A Conversation with Austan Goolsbee

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.

His work focuses on the new economy, government policy, taxes, and technology.

Goolsbee was selected as one of Financial Times’ six “Gurus of the Future”/Best under 40 (2005), named one of the Young Global Leaders at the 2005 World Economic Forum, and one of the 100 Global Leaders for Tomorrow at the 2002 World Economic Forum.

He was born on August 18, 1969, in Waco, Texas. He received his B.A. summa cum laude in economics from Yale University in 1991, his M.A. in economics from Yale University in 1991, and his Ph.D in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1995. He is married with three children.

Tim O’Reilly is the founder and CEO of O’Reilly Media, Inc., thought by many to be the best computer book publisher in the world. O’Reilly Media also hosts conferences on technology topics, including the O’Reilly Open Source Convention, the Web 2.0 Summit, and the Gov 2.0 Summit. Tim’s blog, the O’Reilly Radar “watches the alpha geeks” to determine emerging technology trends, and serves as a platform for advocacy about issues of importance to the technical community. Tim is on the boards of CollabNet and Safari Books Online, and is a partner in O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures.

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