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Martin Stuart Feldstein ( ; November 25, 1939 – June 11, 2019) was an American economist. He was the George F. Baker Professor of Economics at Harvard University and the president emeritus of the National Bureau of Economic Research. He served as president and chief executive officer of the bureau from 1978 to 2008 (with the exception of 1982 to 1984). From 1982 to 1984, Feldstein served as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers and as chief economic advisor to President Ronald Reagan (where his deficit hawk views clashed with the Reagan administration's large military expenditure policies). Feldstein was also a member of the Washington-based financial advisory body the Group of Thirty from 2003.
In 1997, writing about the upcoming European monetary union and the euro, Feldstein warned that the "adverse economic effects of a single currency on unemployment and inflation would outweigh any gains from facilitating trade and capital flows" and that, while "conceived of as a way of reducing the risk of another intra-European war", it was "more likely to have the opposite effect" and "lead to increased conflicts within Europe and between Europe and the United States."Feldstein, Martin. "EMU and international conflict" . Foreign Affairs, November/December 1997. Feldstein, Martin. (1997). The Political Economy of the European Economic and Monetary Union: Political Sources of an Economic Liability. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 11(4), pp. 23–42.
In 2003, Feldstein was awarded the Daniel M. Holland Medal in recognition of his contributions to taxation and public finance.
In 2005, Feldstein was widely considered a leading candidate to succeed chairman Alan Greenspan as Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board. This was in part due to his prominence in the Reagan administration and his position as an economic advisor for the Bush presidential campaign. The New York Times wrote an editorial advocating that Bush choose either Feldstein or Ben Bernanke due to their credentials, and the week of the nomination The Economist predicted that the two men had the greatest probability of selection out of the field of candidates. Ultimately, the position went to Bernanke, possibly because Feldstein was a board member of AIG, which announced the same year that it would restate five years of past financial reports by $2.7 billion. Subsequently, AIG suffered a serious financial collapse that played a central role in the worldwide economic crisis of 2007–2008 and the ensuing global recession. The firm was rescued only by multiple capital infusions by the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank, which extended a $182.5 billion line of credit. Although Feldstein was not explicitly linked to the accounting practices in question, he had served as a Director of AIG since 1988. In March 2007, the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation announced that one of four 2007 Bradley Prizes to honor outstanding achievement would be awarded to Feldstein. "Martin Feldstein" . The Bradley Foundation. May 3, 2007. On September 10, 2007, Feldstein announced his resignation as president of the National Bureau of Economic Research effective June 2008.Feldstein, Marty. "Feldstein's Resignation Letter". The Wall Street Journal. September 10, 2007.
Feldstein served as a member of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board from 2006 to 2009.
Feldstein said in March 2008 he believed the United States was in a recession and it could be a severe one.
As a member of the board of AIG Financial Products, Feldstein was one of those who had oversight of the division of the international insurer that contributed to the company's crisis in September 2008. In May 2009, Feldstein announced he would step down as a director of AIG.Ding, Manning (May 27, 2009). "Feldstein To Leave AIG Board. Harvard Crimson. He served as a board member for Eli Lilly and Company. He also previously served on the boards of several other public companies including JPMorgan and TRW.
On February 6, 2009, Feldstein was announced as one of U.S. president Obama's advisors on the President's Economic Recovery Advisory Board. He served as a member on the President's Economic Recovery Advisory Board from 2009 to 2011.
He served on the board of directors of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Trilateral Commission, the Group of 30 and the National Committee on United States-China Relations. "Martin Feldstein" . BigSpeak Speakers Bureau. Retrieved January 25, 2012. Feldstein was invited to participate in the Bilderberg Group annual conferences in 1996, 1998, 1999, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2005–2008 and 2010 through 2015. "Bilderberg Meetings" . Bilderberg Group. June 2008. "Bilderberg Meetings" . Bilderberg Group. June 2010. He was also a member of the JP Morgan Chase International Council, a member of the Academic Advisory Council of the American Enterprise Institute, and a member of the British Academy.
In 2011 he was included in the 50 Most Influential People in Global Finance ranking of Bloomberg Markets Magazine.
In 2017, Feldstein joined a small group of "Republican elder statesmen" proposing that conservatives embrace carbon taxes, with all revenue rebated with lump-sum dividends, as a policy to deal with global climate change. The group also included James A. Baker III, N. Gregory Mankiw, Henry M. Paulson Jr., and George P. Shultz.
Eight years after Feldstein's study, Dean Leimer and Selig Lesnoy of the U.S. Social Security Administration attempted to replicate his results and uncovered programming mistakes in Feldstein's analysis that invalidated his earlier results, which Feldstein acknowledged and issued a retraction. They also found what they deemed unreasonable assumptions in the construction of the social security wealth variable. After correcting these issues, Leimer and Lesnoy found a much weaker relationship between Social Security and personal savings than Feldstein had originally suggested. In fact, their results indicated that Social Security may have contributed to increased savings.
Feldstein may have made one of his greatest impacts by the concentration of his students in top echelons of government and academia, such as Lawrence Summers, former Harvard president and U.S. Treasury secretary; David Ellwood, dean of Harvard Kennedy School; and James Poterba, MIT professor and member of Bush's tax reform advisory panel. Lawrence Lindsey, formerly Bush's top economic adviser, wrote his doctoral thesis under Feldstein, as did Harvey S. Rosen, the previous chairman of the president's Council of Economic Advisers, Douglas Elmendorf, the former Director of the Congressional Budget Office, José Piñera, Chile's Secretary of Labor and Social Security during its pension privatization in 1980–1981, Jeffrey Sachs, Director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, and Glenn Hubbard, Bush's first chairman of the council and now dean of the Columbia Business School.
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