Martin Stuart "Marty" Feldstein (born November 25, 1939 in New York City) is an American economist. He is currently the George F. Baker Professor of Economics at Harvard University, and the president and CEO of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER). From 1982 to 1984, Feldstein served as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers and as chief economic advisor to President Ronald Reagan (where his deficit hawk views clashed with Reagan administration economic policies). He has also been a member of the Washington-based financial advisory body, the Group of Thirty since 2003.
In 1997, writing about the upcoming European monetary union and the euro, Feldstein warned that the "adverse economic effects of a single currency on unemployment and inflation would outweigh any gains from facilitating trade and capital flows" and that, while "conceived of as a way of reducing the risk of another intra-European war", it was "more likely to have the opposite effect" and "lead to increased conflicts within Europe and between Europe and the United States".
In 2005, Feldstein was widely considered a leading candidate to succeed chairman Alan Greenspan as Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board. This was in part due to his prominence in the Reagan administration and his position as an economic advisor for the Bush presidential campaign. The New York Times wrote an editorial advocating that Bush choose either Feldstein or Ben Bernanke due to their credentials, and the week of the nomination The Economist predicted that the two men had the greatest probability of selection out of the field of candidates. Ultimately, the position went to Bernanke, possibly because Feldstein was a board member of AIG, which announced the same year that it would restate five years of past financial reports by $2.7 billion. Although Feldstein was not linked to the accounting practices in question, he had served as a Director of AIG since 1988, and the Harvard Crimson saw Bush as wanting to avoid a confirmation battle.
In March 2007, the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation announced that one of four 2007 Bradley Prizes to honor outstanding achievement will be awarded to Feldstein.
On September 10, 2007, Feldstein announced that he would be stepping down as president of NBER effective June 2008.
A well-known figure on the Harvard campus, Feldstein taught the introductory economics class "Social Analysis 10: Principles of Economics" (referred to as "Ec10" by Harvard students) for twenty years. Ec10 was routinely, and remains, the largest class at Harvard. He currently teaches courses in American economic policy and public sector economics at Harvard College.
Ultimately, Feldstein may have made one of his greatest impacts through the remarkable concentration of his students in top echelons of government and academia. These include: Larry Summers, former Harvard president and US Treasury secretary; David Ellwood, dean of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government; and James Poterba, MIT professor and member of Bush's tax reform advisory panel. Lawrence Lindsey, formerly Bush's top economic adviser, wrote his doctoral thesis under Feldstein, as did Harvey S. Rosen, the previous chairman of the president's Council of Economic Advisers, and Glenn Hubbard, Bush's first chairman of the council and now dean of the Columbia Business School.
Feldstein told in March 2008 he believes the United States is in a recession and it could be a severe one.
As chairman of the board of AIG Financial Products, Feldstein had oversight of the division of the international insurer which brought the company to crisis in September, 2008.