Glenn Hubbard Bio

Glenn Hubbard is an economist and an academic professor, currently the dean of Columbia Business School. He was born in Florida, and received his Bachelor degree with distinction from the University of Central Florida, he continued his study in Harvard University and earned his PhD degree in Economics from Harvard in 1983. His research specializes in public economics, corporate finance and financial institutions, macroeconomics, industrial organization, natural resource economics, and public policy. He has hundreds of academic publications in economics and finance, and his commentaries appears in various famous business outlets, including the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Financial Times, etc. He played important roles in both government and corporate sector. He served as Deputy Assistant Secretary at the U.S. Department of the Treasury from 1991 to 1993, and served as Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors from 2001 to 2003. In the corporate sector, he is a board member of ADP, BlackRock Closed-End Funds, and MetLife.

Besides Glenn Hubbard’s extraordinary achievements in Economics, he also has controversial behaviors and negative evaluations. Before joining Columbia Business School, Glenn Hubbard served as the chief economic advisor for President George W. Bush. He was interviewed by Charles Ferguson in the Oscar winning documentary Inside Job about his advocacy of deregulation. This documentary is about the 2008 financial crises, and explored what caused this financial meltdown. Ferguson argued that Glenn was too close with the financial service industry, and asked for the list of firms that he served as the advisory board member and receives outside income. Glenn declined to answer this question and threatened Ferguson to end the interview. This was certainly a negative portrayal of Glenn Hubbard.  

Inside Job – Glenn Hubbard

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlIoeTObmEk

I didn’t know Glenn Hubbard before researching about him for this post. Industrial Organization is one of his specializations, so his work would be largely related to our coursework. I’ve also realized that he is the author of the textbook for another ECON class I’m taking this semester. The course is ECON490 Monetary Economics, and the text book used is Money, Banking, and the Financial Systems by Glenn Hubbard. I guess I will be able to know more about him after reading his book by the end of this semester.