University of Colorado economics professor Keith Maskus was last week tapped to serve as the chief economist for the U.S. State Department.
The position was created just a few years ago, in 2010, by then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, to research and monitor the global economy and bring economic data into State Department issues and policy.
We caught up with Maskus to learn more about the appointment:
What sort of duties will you have in this post?
I’ll be managing a group of seven economists doing a lot of long-term research and monitoring what’s going on in the global economy and how it’s impacted by issues like climate change, refugees, migration, trade agreements — my particular interests are in trade agreements like the TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership) and how they affect economies globally and domestically.
I’ll be advising the under secretary (of state) in terms of what we’re finding, what we’d recommend in terms of new policy directions. And then I will be given the task of traveling around the U.S. and internationally to discuss these issues.
You mentioned refugees and migration specifically. What are some economic impacts of refugee crises?
That’s a good question, and a good example of why this office might be useful. Refugees have existed for lots of reasons for a very long time. There is (in the State Dept.) a database on the location of global refugees going back to ’80s.
Read the full story at.
