Karen Dynan

Karen Dynan is vice president, co-director of Economic Studies, and the Robert S. Kerr Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution. She is an expert on macroeconomic policy and household finance issues.

Prior to joining Brookings in 2009, Dynan served on the staff of the Federal Reserve Board for 17 years, most recently as a senior adviser. While at the Fed, she played a leadership role in a number of areas, including macroeconomic forecasting, analysis of household and real estate finance conditions, and the policy response to the financial crisis. She also served as a senior economist at the White House Council of Economic Advisers, from 2003-2004, and as a visiting assistant professor at Johns Hopkins University in 1998.

Dynan’s research focuses on consumer spending and saving decisions, household debt and deleveraging, household financial security, foreclosure prevention, and the effects of financial innovation on economic dynamics. Her papers have been published in top economics journals, including the American Economic Review, Journal of Political Economy, Journal of Economic Perspectives, and Journal of Monetary Economics.

Dynan has published opinion pieces in the Washington Post and Financial Times and has written for policy-related publications such as Stanford University’s Pathways and the Milken Institute Review. She participates in Politico’s Arena, and is an "economic insider" for the National Journal. She chairs the Board of Overseers of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, and she is a member of the American Economic Association Committee on Economic Statistics.

Dynan received her Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard University and her A.B. from Brown University. She lives in Bethesda, Maryland with her husband and twin daughters.