Susan M. Collins, Distinguished Fellow 2025
Susan M. Collins is a distinguished economist and policymaker who currently serves as President and Chief Executive Officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston. Her career has spanned teaching and research, academic administration, and public service. She has excelled in all of these roles, and has exemplified the 蝌蚪网’s code of conduct, which calls for “intellectual and professional integrity,” and for fostering a “professional environment with equal opportunity and fair treatment for all economists.”
Collins has held academic positions at Harvard University, Georgetown University, and the University of Michigan. She was also a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution for many years. Collins has made important research contributions on a range of central issues in macroeconomics and international macroeconomics. Her work with Bosworth applying growth accounting in a cross-country context vastly expanded the range of countries considered in such analyses. In addition to providing critical new evidence on the roles of physical capital accumulation, human capital accumulation, and increases in total factor productivity in countries’ growth experiences, Collins and Bosworth’s careful data work demonstrated that simple and widely used measures of investment—rates of physical investment and years of schooling—are often only weakly correlated with direct measures of changes in stocks of physical and human capital. Among the other issues Collins has explored are the macroeconomic effects of real exchange rate misalignments, how to integrate and reconcile accounting and regression approaches to understanding cross-country differences in growth, the macroeconomic impacts of capital flows to developing countries, and the underpinnings of South Korea’s remarkable growth.
Collins served as the Joan and Sanford Weill Dean of the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan from 2007 to 2017. In that role she helped to increase recognition for the school’s faculty and students, and oversaw the creation of the school’s first undergraduate degree program. She also championed the school’s work in enhancing diversity, equity, and inclusion. In 2020, she became Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs at the University of Michigan. She played a crucial role in guiding the university through the COVID-19 pandemic, and championed efforts to address student mental health problems and sexual and gender-based misconduct. In recognition of her dedication and exemplary service, she was awarded the University of Michigan Board of Regents’ Citation of Honor.
Collins’s public service began early in her career when she served as a senior economist at the Council of Economic Advisers under President George H. W. Bush. She also served as a member of the Board of Directors of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago for nine years. In 2022, she became the first woman of color to lead one of the twelve regional Federal Reserve Banks. In that role she has brought clarity, analytical rigor, and sound judgement to the formulation of monetary policy.