Jeffrey Frankel

Jeffrey Frankel is Harpel Professor of Capital Formation and Growth at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. He directs the program in International Finance and Macroeconomics at the National Bureau of Economic Research, where he is also a member of the Business Cycle Dating Committee, which officially declares the start and end of recessions. Previously, Professor Frankel served on President Clinton’s Council of Economic Advisers (1996-99); his responsibilities as Member included macroeconomics, international economics, and the environment. Before moving east, he had been professor of economics at the University of California, Berkeley, having joined the faculty in 1979. He is on advisory panels for the Federal Reserve Banks of New York and Boston, the Peterson Institute for International Economics, and the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis. Research interests include currencies, crises, international finance, monetary and fiscal policy, commodities, and global environmental issues. Two projects in progress concern avoiding the natural resource curse and setting countries’ emission targets in a climate change agreement. He is co-author of the textbook World Trade and Payments (2007). His most cited book is Regional Trading Blocs (1997). His most cited paper is “Does Trade Cause Growth?” (1999). Recently published papers include “Estimation of De Facto Flexibility Parameter and Basket Weights in Evolving Exchange Rate Regimes” (Amer. Econ. Rev., 2010), “The Forward Market in Emerging Currencies (JIMF, 2010) and “Are Bilateral Remittances Countercyclical?” (Open Ec.Rev., 2011). He was born in San Francisco, graduated from Swarthmore College, and received his Economics PhD from MIT