Alan Krueger, Noted Economic Adviser to Obama, Dies at 58

Alan Krueger, a distinguished Princeton University economist who worked as an aide to former presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, died this weekend at the age of 58. The New York Times reports that Princeton announced his death Monday, but did not specify the cause. Throughout his life, Krueger held a bevy of high-level positions: He was the Labor Department’s top economist under then-President Clinton in the mid 1990s, and served as Obama’s assistant secretary of the Treasury between 2009 and 2010, as the country struggled to recover from 2008’s recession. He also served as the chairman of Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers from 2011 to 2013. Krueger is also credited with helping shift the field of economics towards a more data-centric approach, relying on numbers over theory, and for showing that raising the minimum wage might not affect employment for low-wage workers. One collaborator told the Times that he “really changed the shape of economics and turned it into a more serious science.”