Biosketch
Cecilia Elena Rouse is the president of the Brookings Institution and the Katzman-Ernst Professor in Economics and Education at Princeton University. From 2021 to 2023, she served as Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) while on public service leave from Princeton University, where she joined the faculty in 1992. At Princeton, she also served as dean of the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs from 2012 to 2021.
A labor economist with a focus on the economics of education, Rouse is the founding director of the Princeton Education Research Section and a member of the American Philosophical Society and the National Academy of Education. She served as senior editor of The Future of Children, a policy journal published by Princeton and the Brookings Institution, co-editor of the Journal of Labor Economics, and on the editorial boards of the American Economic Journal: Economic Policy and other journals. She previously served on the boards of the Council of Foreign Relations, MDRC, the National Bureau of Economic Research, and the University of Rhode Island, and was an independent director of the T. Rowe Price Funds.
Rouse’s time as CEA chair was her third White House tour of duty. She served as a member of the Council of Economic Advisers from 2009 to 2011, and as Special Assistant to the President at the National Economic council from 1998 to 1999.
She received her BA and PhD from Harvard University.
Research Interests
Rouse's primary research interests are in labor economics, with a focus on the economics of education. She is the author of papers on topics including the economic benefit of community college attendance, the existence of sex discrimination in symphony orchestras, the consequences of Milwaukee's private school voucher program on student achievement, the impact of Florida's school accountability system on schools, the effect of student loan debt on college graduations' career choices and the impact of computer-assisted instruction on students' performance in reading and mathematics.
Membership Type
Member
Election Year
2024
Primary Section
Section 54: Economic Sciences