BGSU economist promoted by Fed, predicts growth

BOWLING GREEN, O.—Dr. Timothy Fuerst, a professor of economics at Bowling Green State University, has been named a senior economic advisor to the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland.

Fuerst has provided his expertise on money, financial markets and monetary policy to the bank as a consultant since 1994.

He said senior economic advisors are selected based on their research accomplishments and widespread recognition of their expertise within the field. The BGSU professor has an extensive research history and is frequently cited in other scholars’ published articles. In fact, he is among the top 4 percent of more than 16,000 authors worldwide, according to the Internet Documents in Economics Access Service, which uses Research Papers in Economics Author Services, the largest bibliographic database in economic research.

Fuerst is among six economists serving as senior economic advisors in the Fourth Federal Reserve District, which includes Ohio and parts of Kentucky, Pennsylvania and West Virginia. The Cleveland bank, which serves the Fourth District, is one of 12 regional banks in the Federal Reserve System. The regional banks, along with a Board of Governors in Washington, D.C., comprise the system, which is responsible for formulating and implementing U.S. monetary policy, supervising banks and bank holding companies, and providing financial services to depository institutions and the federal government.

Fuerst has some positive views of the economy in 2009. While the first quarter of the year will still be bad from a macroeconomic perspective, he said, the BGSU economist predicts improvement during the spring and growth by midsummer.

For that to happen, not only is improvement in the housing market needed, but also an increase in the sale of durable goods, such as vehicles and appliances, Fuerst said. To this point, he added, consumers have delayed their durable-goods purchases, but they will be forced to buy in the near future, so demand will go up. He also said unemployment will lag behind economic growth but expects the unemployment rate to “top out” in the fall of 2009.

With the Obama administration in place, a fiscal stimulus package and infrastructure projects “are a given,” Fuerst noted. But concern is in order with a debt explosion of more than $1 trillion and whether the infrastructure projects make economic sense, he added, saying he’s not certain if resources in the moribund housing construction sector will transfer into building roads and bridges and whether those can be timely.

Fuerst earned his Ph.D. and master’s degrees in economics from the University of Chicago. He joined the BGSU faculty as an assistant professor in 1993 and was promoted to full professor in 2002. He has been honored in both research and teaching by BGSU’s College of Business Administration.

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(Posted January 29, 2009 )