In this paper, we build on data on officials of the Federal Reserve System, oral history repositories, and hitherto underresearched archival sources to unpack the tortuous path toward crafting an institutional and intellectual space for postwar economic analysis within the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. We show that growing attention to new macroeconomic research was a reaction to both mounting external criticisms against the Fed’s decision-making process and the spread of new macroeconomic theories and econometric techniques. We argue that the rise of the number of PhD economists working at the Fed is a symptom rather than a cause of this transformation. Key to our story are a handful of economists from the Board of Governors’ Division of Research and Statistics (DRS) who did not hold a PhD but envisioned their role as going beyond mere data accumulation and got involved in large-scale macroeconometric model building. We conclude that the divide between PhD and non-PhD economists may not be fully relevant to understand both the shift in the type of economics practiced at the Fed and the uses of this knowledge in the decision-making process. Equally important was the rift between different styles of economic analysis.

中文翻译：

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1960 年代联邦储备系统理事会经济分析的转变

在本文中，我们以美联储官员的数据、口述历史资料库和迄今为止研究不足的档案资源为基础，解开在美联储理事会内为战后经济分析打造制度和知识空间的曲折道路系统。我们表明，对新宏观经济研究的日益关注是对外部对美联储决策过程的批评以及新宏观经济理论和计量经济学技术传播的反应。我们认为，在美联储工作的博士经济学家数量的增加是这种转变的症状而非原因。我们故事的关键是来自理事会研究和统计部 (DRS) 的少数经济学家，他们没有获得博士学位，但他们设想自己的角色不仅仅是数据积累，还参与了大规模的宏观经济模型构建。我们得出的结论是，博士和非博士经济学家之间的鸿沟可能与理解美联储所实行的经济学类型的转变以及这些知识在决策过程中的使用并不完全相关。同样重要的是不同风格的经济分析之间的分歧。我们得出的结论是，博士和非博士经济学家之间的鸿沟可能与理解美联储所实行的经济学类型的转变以及这些知识在决策过程中的使用并不完全相关。同样重要的是不同风格的经济分析之间的分歧。我们得出的结论是，博士和非博士经济学家之间的鸿沟可能与理解美联储所实行的经济学类型的转变以及这些知识在决策过程中的使用并不完全相关。同样重要的是不同风格的经济分析之间的分歧。