US Less Educated Than Bulgaria? - Austan Goolsbee November 10, 2009

Favorite:

Complete video at: http://fora.tv/2009/10/22/A_Conversation_with_US_Chief_Economist_Austan_Goolsbee

Austan Goolsbee, Economics Adviser to Barack Obama, iterates the importance of mathematic literacy for the U.S. The low rates of college-educated young Americans indicate a bleak financial future for the country, he says.

-----

Economics adviser to Barack Obama during the campaign, and now a member of the President's Council of Economic Advisers and chief economist of the Economic Recovery Advisory Board, Austan Goolsbee is a key figure in framing the economic thinking of the Obama administration.

Perhaps most importantly for Silicon Valley, he's an economist clued in to the tech world. His economics papers cover such topics as the impact of taxes on technology diffusion, the impact of internet subsidies on public schools, and the economic impact of leisure time spent on the internet.

He's worked closely with Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein of Nudge fame, and thinks a lot about the power of default options to shape behavior, a topic that any web developer should also know by heart. - Web 2.0 Summit

Austan Goolsbee is a member of the Council of Economic Advisers. Goolsbee is also serving as staff director and chief economist on the President's Economic Recovery Advisory Board.

Goolsbee was the Robert P. Gwinn Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. He was an economic adviser to Barack Obama's 2004 Senate race before becoming a senior economic adviser to Senator Obama's 2008 Presidential campaign.

He is a member of the panel of Economic Advisers to the Congressional Budget Office, a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, and a research fellow at the American Bar Foundation. He is a Senior Economist to the Democratic Leadership Council and the Progressive Policy Institute. He is also a frequent contributor to the New York Times. He was recently a Fulbright Scholar and a recipient of an Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship.