Four New Members for NBER Board

At its September 2014 meeting, the NBER Board of Directors elected four new members.

Benjamin Hermalin is the new representative of the University of California, Berkeley. He succeeds George Akerlof, who was elected director emeritus. Hermalin holds professorships in Berkeley's Economics Department and its Haas School of Business. In the latter, he is the Thomas & Alison Schneider Distinguished Professor of Finance. He is a co-editor of the RAND Journal of Economics. Hermalin received his Ph.D. from MIT in 1988, the same year he joined the Berkeley faculty as an assistant professor in the Department of Economics and the School of Business. He became a full professor in 1998. He has held numerous administrative posts at Berkeley, including serving as interim dean of the Haas School for most of 2002 and as Economics Department chair from 2005 until 2008. He is currently vice chair of the Academic Senate, Berkeley Division, and will be its chair in 2015-16. His areas of research include corporate governance, the study of organizations, and industrial organization.

Arthur Kennickell is the new representative of the American Statistical Association (ASA), succeeding Christopher Carroll. He is assistant director of research and statistics at the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, where he has worked since 1984. He is the former section chief for microeconomic surveys. He has a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Pennsylvania and a B.A. from the University of Chicago. He was the 2007 winner of the Julius Shiskin Memorial Award for innovation in economic statistics. He has long been associated with the development of the Survey of Consumer Finances. Kennickell is a returning member of the NBER board, having previously served as the ASA representative to the NBER from 2004 to 2011.

Cecilia Elena Rouse is the new representative from Princeton University, succeeding Uwe Reinhart. She is the dean of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs and the Lawrence and Shirley Katzman and Lewis and Anna Ernst Professor in the Economics of Education. She is the founding director of the Princeton University Education Research Section and a member of the National Academy of Education. Her primary research interests are in labor economics with a focus on the economics of education. Rouse has served as an editor of the Journal of Labor Economics and is currently a senior editor of The Future of Children. In 1998-99 she served a year in the White House at the National Economic Council and from 2009-11 was a member of the President's Council of Economic Advisers. She is a member of the board of directors of MDRC, and a director of the T. Rowe Price Equity Mutual Funds and T. Rowe Price Fixed Income Mutual Funds. She received her B.A. in economics from Harvard University in 1986 and a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University in 1992.

William Spriggs is the new AFL-CIO representative on the NBER board, succeeding Thea Lee. He is a professor in, and former chair of, the Department of Economics at Howard University and serves as chief economist to the AFL-CIO. He chairs the Economic Policy Working Group for the OECD's Trade Union Advisory Committee. From 2009 until 2012, he served as the assistant secretary for the Office of Policy at the U.S. Department of Labor. He has served as chairman of the Healthcare Trust for the UAW retirees of the Ford Motor Company and as a senior fellow and economist at the Economic Policy Institute, and has worked on the economic staff of the Joint Economic Committee. Spriggs graduated from Williams College and holds a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He is a former president of the National Economics Association, the organization of America's professional black economists.