Obama's former OMB director Peter Orszag joins NYU Law as Distinguished Scholar

Renowned economic policy expert Peter Orszag is joining the law school as a Distinguished Scholar. Orszag is currently vice chairman of corporate and investment banking at Citigroup. He joined the company in 2010 after leaving his position as the 37th director of the Office of Management and Budget where he was the youngest member of President Barack Obama’s cabinet.

Orszag has focused on issues such as health care reform, social security, public policy, global economics, and foreign relations throughout his career, and has written several books and papers on economics. He helped shape top legislative priorities including the stimulus bill and the health care act, and one of his achievements was the creation of an outside commission called the Independent Payment Advisory Board, a group authorized to make changes to the Medicare program.

“Peter’s visit will enrich our academic community tremendously,” said Dean Richard Revesz. Orszag will participate in various events and classes at the law school throughout the year, and collaborate with students and faculty on several research projects. 

Orszag served as the director of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) from January 2007 to December 2008, leading the agency in expanding its focus on areas such as Social Security and climate change. Before that he was a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, where he headed the Hamilton Project and the Retirement Security Project.  He was a lecturer at UC Berkley in macroeconomics in 1999 and 2000. In the Clinton administration Orszag worked as senior economist and senior adviser on the Council of Economic Advisers in 1995 and 1996, and as special assistant to the president for economic policy in 1997 and 1998.

Orszag is an adjunct senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, as well as a bimonthly columnist for Bloomberg View where he writes about topics such as bipartisanship, the American class divide, unemployment, and other economy-related issues. He was previously a contributing columnist for the New York Times, writing op-eds about the deficit, Social Security and health care. After earning a B.A. in economics and graduating summa cum laude from Princeton University, Orszag earned an M.Sc. and a Ph.D. in economics from the London School of Economics, where he was a Marshall Scholar.

Posted August 6, 2012.