President Donald Trump has appointed Prof. Emeritus Richard Burkhauser, policy analysis and management, to the third and final position in his Council of Economic Advisers, the White House announced on Sept. 15.
Back in November shortly after the election, members of the Trump transition team reached out to economists to serve as policy advisors, according to NPR. Members of the team contacted Burkhauser to see if “[he] was interested in applying for a job” for the then-President-elect.
“I think it would be extraordinarily exciting to be part of an administration that uses Republican ideas to do something for workers in the middle who have not enjoyed the benefits of economic growth for the last 20 or 30 years,” Burkhauser told NPR back in November.
Burkhauser signed a petition against Hillary Clinton’s plan during the campaign season, and told NPR that he believed the Trump administration could grow the economy with a Republican controlled House and Senate after years of political gridlock.
Burkhauser is a professor emeritus of policy analysis and management in the College of Human Ecology, teaching his final courses — Introduction to Microeconomics and Economics of Social Security — in the fall of 2015.
Burkhauser joined PAM in 1998, and in 2012 began a joint appointment at the University of Melbourne’s Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research. Until 2015, he split his time between Ithaca and Australia, spending July through December at Cornell and the rest of his time in Melbourne. Burkhauser is currently at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas, and has split time in Austin, in addition to Cornell and Melbourne, since 2016.
Burkhauser’s research interests “focuses on how public policies affect the economic behavior and well-being of vulnerable populations … as well as how levels and trends in income and income inequality have changed in the USA and other countries,” according to his Cornell bio.