by David Irons

Janet Yellen, a professor on leave from Berkeley's Haas School of Business, is President Clinton's designee for chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, Clinton announced Dec. 20.

Yellen, 50, currently serves as governor of the Federal Reserve Board in Washington, D.C., and has been on leave from Berkeley since 1994. She is the Bernard T. Rocca Professor of International Trade at the Haas School.

Yellen, who has accepted the job, must be confirmed by Congress to become chair of the three-member council.

As head of the Council of Economic Advisers, she would follow in the footsteps of another Berkeley professor, Laura D'Andrea Tyson, who was Clinton's first chair of the council. Tyson went on to become chair of the National Economic Council and returns to Berkeley this month as professor of business and economics.

Yellen's work includes major contributions in international economics, macroeconomics, microeconomics, labor economics and the economics of social policy, including crime.

Her writing often has focused on federal economic policy issues. Her three years at the Federal Reserve have increased her already considerable knowledge of international monetary and financial markets.

"The Council of Economic Advisers has the responsibility to advise the president across a vast array of economic policy areas," said David Levine, a professor at the Haas School who is a former senior economist on the council. "Few economists have contributed so much toward understanding so many key policy issues."