Bank’s departing leader to follow well-worn path to Brookings
WASHINGTON — Janet Yellen, who completed her term as Federal Reserve chair Friday, plans to start a new job Monday morning as a fellow in economic studies at the Brookings Institution.
Yellen will follow a well-worn path from the Fed’s marble headquarters on Constitution Avenue to the nearby Brookings building on Massachusetts Avenue. The roster of Brookings fellows includes her immediate predecessor as Fed chairman, Ben Bernanke, and no fewer than three of her predecessors as Fed’s vice chairman: Donald Kohn, Alice Rivlin and Alan Blinder.
“I’m delighted to be joining the Brookings Institution,” Yellen said in a statement released by Brookings. “I look forward to continuing to study the economy, especially issues related to the labor market, and contributing to public policy debates on a range of economic issues.”
For Brookings, Yellen’s arrival fortifies its recent focus on monetary policy, a subject that has commanded significantly greater public interest and scholarly debate since the 2008 financial crisis.
“I congratulate Janet on her outstanding public service and look forward to being her colleague at the Brookings Institution,” Bernanke tweeted.
For Yellen, 71, it is a new professional home. She and her husband, George Akerlof, were longtime professors at the University of California, Berkeley, where they still own a house, but Akerlof is now a professor at Georgetown University.
Yellen’s four-year term at the Fed ended on a high note Friday. The government estimated that the economy added 200,000 jobs in January, while the unemployment rate held at 4.1 percent. It is the first time the economy has added jobs during every month of a Fed chair’s tenure.
Fed Up, a coalition of unions and community groups, said it delivered a giant “Thank You” card to the Fed on Friday afternoon to celebrate Yellen’s success in reducing unemployment.
Jerome Powell will be sworn in as Fed chairman on Monday morning.