Lawrence J. Christiano

Lawrence Joseph Christiano (born January 22, 1952) is an American economist and researcher. He is the Alfred W. Chase Chair in Business Institutions, chairman of the Department of Economics and Professor of Economics at Northwestern University. He has also taught at Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Chicago.
He received his B.A. in History and Economics and M.A. in Economics at the University of Minnesota. He went on to earn his M.Sc. in Econometrics and Mathematical Economics at the London School of Economics and his Ph.D. at Columbia University.
Christiano's research has focused on macroeconomic theory, policy, and econometrics. Specifically, he has been concerned with how the government's monetary and fiscal instruments ought to respond to shocks over the business cycle. This research has two parts; one involves formulating and estimating an empirically plausible model of the macroeconomy, and the second involves developing economic concepts and computational methods for determining optimal policy in an equilibrium model. He has received numerous grants from the National Science Foundation and is an Associate Editor of the Journal of Money, Credit and Banking.
Christiano's work has been published in numerous journals, including the Journal of Economic Theory, the American Economic Review, and the Review of Economics and Statistics. In addition to his work for the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, he has served as a research consultant for the Fed’s Board of Governors and the Federal Reserve Banks of Cleveland, Chicago, and Atlanta. He has served as a visiting scholar at the International Monetary Fund and European Central Bank.