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CEPR Research Fellow Chad Bown has been appointed U.S. Department of State Chief Economist. He will lead the Office of the Chief Economist (OCE), working to strengthen the Department’s ability to conduct economic analysis on high-priority issues.
Chad P. Bown is a Research Fellow for CEPR's International Trade and Regional Economics programme. Chad publishes regularly in our Discussion Paper series, and his research features extensively on VoxEU and VoxTalks. He has also contributed to numerous CEPR eBooks and publications, including Economics and Policy in the Age of Trump and The 2018 trade war and the end of dispute settlement as we knew it. He recently spoke as a panel member at the 2023 CEPR Paris Symposium.
He is Reginald Jones Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington (on leave). Chad also hosts Trade Talks, a weekly podcast about the economics of international trade and policy. He has served as Senior Economist in the White House on the President's Council of Economic Advisers (CEA), and he is formerly a tenured Professor of Economics at Brandeis University. He has recently been a Lead Economist at the World Bank conducting research and advising developing country governments on trade policy. Chad serves on numerous editorial boards and has published extensively in leading economic journals.
The U.S. State Department stated that "Dr. Bown’s extensive academic and research experience, coupled with his leadership in writing and public communication in the field of economics, make him uniquely qualified for this task. Dr. Bown’s appointment demonstrates Secretary Blinken’s commitment to the State Department’s modernization agenda, ensuring economic data and analysis is infused into the work of the Department at all levels. The appointment also highlights the importance of increasing the Department’s ability to analyze and understand how economics influences virtually every major foreign policy challenge. In this role, Dr. Bown will lead efforts by OCE’s team of professional economists to build on key economic workstreams within the Department to advance U.S. foreign policy interests."
You can read the full statement by the U.S. State Department here.
