On Monday, Northwestern’s Institute for Policy Research (IPR) brought chief Obama economic adviser Dr. Austan Goolsbee to campus to deliver a lecture entitled, “The Uses (and Non-Uses) of Economic Analysis in Difficult Times.”
A professor at the University of Chicago and a former adviser for President Obama’s senate and presidential campaigns, Goolsbee is now the chief economist of the President’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board. Goolsbee has had the unusual position of being an academic in government life, something the IPR hoped to capitalize on in its attempt at making the public realize the importance of policy research.
Goolsbee, however, was more of a story-teller than a lecturer.
Goolsbee, speaking at Kellogg’s John Allen Alumni center, delighted the crowd with hilarious insights on the transition from academia to the campaign trail and government. He was, after all, awarded the title of, “D.C.’s funniest celebrity.”
He regaled his audience with stories ranging from how he first met the future president to the campaign’s reaction to the September financial crisis of 2008, something Goolsbee said David Axelrod called a “holy shit moment.”
But beyond the comedic anecdotes about the inner-workings and personalities of the Obama administration, Goolsbee shared some thoughts on the current economic crisis and the difficulties of being an academic in government.
One of the more revealing points Goolsbee made was that public officials expect academics to produce policy research on-demand, which, according to Goolsbee, has to be based on data that, “is not in real time,” forcing him to submit decisions when he himself will not know the impact of data until years have passed.
On the topic of green jobs, Goolsbee said that the challenge of having to count the number of green jobs in the nation with only real time data is only inflamed by the fact that the label “green job” itself is so politicized that counting every green job in the nation is nearly impossible.
During another one of his anecdotes, Goolsbee talked of how someone came up with the suggestion of having “dark green jobs” and “light green jobs”, the former being more “green” than the latter, for clarifying the ambiguity that often comes with its definition,
But amidst his stand-up comedy, a clear message was sent to the audience: government is reliant on immediate assessments for any academic or researcher to really do the good it’s intended to do.
“No one knows anything”, said Goolsbee. “In Washington, no one is objective anymore,” something that he believes makes his job as an economist all the more difficult.