Christina Romer | Women in Economics

The fourth episode of our Women In Economics series is on Christina Romer, macroeconomic historian and former chair of the Council of Economic Advisers during the Great Recession.

Christina began her career at William & Mary and fell in love with economics, so much so that she changed her career path from law to econ. Her research since has fundamentally changed the way we think about the Great Depression and business cycles.

Because of her groundbreaking work, she was tapped by President Obama in 2008 to chair the Council of Economic Advisers and help lead the country through the Great Recession.

Learn more about Christina Romer: https://mru.io/tem

More Women in Econ: https://mru.io/pl9

***INSTRUCTOR RESOURCES***

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- [Christina] The most important thing
that I try to pass on

is the sense that economics
is an empirical field,

then if you get
new empirical evidence,

you're going to have
to change the way

you think about the economy.

I think being open to that

is the most important thing
for a young economist to know.

Economists -- not a group

with a lot of Marys,
Natashas or Juanitas,

and that's caused
a lot of controversy.

However, what's often overlooked
are the actual female economists

who are pushing economics forward

by addressing real-world issues.

Welcome to Women in Economics.

♪ [music] ♪

I grew up in a family

where public policy
was discussed a lot.

I was planning to be a lawyer,

so I was going to major
in Government.

And as part of the Government
major at my college,

you had to take
a year of Economics.

I was about three weeks in,
and I was hooked,

like the government major's gone,
the lawyer's gone,

I was in an Economist.

Christina Romer
is a macro economic historian.

She takes the tools
of modern economics,

statistics, and data

and applies them
to historical questions.

- [Narrator] Christie's researcher
agenda throughout her career

has focused
on a course set of topics

about economic fluctuations
and business cycles.

She's been asking and answering

fascinating questions
about our economy,

starting with her dissertation
as a graduate student at MIT.

There, she changed
her understanding

of how the economy
has grown over time.

I think the questions
that came to me

were about monetary policy
and business cycles

and the Great Depression.

- [Narrator] It was widely believed

that government policies led to
less fluctuations and unemployment

after World War II.

However, the data before
World War II was unreliable.

- [Nancy] But Christie came up
with the ingenious insight

that while you couldn't clean up
the historical data,

you could fuzzy up
the more modern data,

and that's exactly what she did.

And when she did it, lo and behold,

all these differences
basically collapsed.

- [Narrator] Amazingly,
if she applied

the old techniques to the new data,

the pose WOrld War II economy

looked just as volatile
as the pre-World War economy.

This contradicted the consensus

on the role of government
stabilization policies.

Her research rattled
the economic community.

It made a splash.

I remember one of the prominent
economist MIT,

his first reaction was,

"Well, I'd be very upset
about this if I believed it.

So I'm not going to believe it."

Throughout her academic career,

Christine continued to challenge

her understanding
of the Great Depression.

As just one example,
most economists believed

the Great Depression ended

because of higher
government spending

and investment in public works.

She showed that the impact
of those policies

were relatively small compared to

the monetary policy
changes taking place