Alan Krueger

Alan Krueger served as the chair of the United States Council of Economic Advisers during the Obama administration. He was nominated for the position in 2011 and used his expertise to advise on labor market policies. Prior to this, he also served as the Chief Economist at the US Department of Labor under President Bill Clinton.

Alan Krueger and economist David Card published a landmark study in 1994 examining the effects of a minimum wage increase in New Jersey's fast-food industry. They famously found that raising the minimum wage did not result in the job losses predicted by classical economic models. This research fundamentally changed how economists view labor markets.

Alan Krueger was a prominent professor of economics at Princeton University. He spent much of his academic career at Princeton, where he also directed the Industrial Relations Section. He maintained this position while periodically taking leaves to serve in the US government.

The "Great Gatsby Curve" is a concept popularized by Krueger to illustrate the relationship between income inequality and intergenerational income immobility. It shows that countries with higher income inequality tend to have lower levels of social mobility across generations. Krueger presented this data to demonstrate the long-term effects of economic disparity.