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- [Christina] The most important thing
that I try to pass on

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is the sense that economics
is an empirical field,

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then if you get
new empirical evidence,

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you're going to have
to change the way

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you think about the economy.

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I think being open to that

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is the most important thing
for a young economist to know.

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Economists -- not a group

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with a lot of Marys,
Natashas or Juanitas,

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and that's caused
a lot of controversy.

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However, what's often overlooked
are the actual female economists

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who are pushing economics forward

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by addressing real-world issues.

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Welcome to Women in Economics.

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♪ [music] ♪

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I grew up in a family

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where public policy
was discussed a lot.

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I was planning to be a lawyer,

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so I was going to major
in Government.

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And as part of the Government
major at my college,

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you had to take
a year of Economics.

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I was about three weeks in,
and I was hooked,

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like the government major's gone,
the lawyer's gone,

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I was in an Economist.

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Christina Romer
is a macro economic historian.

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She takes the tools
of modern economics,

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statistics, and data

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and applies them
to historical questions.

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- [Narrator] Christy's researcher
agenda throughout her career

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has focused
on a course set of topics

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about economic fluctuations
and business cycles.

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She's been asking and answering

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fascinating questions
about our economy,

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starting with her dissertation
as a graduate student at MIT.

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There, she changed
her understanding

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of how the economy
has grown over time.

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I think the questions
that came to me

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were about monetary policy
and business cycles

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and the Great Depression.

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- [Narrator] It was widely believed

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that government policies led to
less fluctuations and unemployment

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after World War II.

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However, the data before
World War II was unreliable.

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- [Nancy] But Christy came up
with the ingenious insight

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that while you couldn't clean up
the historical data,

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you could fuzzy up
the more modern data,

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and that's exactly what she did.

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And when she did it, lo and behold,

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all these differences
basically collapsed.

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- [Narrator] Amazingly,
if she applied

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the old techniques to the new data,

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the pose WOrld War II economy

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looked just as volatile
as the pre-World War economy.

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This contradicted the consensus

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on the role of government
stabilization policies.

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Her research rattled
the economic community.

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It made a splash.

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I remember one of the prominent
economist MIT,

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his first reaction was,

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"Well, I'd be very upset
about this if I believed it.

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So I'm not going to believe it."

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Throughout her academic career,

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Christine continued to challenge

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her understanding
of the Great Depression.

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As just one example,
most economists believed

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the Great Depression ended

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because of higher
government spending

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and investment in public works.

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She showed that the impact
of those policies

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were relatively small compared to

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the monetary policy
changes taking place.

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- [ ] Starting as soon as Roosevelt
took the US off the gold standard

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when he took office in 1933,

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over the next decade,

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there's just an enormous increase
in money supply.

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What he showed was that

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that is what caused
the very rapid growth that we had.

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- [Narrator] Christina's research
has often focused on the effect

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economic events have
on people's everyday lives.

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- [ ] It's tough to manage to have
new ideas on the same thing

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again and again and again.

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One of the remarkable things

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about Christy and David's
research program

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is that they have done that
very successfully.

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- [Narrator] Over 35 years,

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Christina has done
meticulous research,

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frequently, with her collaborator
and husband, David Romer.

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- [David] We'll have her paper,
and I think it's almost done.

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We've worked really hard on it,

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and each do one last read.

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She says, "You know,
I think there's a logical tension

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between where we end up
in Section 4b

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and how we set out
what we're going to do in Section 2a.

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And I'm thinking, "Oh,
no one's going to notice."

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And we spend weeks more
on the paper because she's right.

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And the paper gets much better.

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- [ ] One of the remarkable
things about her work

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is the coherence that spans
literally her graduate school days

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and her work on her dissertation,

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and connects up to some
of her most recent work

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on thinking about
ways of identifying

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turning points in the economy.

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- [Narrator] Christina's work
would be put to the test

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during the devasting crash of 2008,

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when the US economy
was in free fall.

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- [Christina] We often
describe the economy

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as at the edge of a cliff.

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Well, the truth is, we're not only
at the edge of a cliff,

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we were headed down.

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Financial markets were plunging,

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and the risk of contagion
from the US to the global economy

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was v ery real.

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- [ ] Even people who'd see a lot

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were really worried
about what was happening.

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Just as the nation was turning
to President-elect Obama

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to confront the economic crisis,

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a mysterious email
showed up in Christina'a inbox

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with the subject line:
"Obama Transition."

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- [ ] And I will take a little bit of credit here

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because Christina was just about to delete it,

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and I said, "Why don't you at least google fitst."

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And she discovered that he was the head of the economic side of the transition.

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The Obama administration wanted to meet with Christina as soon as possible.

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- [ ] On the next day, she was on a plane to Chicago to meet with the President-elect.

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- [Narrator] Christina was asked to chair the Council of Economic Advisers.

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The council wa sset up to bring academics into the policy-making process

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and make recommendations to the President.

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- [Christina] I was taking to Rahm Emanuel, and I said,

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"So tell me again, how did I get this job?"

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And he said, "You were an expert on the Great Depression,

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and we thought we might need one."

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- [Janet] She's tried to understand what caused the Depression,

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what ended the Depression,

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what role monitoring and fiscal policy oculd play

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and no one could be better positioned to know what the right strategy woulf be.

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- [CHristina] We were talking to bankers,

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we were talking to employers,

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we were talking to the people that where collecting the statistics.

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- [Marrator] Christina'a research revealed

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that the economy was even more of a perilous position

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than previously thgoutt.

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SHe got on the phone with Obama to give him the bad news.

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- [Christina] Saying, you going, this is terrible.

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We've lost three-quarters of a million jobs.

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I'm just going on like this, and finally he stops me

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and he said, "Christy, it's not your fault... yet."

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- [ ] The challenge that CHristy and her team members on the Economic Advisory Team confronted

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was how large a stimulus the US economy needed

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in order to right the ship

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and trying to calibrate that depended critically on the estimates

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of how much bang for the buck you get

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when you use fiscal policy as a tool

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and try to then inflate the economy.

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- [Marrator} CHristina helped design a fiscal package

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that she thought was necessary to get the economy moving.

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- [Gabriel] The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act

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is a piece of legislation that was signed in February of 2009,

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and it was a combination of direct government spending,

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so think of repairing highways,

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transfers to State governments,

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transfers to individuals and tax cuts.

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And the rationale for it was for the time when households were spending less

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and busniesses were spending less --

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that's a time when it's appropriate for government to spend a little more

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to fill in that gap.

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The recessions leave long scars,

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and people who lose their jobs during recession

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and they're unemployed for a while --

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even ten years later, often are earning less

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than they were before the recession occurred.

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So by making the case,

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both in acaedemic research, and then as a policymaker,

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the government could do more to mitigate recessions

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that really has an impact probably hundreds of thousands of people

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kept their jobs during the Great Recession

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because hse had become an expert on the behavior of the economy,

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on the effects of fiscal policy.

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- [ ] And she was realy passionate about the role that she played

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after the financial crisis and the Great Recession