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Christina Romer

Christina D. Romer is an American economist serving as the Class of 1957-Garff B. Wilson Professor Emerita of Economics at the University of California, Berkeley, where she joined the faculty in 1988 and advanced to full professor in 1993.^[1] She earned her Ph.D. in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1985 and her B.A. from the College of William & Mary.^[2] From January 2009 to September 2010, Romer chaired the Council of Economic Advisers in the administration of President Barack Obama, advising on responses to the Great Recession.^[3] Her research specializes in economic history and macroeconomics, with seminal contributions analyzing the causes of the Great Depression—emphasizing monetary policy failures and the role of aggregate demand stimulus in recovery—and the effects of fiscal and monetary policies on business cycles.^[4]^[5] Romer, a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, has co-directed the Program in Monetary Economics at the National Bureau of Economic Research and served on its Business Cycle Dating Committee, influencing empirical assessments of economic fluctuations through rigorous data revisions and causal identification techniques.^[1]

Early Life and Education

Formative Years and Academic Training

Christina Romer, née Duckworth, was born on December 25, 1958, in Alton, Illinois. She grew up in the Midwest and graduated from high school in Canton, Ohio, in June 1977.^[6] ^[7] Romer enrolled at the College of William & Mary in 1977, initially intending to major in political science with aspirations of becoming a lawyer. During her undergraduate studies, her interests shifted toward economics, leading her to complete a bachelor's degree in the field in 1981.^[8] ^[9] ^[10] She pursued graduate studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, earning a Ph.D. in economics in 1985. Her doctoral research focused on historical episodes of monetary policy, laying groundwork for her later examinations of economic fluctuations.^[6]

Academic Career

Professional Positions and Recognition

Romer began her academic career as an assistant professor of economics and public affairs at Princeton University, serving from 1985 to 1988.^[1] In 1988, she joined the Department of Economics at the University of California, Berkeley, where she advanced to full professor in 1993.^[11] She held the Class of 1957-Garff B. Wilson Professor of Economics position from 1997 to 2023 and transitioned to Professor of the Graduate School thereafter.^[12] At Berkeley, Romer has contributed to teaching and mentorship, earning the Distinguished Teaching Award for her instructional excellence.^[1] She maintains affiliations with key economic institutions, including serving as a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) and co-director of its Program in Monetary Economics, as well as a member of the NBER Business Cycle Dating Committee.^[13]^[1] Romer's professional recognition includes election as a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2004.^[14] She received the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship for 1998–1999, supporting advanced scholarly work.^[15] In 2023, the American Economic Association named her a Distinguished Fellow, acknowledging her sustained contributions to the field.^[11]

Research on the Great Depression and Monetary Policy

Christina Romer's research on the Great Depression emphasized the central role of monetary policy failures in exacerbating the downturn's severity, challenging interpretations that attributed the contraction primarily to banking panics or real shocks. In a 1989 working paper, later published in 1990, she developed a new monthly index of industrial production spanning 1884 to 1940, drawing on contemporary data sources like trade journals and government reports to address inconsistencies in prior measures. This index revealed a sharper decline in output during the early Depression: industrial production fell nearly 43 percent from August 1929 to October 1930, and by July 1932, it stood at less than half its pre-Depression peak, underscoring the contraction's magnitude beyond what standard indices suggested. Her revised data supported the view that monetary disturbances, rather than autonomous declines in productivity or demand, drove much of the output drop, as the index's volatility aligned more closely with money supply fluctuations than with real factors. ^[16] Romer argued that the Federal Reserve's policy errors amplified the monetary contraction, independent of banking panics highlighted by Milton Friedman and Anna Schwartz. She contended that the Fed's adherence to the gold standard constrained aggressive easing but did not preclude action, as evidenced by its 1932 open market purchase program, which expanded the money supply without triggering widespread devaluation expectations among investors. ^[17] Analysis of bond yields and market commentary from the period showed no significant rise in perceived default risk or gold outflows fears during these purchases, indicating the Fed could have pursued larger interventions earlier without immediate gold standard collapse. ^[18] However, doctrinal conservatism and internal divisions led to insufficient lender-of-last-resort operations, allowing money stock to contract by over 30 percent from 1929 to 1933, which her industrial production data linked directly to sustained output deflation. ^[19] In her 1992 paper, Romer shifted focus to recovery mechanisms, estimating that monetary expansion following the U.S. abandonment of the gold standard in April 1933 accounted for virtually all the rebound in industrial production through 1937. ^[4] She calculated that the money supply grew by approximately 50 percent from March 1933 to March 1937, with multipliers implying a 2-3 times output response, far outweighing fiscal contributions like New Deal spending, which added only modest demand pressure. This quantitative decomposition rejected self-correcting equilibrium narratives, attributing the 1937-1938 relapse partly to premature tightening, and reinforced causal evidence for monetary policy's potency in liquidity traps. ^[20] Her findings influenced subsequent debates on central bank independence, highlighting how discretionary easing can mitigate depressions when fiscal tools alone falter, though critics noted potential overestimation of multipliers absent controls for wartime expectations. ^[21] ![ASA 2025 - Bernanke Romer Cochrane 01.jpg][float-right] These analyses underscored the Fed's historical shortcomings in countercyclical policy, informing modern prescriptions for aggressive balance sheet expansion during crises while cautioning against gold-standard-like rigidities that prioritize price stability over output stabilization. ^[22]

Contributions to Fiscal and Tax Policy Analysis

Christina Romer, in collaboration with David Romer, developed a narrative identification strategy to estimate the causal effects of tax changes on economic activity, drawing on postwar U.S. data from 1945 to 2007. By classifying tax liability shifts as exogenous—those motivated by long-run considerations like deficit reduction or structural reforms, rather than short-term stabilization—via analysis of primary sources including presidential addresses and legislative records, they avoided biases from endogenous policy responses to economic conditions.^[23] This approach yielded estimates indicating that an exogenous tax increase of 1 percent of GDP lowers real GDP by 2 to 3 percent over three years, with peak effects around 3 percent after 10 quarters and significant declines in investment exceeding 10 percent.^[24] ^[25] These results highlight the potency of taxation in influencing growth, as tax hikes not tied to spending changes still contract output substantially, implying high fiscal multipliers for tax policy—on the order of -3 for GDP response. Effects were more pronounced pre-1980, suggesting historical variability tied to economic structures or policy environments.^[23] Romer's related work on tax cuts' long-term budget implications found that such reductions do not persistently expand government spending but instead prompt future legislated tax hikes to close deficits, challenging "starve the beast" hypotheses.^[26] Turning to historical fiscal mechanisms, Romer assessed automatic stabilizers' contributions using pre- and postwar evidence, noting their emergence with expanded income taxation and unemployment benefits after World War II. These features mitigated downturns by adding 0.85 percentage points to average post-trough GNP growth and up to 1.5 points in severe recessions, absent in the prewar era where government receipts hovered at 1.5-2.5 percent of GNP.^[27] Discretionary fiscal interventions pre-WWII showed limited efficacy due to constrained government scale and tools, with postwar discretionary actions providing only modest countercyclical boosts of about 0.5 percentage points.^[27] Such data underscore stabilizers' stabilizing role in modern contexts while revealing discretionary policy's historical constraints, favoring evidence-based evaluation of deficit financing over rigid balanced-budget mandates.^[28] Romer's analyses of fiscal shocks in interwar periods further illuminated tax rates' drag on activity, with marginal rate hikes correlating to subdued growth absent the postwar institutional buffers.^[29] Overall, her empirical focus reveals tax increases' outsized negative growth impacts and fiscal responses' context-dependent multipliers, with risks of private investment displacement through higher distortionary taxes, informing cautious approaches to revenue-driven austerity versus spending-led expansions.^[23]

Methodological Innovations in Economic Identification

Christina Romer, in collaboration with David Romer, introduced the narrative approach to macroeconomic identification in their 1989 paper, which leverages qualitative historical records from Federal Reserve deliberations to isolate exogenous monetary policy shocks. By examining Federal Open Market Committee minutes and directives, they identified seven dates between 1969 and 1979 when the Fed implemented contractionary policy actions explicitly not motivated by current or forecasted economic weakness, thereby minimizing endogeneity bias from reverse causality or omitted variables.^[30] This method contrasts with vector autoregression (VAR) techniques, which impose recursive identifying assumptions that may fail to fully disentangle policy from contemporaneous shocks, and event-study approaches, which rely on high-frequency market reactions potentially contaminated by anticipation effects. Subsequent refinements extended the narrative measure to the 1969–1996 period, incorporating real-time Greenbook forecasts to exclude shocks anticipated by Fed staff, ensuring the identified innovations were truly unexpected and uncorrelated with private sector expectations.^[31] Relative to their parallel narrative identification of fiscal shocks via legislative records of tax changes, the monetary approach offers superior handling of anticipation by drawing on internal policymaker assessments rather than public announcements, which can influence expectations prior to implementation.^[24] It also reduces endogeneity risks more effectively in monetary contexts, where central bank actions respond rapidly to data revisions unavailable in fiscal episodes that unfold over legislative cycles.^[23] In a 2023 retrospective spanning 35 years of applications, Romer and Romer reaffirmed the approach's validity through updated datasets and robustness checks, confirming that identified contractionary shocks raise unemployment by 2–3 percentage points and reduce output significantly, underscoring monetary policy's potency while cautioning against overemphasizing surprise components at the expense of systematic rule-based effects.^[32] The analysis emphasizes rigorous protocols for narrative coding—such as multiple coders and cross-validation against quantitative forecasts—to mitigate subjectivity, distinguishing credible implementations from ad hoc uses.^[33] Extensions of the narrative framework have informed studies of inflation dynamics, where shocks derived from Fed records reveal how policy surprises anchor long-run expectations, complementing direct analyses of central bank communications by isolating causal channels from rhetorical influences.^[34] This has enabled assessments of how exogenous tightening propagates through expectation formation, highlighting the method's versatility beyond initial output effects to expectation-driven transmission mechanisms.^[35]

Government Service

Appointment and Role in the Obama Administration

President-elect Barack Obama announced on November 24, 2008, his intention to nominate Christina Romer, a University of California, Berkeley economics professor, as chair of the Council of Economic Advisers (CEA).^[36] Romer underwent Senate confirmation hearings in early 2009 and assumed the role on January 29, 2009, serving until September 3, 2010.^[37] As CEA chair, she became the first woman to lead the council, providing independent economic analysis to the president on domestic and international issues.^[38] In her position, Romer advised President Obama on the economic response to the 2008 financial crisis and ensuing recession, which saw U.S. unemployment peak at 10% in October 2009.^[39] She met nearly daily with the president as one of four principal economic advisors, focusing on data-driven forecasts and policy recommendations to stabilize financial markets and support recovery.^[40] Romer directed the CEA's work, serving as its chief public spokesperson and coordinating with agencies like the Treasury Department and Federal Reserve on measures such as oversight of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), enacted in 2008 to address banking sector distress.^[41] Romer's tenure emphasized empirical analysis of recession dynamics, drawing on her expertise in historical downturns to inform administration strategies amid contracting GDP, which fell 4.3% annualized in Q1 2009.^[42] She collaborated on broader stabilization efforts, including monitoring credit markets and labor market indicators, while the CEA produced reports assessing economic conditions for the Economic Report of the President.^[41] Romer announced her resignation on August 5, 2010, effective September 3, to return to her faculty position at Berkeley and resume teaching and research.^[40] Her departure occurred as the administration shifted focus toward midterm elections, though official statements attributed it to personal and professional commitments rather than policy disagreements.^[43]

Formulation of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act

As Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers in the Obama administration, Christina Romer led the economic analysis for the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), enacted on February 17, 2009, at a cost of approximately $787 billion.^[44] Romer projected that absent fiscal intervention, the unemployment rate would peak at 9 percent in early 2010, based on baseline forecasts incorporating the ongoing financial crisis and recession dynamics.^[45] Drawing on multiplier models calibrated to historical recession episodes, she internally advocated for a stimulus package ranging from $1.2 trillion to $1.8 trillion to substantially close the projected output gap and restore full employment by early 2011.^[46] Romer's rationale emphasized components enabling rapid demand boosts, including infrastructure investments, aid to state and local governments to avert service cuts, and temporary tax cuts, which empirical estimates suggested would yield multipliers of 1.0 to 1.6 due to their timeliness and targeting during economic slack.^[47] ^[48] Internal calculations indicated such a package could lift GDP by 2 to 3 percent annually in 2009 and 2010, complementing Federal Reserve monetary easing at the zero lower bound.^[44] These projections integrated Okun's law linking output to employment with fiscal impulse responses derived from vector autoregressions on past U.S. data.^[46] Political constraints led to compromises, reducing the proposed scale amid congressional negotiations, resulting in the final ARRA blending roughly $288 billion in tax relief—primarily refundable credits and payroll tax cuts—with $499 billion in direct spending, including transfers to states and infrastructure outlays prioritized for quick disbursement.^[46] This mix aimed to balance immediate consumption and investment stimuli while accommodating legislative feasibility.^[44]

Policy Debates and Criticisms

Disagreements on Stimulus Scale and Design

Christina Romer, as chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, advocated for a fiscal stimulus package exceeding $1 trillion to address the 2008-2009 recession, drawing on analogies to the inadequate policy responses during the Great Depression that prolonged economic contraction.^[49] In a December 2008 memo to President-elect Barack Obama, Romer initially proposed $1.8 trillion in stimulus, based on econometric models projecting high fiscal multipliers—estimated at 1.5 to 1.6 for government spending and up to 2 to 3 for tax cuts—derived from historical data on policy shocks.^[42] ^[23] These estimates assumed that, with interest rates near zero, fiscal expansion could effectively boost aggregate demand without significant monetary offset, contrasting with more conservative views that emphasized potential crowding out of private investment.^[24] Internal debates within the Obama economic team centered on scaling down Romer's proposal due to concerns over political feasibility and implementation risks. Larry Summers, director of the National Economic Council, dismissed the $1.8 trillion figure as impractical and urged a compromise at $1.2 trillion, prioritizing a package that could garner congressional support amid Republican opposition and fears of deficit expansion.^[46] Romer reluctantly adjusted her recommendation but argued that even $1.2 trillion was the minimum needed to limit unemployment to around 8 percent by late 2009, citing simulations showing diminishing returns from smaller interventions.^[50] Skeptics like Summers highlighted crowding-out effects and the challenges of rapid spending deployment, favoring a more targeted approach over Romer's broader, Depression-inspired scale.^[51] Disputes also arose over the stimulus's composition, with Romer pushing for a higher share of direct investment spending—such as infrastructure projects deemed "shovel-ready"—to maximize long-term productivity gains and multipliers exceeding 1.5, rather than transfer payments like aid to states that might merely offset budget cuts without net demand increase.^[44] The final American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, signed on February 17 at approximately $787 billion, reflected political compromises that diluted economic optimality: it allocated roughly one-third to tax cuts, one-third to transfers including state aid, and one-third to investments, influenced by bipartisan negotiations and Democratic priorities despite limited Republican votes.^[42] These adjustments, driven by legislative horse-trading, reduced the emphasis on high-multiplier spending favored by Romer, incorporating elements like extended unemployment benefits and education funding that carried lower estimated impacts per dollar.^[52]

Empirical Assessments of Fiscal Multiplier Effectiveness

Empirical studies evaluating the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009 found that realized GDP growth fell short of projections derived from Christina Romer's multiplier estimates, which ranged from 1.0 to 1.57 for government purchases and transfers to lower-income households.^[47] ^[53] For instance, ARRA's $787 billion in provisions was forecasted to boost GDP by up to 3.7% in 2010 and create 3 to 4 million jobs by year-end, yet quarterly GDP growth averaged 2.5% in 2010, with unemployment remaining above 9% through that year and only declining to 7.8% by late 2012.^[47] ^[54] Subsequent econometric analyses of ARRA's effects yielded fiscal multipliers generally between 0.5 and 1.0, lower than the upper-end predictions used in policy design.^[55] ^[56] The Congressional Budget Office's retrospective assessments estimated ARRA's peak GDP impact at 1.5% to 4.1% through 2010 before tapering, implying an average multiplier near 1.0 when accounting for implementation lags and leakages, though direct state-level spending studies found job multipliers implying costs per job saved or created around $50,000 to $200,000 per fiscal dollar.^[57] ^[58] These estimates contrasted with higher values during liquidity trap conditions but highlighted diminishing returns from temporary, front-loaded outlays that encouraged substitution rather than net expansion.^[56] Analyses attributing drivers of the post-2009 recovery emphasized Federal Reserve actions, such as quantitative easing and near-zero interest rates, alongside private sector deleveraging and export growth, over ARRA's fiscal impulse.^[59] ^[60] Vector autoregression decompositions identified monetary policy and financial shocks as primary recovery forces from 2010 onward, with fiscal contributions marginal after initial stabilization, as evidenced by sustained output gaps exceeding 5% of potential GDP into 2013 despite $1 trillion in cumulative ARRA outlays.^[59] Romer defended ARRA's efficacy by arguing that state-level spending cuts, totaling over $100 billion in fiscal retrenchment from 2009 to 2011, partially offset federal stimulus, reducing net multipliers, while global headwinds like European debt crises constrained broader impulses.^[53] She conceded in later reflections that the package's temporary design and composition—favoring tax cuts with lower multipliers (around 0.4 to 0.9)—limited long-term bang-for-buck compared to sustained infrastructure or aid-targeted spending, though she maintained it averted a deeper downturn akin to the 1930s.^[61] Comparisons to European fiscal consolidations post-2010 revealed mixed impacts, with austerity episodes in Greece, Portugal, and Ireland correlating with GDP contractions 1.5 to 2 times the fiscal impulse size, implying multipliers exceeding 1.0 and supporting contractionary effects during high debt and low growth environments.^[62] ^[63] However, cross-country variation showed that growth-friendly adjustments via spending composition shifts yielded milder recessions in cases like Ireland, where multipliers averaged 0.8 to 1.2, underscoring context-dependent outcomes influenced by monetary accommodation and initial conditions rather than uniform fiscal drag.^[62]

Broader Critiques of Keynesian Approaches

Economists critiquing Keynesian fiscal policies, including those associated with Christina Romer's advocacy for stimulus during recessions, emphasize opportunity costs arising from government spending's inefficiency. John Cochrane, a Hoover Institution fellow, argues that such interventions often allocate resources to low-productivity uses, fostering waste and political favoritism in disbursement rather than market-driven efficiency, thereby crowding out private investment without resolving structural rigidities like labor market barriers or regulatory burdens.^[61]^[64] This perspective highlights incentive distortions, where public outlays on transfers or temporary projects fail to generate sustained employment or innovation, as evidenced by post-stimulus analyses showing limited long-term GDP contributions relative to baseline forecasts.^[65] Theoretical and empirical challenges further question the potency of fiscal multipliers under rational expectations. Ricardian equivalence posits that households, anticipating future tax hikes to service deficits, increase savings rather than consumption, muting stimulus effects; while full equivalence lacks universal empirical support, studies indicate partial offsets, with consumption responses 20-50% lower than naive Keynesian models predict due to forward-looking behavior.^[66]^[67] Debt overhang exacerbates this, as elevated public liabilities prompt private sector deleveraging and reduced investment amid fears of austerity or crowding out, empirical cross-country data linking debt-to-GDP ratios above 90% to growth drags of 1% annually.^[68] Romer counters that short-run demand deficiencies in deep recessions warrant intervention, citing her narrative-based estimates of tax change multipliers around 3 for output declines from increases, suggesting deviations from strict equivalence via liquidity constraints or myopia, though she concedes long-term supply-side reforms as essential for growth.^[23] Historical precedents underscore risks of fiscal expansions igniting inflation sans enduring expansion. In the 1970s United States, deficit-financed spending amid loose monetary policy contributed to the Great Inflation, with CPI surging from 5.5% in 1970 to 14% by 1980, coinciding with productivity stagnation and two recessions (1973-75, 1980), as expansions accommodated wage-price spirals without bolstering real output, ultimately necessitating Volcker's tight policy to restore stability.^[69]^[70] Critics like Cochrane invoke such episodes to argue Keynesian demand management overlooks supply constraints and fiscal dominance, where stimulus erodes credibility and perpetuates volatility over stabilization.^[71] Romer acknowledges these dynamics in her monetary policy research, prioritizing countercyclical tools while stressing credible commitment to avoid 1970s-style persistence.^[61]

Later Career and Publications

Return to Academia and Ongoing Research

Following her resignation from the Chairmanship of the Council of Economic Advisers on September 3, 2010, Christina Romer returned to the University of California, Berkeley, where she resumed full-time faculty responsibilities as the Class of 1957 Garff B. Wilson Professor of Economics and, subsequently, Professor of the Graduate School.^[40]^[18] Her post-government academic work centered on instruction in macroeconomics and economic history, alongside mentoring graduate students in these fields as part of Berkeley's doctoral program.^[1] Romer maintained deep ties to the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), serving as a research associate affiliated with Berkeley's economics department and resuming her role as co-director of the NBER Program in Monetary Economics from 2010 to 2018.^[13]^[3] She also joined the NBER Business Cycle Dating Committee, contributing to determinations of U.S. economic expansions and recessions based on empirical indicators.^[3] These affiliations facilitated ongoing advisory input to policymakers, though without formal appointments to Federal Reserve boards or international organizations post-2010. Her research trajectory shifted toward collaborative empirical investigations of policy regimes, frequently partnering with her husband, David Romer, to construct and analyze historical datasets on monetary and fiscal interventions.^[1] These efforts emphasized causal identification in macroeconomic fluctuations, drawing on archival sources to quantify policy impacts without producing major monographs; instead, influence derived from peer-reviewed papers and congressional testimonies.^[18] No comprehensive books emerged from this period, aligning with a focus on targeted, data-intensive contributions over synthetic volumes.

Recent Work on Disinflation and Inflation Dynamics

In a 2024 National Bureau of Economic Research working paper co-authored with David H. Romer, Christina Romer examined historical episodes of disinflation attempts by central banks, focusing on post-World War II U.S. experiences and comparable cases in other advanced economies.^[72] The analysis identified two critical elements underpinning successful inflation reductions: a strong central bank commitment to disinflation, evidenced by explicit policy statements and sustained tight monetary conditions, and an element of surprise relative to market expectations, which helped anchor inflation expectations downward without excessive output costs.^[73] For instance, the Volcker disinflation of the early 1980s succeeded due to the Federal Reserve's resolute actions amid high initial inflation, contrasting with failures in the late 1960s and 1970s, where inconsistent commitment prolonged inflationary pressures despite similar starting conditions.^[74] Regressions in the paper confirmed that greater commitment correlated with larger and more sustained drops in inflation over five years, with limited trade-offs in unemployment when surprise was incorporated.^[18] Romer and David Romer further applied these insights to the post-2021 U.S. inflation surge in a separate 2024 Brookings Papers on Economic Activity contribution, arguing that the Federal Reserve's 2020 monetary policy framework—emphasizing makeup for past employment shortfalls and flexible average inflation targeting—delayed aggressive rate hikes despite core inflation exceeding 3% by mid-2021.^[75] They contended that the framework's forward guidance commitments, which tied policy easing to inflation averages over time, fostered overly dovish market expectations and hindered timely tightening, as evidenced by the Fed's initial characterization of inflation as "transitory" even as supply disruptions and fiscal stimulus amplified price pressures.^[76] This critique highlighted framework-induced inertia, where the focus on symmetric employment-inflation trade-offs overlooked asymmetric risks from sustained high inflation, leading to sharper subsequent rate increases and higher recession probabilities than might have occurred under a stricter inflation-targeting regime.^[77] Building on their narrative identification of monetary policy shocks, Romer and David Romer updated the approach in a 2023 analysis extending the dataset through recent years, reaffirming that exogenous policy tightenings significantly reduce output and inflation while raising unemployment in line with theoretical predictions.^[78] The extension identified a contractionary shock in 2022, corresponding to the Fed's pivot to rapid rate hikes, which helped curb inflation but underscored vulnerabilities in relying on forward guidance for expectation management, as pre-committed low-rate paths proved difficult to reverse amid evolving data.^[32] These findings imply that central banks should prioritize credible, data-responsive commitment over rigid guidance in high-inflation environments to avoid entrapment in self-fulfilling prophecies. The works collectively inform ongoing policy debates by advocating for enhanced central bank communication that balances commitment with flexibility, particularly in coordinating with fiscal authorities to mitigate demand-driven inflation persistence.^[73] Romer and David Romer suggested that steepening rate paths in response to persistent core inflation, rather than gradualism tied to employment metrics, could replicate historical successes while minimizing long-term output losses, though they cautioned against over-reliance on unanchored fiscal expansions that complicate monetary control.^[75]

Personal Life

Marriage and Family

Christina Romer has been married to David Romer, also an economist and professor at the University of California, Berkeley, since their time in graduate school at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where they met as classmates.^[8]^[79] The couple has collaborated extensively on economic research, co-authoring influential papers that developed narrative identification methods for analyzing monetary policy shocks and other macroeconomic events, which have facilitated more precise causal inferences in empirical studies.^[13]^[15] Romer cited family considerations as the primary reason for her resignation from the chairmanship of the Council of Economic Advisers in August 2010, after less than two years in the role, noting her desire to return to California where her son was set to begin high school that fall.^[40]^[43] She has described the decision as long-planned, emphasizing commitments to her family over continued public service in Washington, D.C.^[80]

Interests and Philanthropy

Romer has participated in mentoring efforts for young economists, sharing insights on navigating academic careers and public policy roles through lectures and informal guidance.^[81] She has emphasized the value of mentorship from female role models in her own development and contributes to discussions on increasing women's representation in economics via panels hosted by organizations like the American Economic Association and the Federal Reserve.^[8]^[82] In recognition of her teaching excellence, Romer received the Distinguished Teaching Award from the University of California, Berkeley in 1994 and the Visionary Award from the Council for Economic Education in 2014, reflecting her commitment to educational outreach beyond traditional research.^[12] She has also engaged in public education on economic history, such as through a 2013 teach-in at the University of Oklahoma titled "Lessons from the Great Depression for Policy Today."^[12] Romer serves on the advisory board of the Living New Deal project, which maps and promotes public awareness of New Deal-era infrastructure and programs to preserve their historical legacy and educate on government responses to economic crises.^[83] Public records indicate limited details on Romer's personal philanthropy, with no major foundations or large-scale donations prominently attributed to her; any contributions appear directed toward academic or educational causes consistent with her professional affiliations.^[12]

References

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Christina Romer | UC Berkeley Economics
Christina Romer is the Class of 1957-Garff B. Wilson Professor of Economics Emerita. She joined the Berkeley faculty in 1988 and was promoted to full professor ...
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Christina Romer - UC Berkeley Research
Mar 7, 2019 · Christina Romer received her B.A. from the College of William and Mary and her Ph.D. from M.I.T. Her current research interests include the ...
[3]
Christina D. Romer - Brookings Institution
Professor Romer served as chair of the Council of Economic Advisers from January 2009 to September 2010. She was co-director of the Program in ...
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What Ended the Great Depression? | NBER
Sep 1, 1991 · This paper examines the role of aggregate demand stimulus in ending the Great Depression. A simple calculation indicates that nearly all of ...
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The Great Crash and the Onset of the Great Depression | NBER
Jun 1, 1988 · This paper argues that the collapse of stock prices in October 1929 generated temporary uncertainty about future income.
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In shift from Depression scholarship to White House policymaking ...
Christina D. Romer PhD '85 was so spooked by a momentary lapse ... Born in Alton, Ill., Romer graduated from high school in Canton, Ohio, got her ...<|separator|>
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Laureation address – Professor Christina Romer
Jun 24, 2014 · Christina Romer was born in Illinois and attended high school in Ohio. She is a graduate in economics of our partner institution, William ...
[8]
Christina Romer | UC Berkeley Economics
Romer entered The College of William and Mary for her undergraduate career in 1977 believing that she was going to study political science and become a lawyer.
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Christina D Romer | Archives of Women's Political Communication
As chair of the Council of Economic Advisers from January 2009 to September 2010, Christina Romer ... Born: December 25, 1958 (age 66). Career: Professor ...
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Christina Romer attended the College of William & Mary from 1978 to 1981, when she was still known by her maiden Duckworth. Ms. Duckworth completed an Honor's ...Missing: life | Show results with:life
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Christina Romer is the Class of 1957-Garff B. Wilson Professor of Economics. She joined the Berkeley faculty in 1988 and was promoted to full professor in 1993.Missing: William Mary
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[PDF] CHRISTINA D. ROMER
Sep 1, 2025 · Honorary Doctor of Public Service, College of William and Mary, 2010. Fellow, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2004. Guggenheim Fellow ...Missing: PhD | Show results with:PhD
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Christina D. Romer | NBER
Author(s) - Christina D. Romer & David H. Romer. We analyze the contributions of monetary and fiscal policy to postwar economic recoveries.
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Christina Romer | American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Sep 23, 2025 · Christina Romer. University of California, Berkeley. Economist; Educator. Area. Social and Behavioral Sciences. Specialty. Economics. Elected.
[15]
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Sep 1, 2008 · Individually, Christina is well known for her research on the Great Depression and David for his work on microeconomic foundations of Keynesian ...
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A New Monthly Index of Industrial Production, 1884-1940 - jstor
The article derives a new monthly index of industrial production for the United. States for 1884 to 1940. This index improves upon existing measures of ...
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Was the Federal Reserve Constrained by the Gold Standard During ...
Mar 17, 2006 · We find virtually no evidence that the large monetary expansion led investors to believe that the United States would devalue.
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Christina Romer| Department of Economics
Professor of the Graduate School. Mailing Address: University of California, Berkeley Department of Economics 530 Evans Hall #3880 Berkeley, CA 94720-3880Missing: associate | Show results with:associate
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[PDF] Monetary Policy in the Great Depression: What the Fed Did, and Why
The GNP and unemployment series used here are standard, but Romer (1986a, 1986b) presents new estimates of GNP and unemployment for the 1920s. Both new ...
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What Ended the Great Depression? Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 March 2009. Christina D. Romer. Show author details ...
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What Ended the Great Depression? by Christina D. Romer :: SSRN
This paper examines the role of aggregate demand stimulus in ending the Great Depression. A simple calculation indicates that nearly all of the observed ...
[22]
[PDF] The Most Dangerous Idea in Federal Reserve History: Monetary ...
Romer. 2006. “Was the Federal Reserve Constrained by the. Gold Standard During the Great Depression? Evidence from the 1932 Open ...
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[PDF] The Macroeconomic Effects of Tax Changes: Estimates Based on a ...
This paper includes a detailed summary of our findings about the motivation, revenue effects, and other characteristics of each legislated tax change over the ...
[24]
The Macroeconomic Effects of Tax Changes: Estimates Based on a ...
This paper investigates the impact of tax changes on economic activity. We use the narrative record, such as presidential speeches and Congressional reports,
[25]
The Macroeconomic Effects of Tax Changes: Estimates Based on a ...
Jul 12, 2007 · Tax changes have very large effects: an exogenous tax increase of 1 percent of GDP lowers real GDP by roughly 2 to 3 percent.
[26]
Do Tax Cuts Starve the Beast? The Effect of Tax Changes on ...
Christina D. Romer & David H. Romer, 2007. "The Macroeconomic Effects of Tax Changes: Estimates Based on a New Measure of Fiscal Shocks," NBER Working Papers ...
[27]
https://www.nber.org/papers/w6948
[28]
Changes in Business Cycles: Evidence and Explanations
Countercyclical monetary policy and automatic stabilizers have prolonged postwar expansions and prevented severe depressions. ... Citation. Romer, Christina, D.Missing: critiques | Show results with:critiques
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[PDF] what do we know about the effects of fiscal policy? separating ...
Nov 7, 2011 · Romer, Christina D., and David H. Romer. 2011. “The Effects of Marginal Tax Rates: Evidence from the Interwar Era.” Unpublished paper, ...
[30]
[PDF] Does Monetary Policy Matter? A New Test in the Spirit of Friedman ...
This paper investigates whether nominal disturbances have important real effects. What differentiates the paper from the countless others on.
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A New Measure of Monetary Shocks: Derivation and Implications
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[32]
Does Monetary Policy Matter? The Narrative Approach after 35 Years
The Narrative Approach after 35 Years by Christina D. Romer and David H. Romer ... 2023, Abstract: The narrative approach to macroeconomic identification usesMissing: retrospective | Show results with:retrospective
[33]
[PDF] Does Monetary Policy Matter? The Narrative Approach after 35 Years
In 1989, we wrote a paper on the effects of monetary policy using a technique we termed the “narrative approach” (Romer and Romer 1989). This is an empirical.
[34]
Does Monetary Policy Matter? The Narrative Approach after 35 Years
Apr 21, 2023 · This paper discusses the requirements for rigorous narrative analysis using fresh research on the impact of monetary policy as the focal application.Missing: 1989 | Show results with:1989
[35]
Does Monetary Policy Matter? The Narrative Approach after 35 Years
The narrative approach to macroeconomic identification uses qualitative sources, such as newspapers or government records, to provide information that can ...Missing: method 1989
[36]
Christina Romer named top U.S. economist - Berkeley News
Nov 24, 2008 · Romer, an American Academy of Arts and Sciences fellow, has written extensively about monetary and fiscal policy, the causes of and sources of ...
[37]
Former Chairs of the Council of Economic Advisers | The White House
Christina D. Romer served as Chair of the Council from January 29, 2009 to September 3, 2010. During this time, Dr. Romer was on leave from her position at the ...Missing: confirmation | Show results with:confirmation
[38]
Christina D. Romer - University of Hawaii at Manoa
The recipient of numerous awards, she is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Professor Romer received her Ph.D. from MIT and is the Class ...
[39]
Christina Romer | Economic Policy Institute
Christina Romer is the former chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, appointed by President Barack Obama to design a response to the Great Recession.
[40]
Dr. Christina Romer, Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, to ...
Aug 5, 2010 · As CEA chair, Dr. Romer is one of the key economic advisers who has met with the President on almost daily basis to help chart the response to ...
[41]
[PDF] RePORt tO tHe PReSIDeNt ON tHe ACtIVItIeS OF tHe COUNCIL OF ...
Dr. Romer is the Council's chief public spokesperson. She directs the work of the Council and exercises ultimate responsibility for the work of the ...Missing: Obama | Show results with:Obama
[42]
The $787 Billion Question - Finance & Development, March 2013
Maureen Burke profiles Christina Romer, former chair of the U.S. Council of Economic Advisers. ... Obama's top economic advisor. So when she was invited to ...
[43]
Romer to leave White House post - POLITICO
Aug 6, 2010 · Romer's resignation had been in the works for two months, and the White House had planned to announce her departure next week, aides said.
[44]
CEA -- Chair's Remarks -- 03032009 | The White House
Mar 3, 2009 · Christina D. Romer ... In contrast, the act that was just passed provides fiscal stimulus of close to 3% of GDP in each of 2009 and 2010.
[45]
Romer and Bernstein on stimulus - The New York Times Web Archive
Jan 10, 2009 · The chart above has unemployment ex-stimulus peaking at 9 percent in the first quarter of 2010 and coming down through the year; the CBO ...Missing: exact | Show results with:exact
[46]
EXCLUSIVE: The Memo that Larry Summers Didn't Want Obama to ...
Feb 21, 2012 · In this version of the memo, Romer calculated that it would take an eye-popping $1.7-to-$1.8 trillion to fill the entire hole in the economy—the ...
[47]
Does Government Spending Stimulate Economies? - Mercatus Center
Jul 14, 2010 · For example, in their January 2009 report, Romer and Bernstein used multipliers of between 1.0 and 1.55 to determine the effect of the proposed ...Missing: internal | Show results with:internal
[48]
[PDF] How Big (Small?) are Fiscal Multipliers
At the other extreme, Christina Romer, Chair of President Obama's. Council of Economic Advisers at the time, used multipliers as high as 1.6 in estimating the.
[49]
[PDF] Lessons from the Great Depression for Economic Recovery in 2009
Mar 9, 2009 · As I have just described, monetary policy was very expansionary in the mid- 1930s. Fiscal policy, though less expansionary, was also helpful.
[50]
The Comprehensive Case Against Larry Summers - The Atlantic
Sep 13, 2013 · When Christina Romer, then-chairwoman of the Council of Economic Advisers, argued that the stimulus needed to be more than twice as large as the ...
[51]
Why progressives hate the idea of Larry Summers for Fed Chair
Jul 26, 2013 · While Romer calculated that restarting the American economy would require more than $1 trillion in stimulus, Summers managed to bring the ...
[52]
Christina Romer Advised Obama To Push $1.8 Trillion Stimulus
Feb 14, 2012 · It culminated in a March 2009 meeting that Geithner won with an assist from Emanuel. As it has been previously reported, the president's top ...Missing: advocated $1.2-1.8
[53]
[PDF] The Likely Effects of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act
David Romer and I have argued that omitted variable bias is a rampant problem in estimating the effects of fiscal policy. One good way to ...Missing: response ARRA
[54]
CBO Report Discusses ARRA Effect on Jobs, GDP Growth
In March of 2009, a report by the CBO had estimated that in the third quarter of 2009, we would see employment increase by 600,000 to 1.5 million more people ...Missing: retrospective | Show results with:retrospective
[55]
[PDF] The Fiscal Multiplier and Economic Policy Analysis in the United ...
“Are Government Spending. Multipliers Greater During Periods of Slack? Evidence from Twentieth-Century Historical Data,”. American Economic Review: Papers and ...
[56]
[PDF] Government Spending Multipliers in Good Times and in Bad
US government spending multipliers are generally below unity, but can be as high as 1.5 in some cases when interest rates are near the zero lower bound.
[57]
Estimated Impact of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act ...
Feb 20, 2015 · CBO now estimates that the total impact over the 2009– 2019 period will amount to nearly $840 billion. By CBO's estimate, close to half of that ...Missing: retrospective multipliers
[58]
[PDF] Geographic Cross-Sectional Fiscal Spending Multipliers
Applying a common econometric framework to instruments from each of the three studies, I consistently find a cost per job of the ARRA of roughly $50,000. Using ...
[59]
[PDF] Disentangling the Channels of the 2007-2009 Recession
May 11, 2012 · We consider six shocks: oil, monetary policy, productivity, uncertainty, liquidity/financial risk, and fiscal policy. We identify these shocks.
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[PDF] Understanding fiscal and monetary policy in 2008-2009
Oct 11, 2009 · I offer an interpretation of the Fall 2009 macroeconomic situation and outlook, focused on the fiscal stance of the U. S. government and its ...<|separator|>
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Christina Romer on Stimulus - The Grumpy Economist
Oct 22, 2012 · You will recall that as chair of the Council of Economic advisers, she played a big part in designing the stimulus, and forecasting its effects.Missing: notable | Show results with:notable
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[PDF] Fiscal consolidation and its growth effects in euro area countries
Oct 1, 2024 · The empirical evidence on the growth effects of fiscal consolidation shows that while fiscal adjustments are contractionary, the negative growth.
[63]
Sovereign spreads and the effects of fiscal austerity - ScienceDirect
Overall, I find that the likelihood of self-defeating austerities depends on the magnitude of fiscal multipliers and fiscal policy, but it is generally low.Missing: studies | Show results with:studies
[64]
[PDF] SOME UNPLEASANT FISCAL ARITHMETIC John H. Cochrane Workin
Most of the Administration's defense of fiscal stimulus (for example, Bernstein and Romer. 2009) cites simple Keynesian flow multipliers from 1960s-vintage ISLM ...
[65]
Fiscal Stimulus, RIP, John Cochrane
Nov 9, 2010 · The stimulus question is whether, beyond all this, the government should intentionally borrow and spend, or even give money away, on the belief ...
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[PDF] Fiscal policies, the current account and Ricardian equivalence
In this case a fiscal stimulus is offset or even overcompensated by higher private savings. In this Ricardian case, a high debt level should therefore be ...
[67]
[PDF] The Empirical Evidence on the Ricardian Equivalence Hypothesis
Jan 16, 2023 · According to the Ricardian equivalence or debt neu- trality hypothesis a change from tax to debt financing of government expen- diture does ...
[68]
The Impact of Public Debt on Economic Growth: What the Empirical ...
Aug 13, 2025 · One such channel is Ricardian Equivalence, which implies substitutability between public debt and the future tax burden (Barro 1974). Higher ...Missing: overhang | Show results with:overhang
[69]
The Great Inflation | Federal Reserve History
By the late 1970s, the public had come to expect an inflationary bias to monetary policy. And they were increasingly unhappy with inflation. Survey after survey ...
[70]
The Great Inflation: A Historical Overview and Lessons Learned
Oct 1, 2012 · Soaring inflation battered the US economy in the 1970s, ending only after the Fed, under Chairman Paul Volcker, applied contractionary (tight) monetary policy ...
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Inflation and the Macroeconomy - The Grumpy Economist
Jan 4, 2025 · The primary cause of the Great Inflation, most economists would agree, was over-expansionary monetary and fiscal policies, beginning in the mid-1960s.
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Lessons from History for Successful Disinflation
Jul 15, 2024 · Christina Romer. University of ... Romer, Christina and Romer, David, Lessons from History for Successful Disinflation (July 2024).
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Lessons from history for successful disinflation - Brookings Institution
Jul 24, 2024 · Lessons from history for successful disinflation. Christina D. Romer and. Christina Romer ... This question takes on particular relevance in 2024 ...
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[PDF] LESSONS FROM HISTORY FOR SUCCESSFUL DISINFLATION
Oct 24, 2024 · this group that inflation is a problem and that it would be desirable, if possible, to attempt to slow growth in the aggregates.
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[PDF] Did the Federal Reserve's 2020 Policy Framework Limit Its ...
Furthermore, in setting the September 2020 forward guidance based on the new framework, the FOMC said that it wasn't enough to have inflation above 2 percent.
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Symposium on the Federal Reserve's monetary policy framework ...
Sep 25, 2024 · Inflation rose quickly enough in 2021 that within a few months its average was higher than 2%. It was expected to remain higher, so the Fed ...Challenges around the... · Considerations for a post... · Did the Federal Reserve's...
[77]
Did the Federal Reserve's 2020 Policy Framework Limit Its ...
Christina D. Romer & David H. Romer, 2024. "Did the Federal Reserve's 2020 Policy Framework Limit Its Response to Inflation? Evidence and Implications for the ...Missing: post- | Show results with:post-
[78]
Does Monetary Policy Matter? The Narrative Approach after 35 Years
Apr 24, 2023 · The narrative approach to macroeconomic identification uses qualitative sources, such as newspapers or government records, ...Missing: 1989 | Show results with:1989
[79]
Christina Romer: The aftermath of financial crises: It doesn't have to ...
Christina Romer examines financial crises of the past and explains implications for what Europe and other areas should do today, and for what policies ...
[80]
Romer disputes friction at W.H. - Politico
Aug 9, 2010 · But Republicans pointed to Romer's departure as proof of turmoil within Obama's economic team. “Combined with the disappointing economic numbers ...
[81]
Romer offers young academics solace, sense and secrets
Oct 11, 2011 · With a doctorate from M.I.T., Romer began her teaching career at Princeton before joining the faculty at Berkeley in 1988. She is married to ...<|separator|>
[82]
Women in Economics: Christina Romer, Janice Eberly and Shelly ...
Nov 17, 2022 · In this podcast, professors Janice Eberly, Shelly Lundberg and Christina Romer discuss their leadership roles in the American Economic ...
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Boards | Living New Deal
Christina Romer is the Class of 1957 – Garff B. Wilson Professor of ... He has served on the boards of Long Beach Heritage, Historical Society of Long ...<|control11|><|separator|>