NBER Research Associate Ben S. Bernanke will succeed N. Gregory Mankiw as Director of the NBER's Program on Monetary Economics. Mankiw is retiring as Program Director, having served since 1991, but will continue as a member of the Program.

Bernanke is the Howard Harrison and Gabrielle Snyder Beck Professor of Economics and Public Affairs and the chair of the economics department at Princeton University. A macroeconomist, his research has focused on monetary policy and macroeconomic history. His most recent book is on inflation targeting, a new strategy for the practice of monetary policy. With the support of a Guggenheim Fellowship, he is currently writing a book on the Great Depression. He is also the author of a best-selling textbook in macroeconomics.

Bernanke received his B.A. from Harvard and his Ph.D. from MIT. He has taught at Stanford Graduate School of Business, MIT, and New York University, as well as at Princeton. He has consulted for the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, the European Central Bank, and other central banks, and he serves on a U.S. State Department committee that advises the Israeli government on economic policy. Bernanke is a Fellow of the Econometric Society and has served as the co-editor of the NBER Macroeconomics Annual since 1995.