Jason Furman

Jason Furman is a nonresident senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, which he joined in January 2017. He is also professor of the practice of economic policy jointly at the Harvard Kennedy School and the department of economics at Harvard University. He served as a top economic adviser to President Barack Obama in the previous eight years prior to joining the Institute, including as the 28th chair of the Council of Economic Advisers from August 2013 to January 2017, acting as both Obama’s chief economist and a member of the cabinet. Furman played an important role in most of the major economic policies of the Obama administration. In addition, Furman helped make the Council of Economic Advisers a thought leader on a wide range of topics including labor markets, competition policy, and macroeconomics.

Prior to joining the Obama administration, Furman held a variety of public policy and research posts. In public policy, Furman worked at both the Council of Economic Advisers and National Economic Council during the Clinton administration and at the World Bank. In research, Furman was a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. He has served in visiting positions at various universities, including New York University’s Wagner Graduate School of Public Policy, and has conducted research in a wide range of areas, such as fiscal policy, tax policy, health economics, Social Security, and domestic and international macroeconomics. Furman has authored numerous articles in scholarly journals and periodicals and is the editor of two books on economic policy. He holds a PhD in economics from Harvard University.