James Michael "Jim" Poterba, FBA (born July 13, 1958) is an American economist, Mitsui Professor of Economics at the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the ...

, and current

NBER The National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) is an American private nonprofit research organization "committed to undertaking and disseminating unbiased economic research among public policymakers, business professionals, and the academic c ...

president and chief executive officer.

Early years

Poterba was born in New York City. He completed his

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 ...

, summa cum laude, in 1980 from

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

and completed his PhD in 1983 from

Nuffield College, Oxford Nuffield College () is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. It is a graduate college and specialises in the social sciences, particularly economics, politics and sociology. Nuffield is one of Oxford's newer co ...

. He was a

Marshall Scholar The Marshall Scholarship is a postgraduate scholarship for "intellectually distinguished young Americans ndtheir country's future leaders" to study at any university in the United Kingdom. It is widely considered one of the most prestigious sc ...

Academic career

Poterba started his career as an instructor in Economics at the

. He became Professor of Economics at MIT in 1988. Today, he is the Mitsui Professor of Economics. He became the president of the National Bureau of Economic Research on 1 July 2008.

Research

Poterba is known for his research on how

taxation A tax is a compulsory financial charge or some other type of levy imposed on a taxpayer (an individual or legal person, legal entity) by a governmental organization in order to fund government spending and various public expenditures (regiona ...

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 ''Journal of Public Economics'' is a monthly peer-reviewed academic journal covering public economics, with particular emphasis on the application of modern economic theory and methods of quantitative analysis. It provides a forum for discussio ...

'', 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 The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (abbreviation: AAA&S) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, and ...

in 1996. In 1999 Poterba was awarded the

NAS Award for Scientific Reviewing The NAS Award for Scientific Reviewing is awarded by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences "to recognize authors whose reviews have synthesized extensive and difficult material, rendering a significant service to science and influencing the course ...

from the

National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the Nati ...

. In July 2017, Poterba was elected a

Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy Fellowship of the British Academy (FBA) is an award granted by the British Academy to leading academics for their distinction in the humanities and social sciences. The categories are: # Fellows – scholars resident in the United Kingdom # C ...

(FBA), the United Kingdom's

national academy A national academy is an organizational body, usually operating with state financial support and approval, that co-ordinates scholarly research activities and standards for academic disciplines, most frequently in the sciences but also the humanit ...

for the humanities and social sciences.

Personal life

Poterba is married to economist

Nancy Rose Nancy Rose is an American economist, currently the Charles P. Kindleberger Professor and Head of the Department of Economics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. From 2014 to 2017, Rose served as the deputy assistant attorney general for ec ...

References

External links

Personal websiteBiography of James M. PoterbaCV of James M. PoterbaProfile of James M. PoterbaNBER Working Papers by James M. Poterba
* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Poterba, James M. 1958 births Alumni of Nuffield College, Oxford Economists from New York (state) Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Harvard University alumni Living people MIT School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences faculty Marshall Scholars Scientists from New York City Fellows of the Econometric Society Corresponding Fellows of the British Academy American chief executives National Bureau of Economic Research 21st-century American economists