Alumni Gazette

Advisory Group Calls On Economics Graduate

Dunham (Photo: Courtesy Wayne Dunham)

For someone interested in getting the big picture on American economic policy, Wayne Dunham ’95 (PhD) has found the perfect place for a one-year leave from his regular job.

Dunham, an economist in the antitrust division of the U.S. Justice Department, has been selected to serve as one of 10 senior economists on the staff of the President’s Council of Economic Advisors.

The staff, which includes Ph.D.-level economists on leave from academia and from other governmental agencies, analyzes economic issues and makes recommendations to the council chairman who, in turn, advises President Bush on economic policy.

“The council’s role is to give the best advice possible to the president,” Dunham says.

Appointed last August, Dunham will return to his full-time job at Justice next year. In an unusual arrangement for a federal agency, the council depends on a revolving staff of senior economists, each of whom serve single-year appointments.

According to the council, the arrangement is intended to ensure that the agency is provided with “a higher level of technical economic sophistication and of familiarity with current developments in economic thinking.”

The council itself has three members, including the chairman.

Dunham says he’s been interested in serving the council for some time after making his career at the Justice Department, where he has been since earning his doctorate from Rochester.

At Justice, he has focused on issues of antitrust, including work on the government’s six-year case against Microsoft, which ended in 2002 with a judgment against the software company.

As a staff member, Dunham is prohibited from discussing the policy recommendations of the council.

But he says the economists’ role is to analyze issues that may affect the nation’s economy, and he finds that expansive view appealing as an economist:

“One of the things I wanted to do was look at a lot of economic things from a broader perspective.”

—Scott Hauser