Alan Krueger
Alan Bennett Krueger (September 17, 1960 – March 16, 2019) was an American economist who was the James Madison Professor of Political Economy at Princeton University and Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. He served as Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy, nominated by President Barack Obama, from May 2009 to October 2010, when he returned to Princeton. He was nominated in 2011 by Obama as chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, and served in that office from November 2011 to August 2013.[2]
Alan Krueger
He was among the 50 highest ranked economists in the world according to Research Papers in Economics. He made innovative use of natural experiments in economics, including influential research in the 1990s that challenged the dominant perspective in economics at the time that minimum wage adversely affected employment. He also made prominent contributions to research on inequality and the economic effects of education.
Early life and education[edit]
Krueger grew up in a Jewish family[3] in Livingston, New Jersey, and graduated from Livingston High School in 1979.[4]
Krueger received his B.S. from the Cornell University School of Industrial and Labor Relations (with honors), and he received his A.M. and Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard University in 1985 and 1987, respectively.[5]
Death and legacy[edit]
Krueger was found dead at his home in Princeton on March 16, 2019.[9] His family stated the cause of death was suicide.[9][27] In a statement, former President Obama declared: "Alan was someone who was deeper than numbers on a screen and charts on a page," adding, "He saw economic policy not as a matter of abstract theories, but as a way to make people's lives better."[28] His death was commemorated by The Economist with a full-page obituary running in their Free Exchange column.[29]
David Card, co-author with Krueger of their influential 1994 paper on the effect of raising the minimum wage,[10] stated that it was "unambiguously clear" that if Krueger were still alive, he would have shared in Card's 2021 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences.[30]