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Benjamin M. Friedman

Benjamin Friedman

Professor of Political Economy, Harvard University

Benjamin Friedman is the William Joseph Maier Professor of Political Economy, and formerly Chairman of the Department of Economics, at Harvard University. He is also a director and member of the editorial board of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, a director of the Private Export Funding Corporation, a trustee of the Pioneer Funds, and a director of the National Council on Economic Education.

Before joining the Harvard faculty in 1972, Professor Friedman worked for Morgan Stanley & Co. and the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.

Professor Friedman has served as director of financial markets and monetary economics research at the National Bureau of Economic Research, as a member of the National Science Foundation Subcommittee on Economics, and as an adviser to the Congressional Budget Office and to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. He is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Professor Friedman's latest book is The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth, published in 2005. He is the author of 12 other books including Day of Reckoning: The Consequences of American Economic Policy Under Reagan and After, which received the George S. Eccles Prize, awarded annually by Columbia University for excellence in writing about economics. In addition to Day of Reckoning and The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth, Professor Friedman has written extensively on economic policy, and in particular on the role of the financial markets in shaping how monetary and fiscal policies affect overall economic activity.

Benjamin Friedman received A.B., A.M. and Ph.D. degrees in economics from Harvard University. During his graduate study at Harvard he was a Junior Fellow of the Society of Fellows. In addition, he received a M.Sc. degree in economics and politics from King's College, Cambridge, where he studied as a Marshall Scholar.

Benjamin Friedman was the 2005-6 recipient of the John R. Commons Award, presented every two years in recognition of achievements in economics and service to the economics profession, and in 2008 he received the Medal of the Italian Senate.

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