Peter Diamond is an American economist born in 1940 who gained recognition for his analysis of the US social security policy while working as an adviser to the Social Security Advisory Board in the 1980s and 1990s. He is also known for being awarded the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences in 2010 alongside Dale T. Mortensen and Christopher A. Pissarides.
Diamond currently works as an Institute Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 2011, he withdrew his candidacy for the board membership of the Federal Reserve due to Republican opposition that lasted for 14 months. If you are interested in learning more about him, keep reading this Zatrun.com article.
Who is Peter Diamond?
Peter Diamond was born in New York City into a Jewish family. His grandparents immigrated to the US from Poland and Russia, and his parents, who were born in 1908, grew up in New York City and did not live outside the city. Diamond has a younger brother named Richard who was born in 1934.
He attended a public school in the Bronx and moved to a suburban public school in Long Island in second grade when his family moved there. He graduated from Lawrence High School and earned his bachelor’s degree in mathematics with the highest honour from Yale University in 1960 and his Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1963.
After completing his Ph.D., Diamond started his academic career as an assistant professor at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1963 and worked there until 1965. He then became an assistant professor at MIT in 1966 and was promoted to full professor in 1970. He served as the head of the economics department from 1985 to 1986 and was appointed as an Institute Professor in 1997.
In addition to his academic work, Peter Diamond was elected as a member of the Econometric Society in 1968 and served as its president. He was also the president of the American Economic Association in 2003.
He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Sciences, and the founding member of the National Academy of Social Insurance, and he received the Robert M. Ball Award for Outstanding Achievements from the National Academy of Social Insurance in 2008. He taught economics as a Fulbright Distinguished Chair at Siena University in 2000.
His Books and Other Works
Peter Diamond has authored a book titled “Saving Social Security: A Balanced Approach,” co-authored with Peter R. Orszag, the former director of the Office of Management and Budget under the Obama Administration, which was published by Brookings Institution Press in 2004-2005. He also presented his ideas in an article previously published by the Brookings Institution.
Peter Diamond’s nomination for the Federal Reserve Board, along with Janet Yellen and Sarah Bloom Raskin, was opposed by Republican senators in 2010, leading to the Senate returning his nomination to the presidency, resulting in his nomination being rejected. He was re-nominated by President Obama in September of the same year. However, due to Republican opposition that lasted for 14 months, he withdrew his candidacy for the board membership of the Federal Reserve in 2011.
