Douglas W. Elmendorf

Douglas William Elmendorf (born April 16, 1962) is an American economist who is the dean and Don K. Price Professor of Public Policy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government. He previously served as the Director of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) from 2009 to 2015. He was a Brookings Institution senior fellow from 2007 to 2009, and briefly in 2015 following his time at the CBO, and was a director of the Hamilton Project at Brookings.

Early life and education

Born in Poughkeepsie, New York, Elmendorf attended the Poughkeepsie Day School and graduated from Spackenkill High School. He spent his early career as an academic and educator. He graduated from Princeton University with an A.B. in economics in 1983 after completing a 70-page long senior thesis titled "A Prediction Model of the Market for Engineering." He then attended Harvard University to obtain his master's and Ph.D. in the same subject. After graduating in 1989, he stayed at Harvard for four years as an assistant professor, working closely with economics professor Martin Feldstein, the director of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Ronald Reagan, to teach introductory economics classes.

Career

In 1993, Elmendorf moved to public life, working for the Congressional Budget Office for the first time. He spent a year as an associate analyst before joining full-time in 1994 as a principal analyst where Elmendorf focused on health-care issues and the economic effects of budget deficits. Working under Director Robert Reischauer, Elmendorf worked on a team that concluded President Bill Clinton's health reform package would cost much more than originally thought. This analysis helped cripple Clinton's attempt to reform health care.

Elmendorf only stayed a year at the CBO as a principal analyst before heading to the Federal Reserve Board as an economist under Chair Alan Greenspan. In 1998, his travels through the financial departments of the federal government continued, as Elmendorf moved to the Council of Economic Advisers, working as a senior economist under Director Janet Yellen. After staying at the CEA for a year, Elmendorf then joined the United States Treasury Department as deputy assistant secretary for economic policy, working under Clinton Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers. When George W. Bush took office, Elmendorf moved back to the Fed as a senior economist and in 2002, he got a promotion to chief of the macroeconomics analysis team, leading a group of 30 economists and researchers as they forecasted inflation rates and labor markets.

In 2007, Elmendorf began working for the well-known economic think-tank the Brookings Institution, co-editing the twice-yearly publication "Brookings Papers on Economic Activity."_In_2008,_Jason_Furman.html" ;"title="/nowiki>">">[1/nowiki>/sup> Each issue of the journal comprises the proceedings of a conference he ...