N. Gregory Mankiw
Encyclopedia
Nicholas Gregory "Greg" Mankiw (icon; Ukrainian Cyrillic: Григорій Манків; born February 3, 1958) is an American macroeconomist and Professor of Economics at Harvard University
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...

. Mankiw is known in academia for his work on New Keynesian economics
New Keynesian economics
New Keynesian economics is a school of contemporary macroeconomics that strives to provide microeconomic foundations for Keynesian economics. It developed partly as a response to criticisms of Keynesian macroeconomics by adherents of New Classical macroeconomics.Two main assumptions define the New...

.

From 2003 to 2005, Mankiw was chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers
Council of Economic Advisers
The Council of Economic Advisers is an agency within the Executive Office of the President that advises the President of the United States on economic policy...

 under President George W. Bush
George W. Bush
George Walker Bush is an American politician who served as the 43rd President of the United States, from 2001 to 2009. Before that, he was the 46th Governor of Texas, having served from 1995 to 2000....

. In 2006, he became an economic adviser to Mitt Romney
Mitt Romney
Willard Mitt Romney is an American businessman and politician. He was the 70th Governor of Massachusetts from 2003 to 2007 and is a candidate for the 2012 Republican Party presidential nomination.The son of George W...

. He is a conservative and he writes a popular blog about economic issues. He is also author of the best-selling textbook, Principles of Economics, and according to the IDEAS/RePEc
Research Papers in Economics
Research Papers in Economics is a collaborative effort of hundreds of volunteers in 57 countries to enhance the dissemination of research in economics. The heart of the project is a decentralized database of working papers, preprints, journal articles and software components. The project started...

 rankings, is the 22nd most widely cited economist in the world today.

Education

Mankiw was born in Trenton, New Jersey
Trenton, New Jersey
Trenton is the capital of the U.S. state of New Jersey and the county seat of Mercer County. As of the 2010 United States Census, Trenton had a population of 84,913...

. In his youth, he attended the Pingry School
Pingry School
The Pingry School is a coeducational, independent, college preparatory country day school in New Jersey, with a Lower School campus in the Short Hills neighborhood of Millburn, and a Middle and Upper School campus in Martinsville. The school was founded in 1861 by Dr. John F. Pingry.Pingry's...

. In 1975, he studied astronomy
Astronomy
Astronomy is a natural science that deals with the study of celestial objects and phenomena that originate outside the atmosphere of Earth...

 at the Summer Science Program
Summer Science Program
The Summer Science Program is an intense six-week summer program for intellectually talented high school students. The program is based on a collaborative research project in celestial mechanics. Students study astronomy, physics, spherical trigonometry, and calculus while working to take...

. He graduated from Princeton University
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....

 summa cum laude in 1980 with a Bachelor of Arts
Bachelor of Arts
A Bachelor of Arts , from the Latin artium baccalaureus, is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate course or program in either the liberal arts, the sciences, or both...

 in economics
Economics
Economics is the social science that analyzes the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. The term economics comes from the Ancient Greek from + , hence "rules of the house"...

. He spent a year working on his Doctor of Philosophy
Doctor of Philosophy
Doctor of Philosophy, abbreviated as Ph.D., PhD, D.Phil., or DPhil , in English-speaking countries, is a postgraduate academic degree awarded by universities...

 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT has five schools and one college, containing a total of 32 academic departments, with a strong emphasis on scientific and technological education and research.Founded in 1861 in...

 and a subsequent year studying at Harvard Law School
Harvard Law School
Harvard Law School is one of the professional graduate schools of Harvard University. Located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, it is the oldest continually-operating law school in the United States and is home to the largest academic law library in the world. The school is routinely ranked by the U.S...

. He worked as a staff economist for the Council of Economic Advisers from 1982–83, foreshadowing his later position as chairman of that organization. After leaving the Council, he earned his PhD in economics from MIT in 1984. He returned to Harvard Law for a year but, having nearly completed his PhD and realizing he was not as comparatively good at law, he left to teach at MIT for a year and then became an assistant professor of Economics at Harvard University
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...

 in 1985 and full professor in 1987.

He was appointed by President George W. Bush as Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers
Council of Economic Advisers
The Council of Economic Advisers is an agency within the Executive Office of the President that advises the President of the United States on economic policy...

 in May 2003. He has since resumed teaching at Harvard, taking over the introductory economics course Social Analysis 10.

Career

He has written two popular college-level textbooks: one in intermediate macroeconomics and the more famous Principles of Economics. More than one million copies of the books have been sold in seventeen languages.

Mankiw is a New Keynesian
New Keynesian economics
New Keynesian economics is a school of contemporary macroeconomics that strives to provide microeconomic foundations for Keynesian economics. It developed partly as a response to criticisms of Keynesian macroeconomics by adherents of New Classical macroeconomics.Two main assumptions define the New...

 economist. He did important work on menu costs
Menu costs
In economics, a menu cost is the cost to a firm resulting from changing its prices. The name stems from the cost of restaurants literally printing new menus, but economists use it to refer to the costs of changing nominal prices in general...

, which are a source of price stickiness. In 1989, he wrote a paper predicting that the aging of the baby boomers would undermine the housing market in the 1990s and 2000s.

Mankiw has become an influential figure in the Blogosphere
Blogosphere
The blogosphere is made up of all blogs and their interconnections. The term implies that blogs exist together as a connected community or as a social network in which everyday authors can publish their opinions...

 and online journalism since launching his blog
Blog
A blog is a type of website or part of a website supposed to be updated with new content from time to time. Blogs are usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in...

. The blog, originally designed to assist his Ec10 students, has gained a readership that extends far beyond students of introductory economics. In particular, he has used it as a platform to advocate the implementation of pigovian tax
Pigovian tax
A Pigovian tax is a tax levied on a market activity that generates negative externalities. The tax is intended to correct the market outcome. In the presence of negative externalities, the social cost of a market activity is not covered by the private cost of the activity...

es such as a revenue-neutral carbon tax
Carbon tax
A carbon tax is an environmental tax levied on the carbon content of fuels. It is a form of carbon pricing. Carbon is present in every hydrocarbon fuel and is released as carbon dioxide when they are burnt. In contrast, non-combustion energy sources—wind, sunlight, hydropower, and nuclear—do not...

; to this end Mankiw founded the informal Pigou Club
Pigou Club
The Pigou Club is described by its inventor, economist N. Gregory Mankiw, as "an elite group of economists and pundits who have publicly advocated higher Pigovian taxes, such as gasoline taxes or carbon taxes." Typically, these pundits and economists also advocate lowering other taxes, such as the...

.

From 2003 to 2005, Mankiw was one of President George W. Bush
George W. Bush
George Walker Bush is an American politician who served as the 43rd President of the United States, from 2001 to 2009. Before that, he was the 46th Governor of Texas, having served from 1995 to 2000....

's top economic advisers, and was chairman of the national Council of Economic Advisers
Council of Economic Advisers
The Council of Economic Advisers is an agency within the Executive Office of the President that advises the President of the United States on economic policy...

 (CEA). In November 2006, Mankiw became an official economic adviser to then-Massachusetts
Massachusetts
The Commonwealth of Massachusetts is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. It is bordered by Rhode Island and Connecticut to the south, New York to the west, and Vermont and New Hampshire to the north; at its east lies the Atlantic Ocean. As of the 2010...

 governor
Governor of Massachusetts
The Governor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts is the executive magistrate of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, United States. The current governor is Democrat Deval Patrick.-Constitutional role:...

 Mitt Romney
Mitt Romney
Willard Mitt Romney is an American businessman and politician. He was the 70th Governor of Massachusetts from 2003 to 2007 and is a candidate for the 2012 Republican Party presidential nomination.The son of George W...

's political action committee
Political action committee
In the United States, a political action committee, or PAC, is the name commonly given to a private group, regardless of size, organized to elect political candidates or to advance the outcome of a political issue or legislation. Legally, what constitutes a "PAC" for purposes of regulation is a...

, Commonwealth PAC. In 2007, he signed on as an economic adviser to Romney's presidential campaign
Mitt Romney presidential campaign, 2012
The Mitt Romney 2012 presidential campaign began informally shortly after the 2008 presidential election. Having campaigned for the Republican nomination in 2008, the former Governor of Massachusetts was frequently mentioned as a possible candidate for the 2012 Republican Party nomination for U.S....

.

The Research Papers in Economics
Research Papers in Economics
Research Papers in Economics is a collaborative effort of hundreds of volunteers in 57 countries to enhance the dissemination of research in economics. The heart of the project is a decentralized database of working papers, preprints, journal articles and software components. The project started...

 project ranked him as the 25th most influential economist in the world as of August 2011 based on his academic contributions.

Benefits of outsourcing

Several controversies arose from CEA's February 2004 Economic Report of the President. In a press conference, Mankiw spoke of the gains from free trade, noting that outsourcing
Outsourcing
Outsourcing is the process of contracting a business function to someone else.-Overview:The term outsourcing is used inconsistently but usually involves the contracting out of a business function - commonly one previously performed in-house - to an external provider...

 of jobs by U.S. companies is "probably a plus for the economy in the long run." While this reflected mainstream economic analysis, it was criticized by many politicians who drew a link between outsourcing and the still-slow recovery of the U.S. labor market in early 2004.

Service versus manufacturing

Controversy also arose from a rhetorical question posed by the report (and repeated by Mankiw in a speech about the report): "when a fast-food restaurant sells a hamburger, is it providing a service or combining inputs to manufacture a product?" The intended point was that the distinction between manufacturing jobs and service industry jobs is somewhat arbitrary and therefore a poor basis for policy. Even though the issue was not raised in the report, a news account led to criticism that the Administration was seeking to cover up job losses in manufacturing by redefining jobs such as cooking hamburgers as manufacturing.

2008–2009 Keynesian resurgence

In November 2008, Mankiw wrote in the New York Times:

"If you were going to turn to only one economist to understand the problems facing the economy, there is little doubt that the economist would be John Maynard Keynes. Although Keynes died more than a half-century ago, his diagnosis of recessions and depressions remains the foundation of modern macroeconomics. His insights go a long way toward explaining the challenges we now confront."


Mankiw has expressed skepticism about a trillion dollar spending package in the face of the global financial and economic crisis. He has vigorously criticized Vice-President Joseph Biden for suggesting there was complete unanimity of support among economists for a stimulus package.

2011 student walkout

On November 2, 2011, some of the students in his Economics 10 class walked out of the class. About 60 to 70 out of 750 students participated. Before leaving, they handed Mankiw an open letter critical of his course, saying in part:
"we found a course that espouses a specific—and limited—view of economics that we believe perpetuates problematic and inefficient systems of economic inequality in our society today ... Economics 10 makes it difficult for subsequent economics courses to teach effectively as it offers only one heavily skewed perspective rather than a solid grounding on which other courses can expand. ... Harvard graduates play major roles in the financial institutions and in shaping public policy around the world. If Harvard fails to equip its students with a broad and critical understanding of economics, their actions are likely to harm the global financial system. The last five years of economic turmoil have been proof enough of this."


The students concluded their letter by stating they would instead be attending the Occupy Boston
Occupy Boston
Occupy Boston is a protest that began on September 30, 2011 in Boston, Massachusetts, on Dewey Square in the Financial District opposite the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston...

 demonstration then under way. In defending the course, Amity Shlaes
Amity Shlaes
Amity Ruth Shlaes is an American author and columnist from New York, who writes about politics and economics.-Education and career:...

, senior fellow in economic history at the Council on Foreign Relations wrote in Bloomberg, "Ec 10, though still Keynes-flavored, does feature intellectual variety relative to the rest of Harvard’s curriculum. The course’s message of free markets and trade, and less-regulated prices, rings at odds with the ideology on offer in many Harvard courses labeled 'history,' 'sociology' or 'government.'"

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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