largest university in the state. The University of Iowa is org ...
,
Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...
, and the
University of Minnesota The University of Minnesota, formally the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, (UMN Twin Cities, the U of M, or Minnesota) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul, Tw ...
. He served as the chair of the University of Minnesota's economic department from 2006 until 2008, As chair of the University of Minnesota's Economics Department, Kocherlakota decisively "recruited multiple economists to the school at once" (nine new hires within a two-year span), which improved its national rank in the '' U.S. News & World Report'' from 15th to 10th place among graduate programs in economics. Kocherlakota's research in
monetary economics Monetary economics is the branch of economics that studies the different competing theories of money: it provides a framework for analyzing money and considers its functions (such as medium of exchange, store of value and unit of account), and it ...
, asset pricing, and
public finance Public finance is the study of the role of the government in the economy. It is the branch of economics that assesses the government revenue and government expenditure of the public authorities and the adjustment of one or the other to achie ...
has appeared in ''
Econometrica ''Econometrica'' is a peer-reviewed academic journal of economics, publishing articles in many areas of economics, especially econometrics. It is published by Wiley-Blackwell on behalf of the Econometric Society. The current editor-in-chief is Gui ...
'', ''
Journal of Political Economy The ''Journal of Political Economy'' is a monthly peer-reviewed academic journal published by the University of Chicago Press. Established by James Laurence Laughlin in 1892, it covers both theoretical and empirical economics. In the past, the ...
'', ''
Journal of Economic Theory The ''Journal of Economic Theory'' is a bimonthly peer-reviewed academic journal covering the field of economic theory. Karl Shell has served as editor-in-chief of the journal since it was established in 1968. Since 2000, he has shared the editor ...
'', ''
Journal of Monetary Economics The ''Journal of Monetary Economics'' is a peer-reviewed academic journal covering research on macroeconomics and monetary economics. It is published by Elsevier and was established in October 1973 by Karl Brunner and Charles I. Plosser. Beginn ...
'', and ''
Journal of Money, Credit and Banking The ''Journal of Money, Credit and Banking'' is a peer-reviewed academic journal covering monetary and financial issues in macroeconomics. It is published by Wiley-Blackwell on behalf of the Ohio State University Department of Economics. The edi ...
''. He is one of the founders of "New Dynamic Public Finance", which is an approach to
optimal tax Optimal tax theory or the theory of optimal taxation is the study of designing and implementing a tax that maximises a social welfare function subject to economic constraints. The social welfare function used is typically a function of individual ...
design "given only minimal restrictions on the set of possible tax instruments, and on the nature of shocks affecting people in the economy". It establishes a "formal connection between the problem of dynamic optimal taxation and dynamic principal-agent contracting theory,..
hich Ij ( fa, ايج, also Romanized as Īj; also known as Hich and Īch) is a village in Golabar Rural District, in the Central District of Ijrud County, Zanjan Province, Iran Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, and also ...
means that the properties of solutions to principal-agent problems can be used to determine the properties of optimal tax systems". His contributions include articles on optimal taxation and optimal
unemployment insurance Unemployment benefits, also called unemployment insurance, unemployment payment, unemployment compensation, or simply unemployment, are payments made by authorized bodies to unemployed people. In the United States, benefits are funded by a comp ...
. He published a graduate textbook on the subject in 2010 called ''The New Dynamic Public Finance'' by
Princeton University Press Princeton University Press is an independent publisher with close connections to Princeton University. Its mission is to disseminate scholarship within academia and society at large. The press was founded by Whitney Darrow, with the financial su ...
. In 2008, he was among 270 economists who signed a petition protesting the
Obama administration Barack Obama's tenure as the 44th president of the United States began with his first inauguration on January 20, 2009, and ended on January 20, 2017. A Democrat from Illinois, Obama took office following a decisive victory over Republican ...
's economic stimulus plan that eventually passed and signed into law in February 2009. Paid for by the
Cato Institute The Cato Institute is an American libertarian think tank headquartered in Washington, D.C. It was founded in 1977 by Ed Crane, Murray Rothbard, and Charles Koch, chairman of the board and chief executive officer of Koch Industries.Koch Indust ...
, a libertarian
think tank A think tank, or policy institute, is a research institute that performs research and advocacy concerning topics such as social policy, political strategy, economics, military, technology, and culture. Most think tanks are non-governmenta ...
, the petition was published in several major national newspapers. According to Kocherlakota, he signed the petition not necessarily because he was opposed to the stimulus, but because he thought it was important to point out that the beneficial effects of an economic stimulus were not "a settled question within the academe."


Minneapolis Fed presidency

On October 8, 2009, Kocherlakota assumed the presidency of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis following the retirement of
Gary H. Stern Gary Hilton Stern (born November 3, 1944) is an American economist and banker. On March 16, 1985, he took office as the eleventh chief executive of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, and retired from the position on September 1, 2009. Lif ...
. Kocherlakota had been a consultant at the Minneapolis Fed since 1999. In January 2011, Kocherlakota contested the idea that the Federal Reserve caused the U.S. housing bubble in the 2000s. He noted that "land prices started to rise in 1996 and that prices grew 11% per year between 1996 and 2001, when the Fed's target rate was between 4.75% and 6.5% ... 'hardly ... loose monetary policy.'" In August 2011, he was one of the three governors who voted against the statement promising to keep the short-term interest rate near zero for two more years. After being appointed to the Minneapolis Fed in 2009, he underwent a "dramatic and unexpected intellectual transformation" from monetary hawk to dove, signaled in a September 2012 speech delivered at
Gogebic Community College Gogebic Community College (GCC) is a public community college in Ironwood, Michigan. Founded as Ironwood Junior College in 1932, the college has a main campus in Ironwood and a site in Houghton, Michigan to serve Houghton County and the surro ...
in
Ironwood Ironwood is a common name for many woods or plants that have a reputation for hardness, or specifically a wood density that is heavier than water (approximately 1000 kg/m3, or 62 pounds per cubic foot), although usage of the name ironwood in E ...
,
Michigan Michigan () is a state in the Great Lakes region of the upper Midwestern United States. With a population of nearly 10.12 million and an area of nearly , Michigan is the 10th-largest state by population, the 11th-largest by area, and the ...
, in which he advocated that the Fed "keep the
fed funds rate In the United States, the federal funds rate is the interest rate at which depository institutions (banks and credit unions) lend reserve balances to other depository institutions overnight on an uncollateralized basis. Reserve balances ...
extraordinarily low until the unemployment rate fall below 5.5 percent" to everyone's surprise. He said that he realized that labor-market problems like unemployment were, in fact, related to demand. He cast the only dissenting vote at the October 2014 Fed meeting, during which the Committee voted to conclude the QE asset purchase program, because of his view that inflation rates are still too low and that an interest-rate hike in 2015 would be a "mistake", especially as inflation is unlikely to reach the targeted 2% until 2018. Kocherlakota is the
Lionel W. McKenzie Lionel Wilfred McKenzie (January 26, 1919 – October 12, 2010) was an American economist. He was the Wilson Professor Emeritus of Economics at the University of Rochester. He was born in Montezuma, Georgia. He completed undergraduate studies at ...
Professor of Economics at the
University of Rochester The University of Rochester (U of R, UR, or U of Rochester) is a private research university in Rochester, New York. The university grants undergraduate and graduate degrees, including doctoral and professional degrees. The University of Roc ...
since January 1, 2016.


Personal life

Kocherlakota is married to Barbara McCutcheon, who holds a Ph.D. in economics from the
University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the b ...
."Minneapolis Fed: Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis names Narayana Kocherlakota new president"
Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, September 30, 2009
He enjoys rap music,
Jack White John Anthony White (; born July 9, 1975), commonly known as Jack White, is an American musician, best known as the lead singer and guitarist of the duo the White Stripes. White has enjoyed consistent critical and popular success and is widely c ...
, and American football.


References


External links


Official biography at the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Kocherlakota, Narayana 1963 births 21st-century American economists American people of Indian descent American people of Telugu descent Economists from Minnesota Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis presidents Fellows of the Econometric Society Living people Northwestern University faculty Princeton University alumni Stanford University Department of Economics faculty Telugu people University of Chicago alumni University of Iowa faculty University of Minnesota faculty