Feldstein, who will most likely get a two-year leave from the University, has been working in the White House since Labor Day. He has, according to a chief council aide who asked not to be identified, been actively involved in formulating preliminary economic forecasts and providing advice to the President on several policy matters.
Equally involved is a core of Harvard aides. Laurence H. Summers, professor of Economics--who was tenured just this summer after leaving MIT--is Feldstein's chief aide on the domestic economic policy. Three of Feldstein's graduate students are working as staff assistants on taxes and labor.
Under Feldstein's predecessor--Murray Wiedenbaum--the CEA had apparently lost influence in the Administration. Wiedenbaum was reportedly uncomfortable with Reagan's massive defense expenditures and the subsequent large budget deficits.
The day after Wiedenbaum left in July--ostensibly so he could return to Washington University in St. Louis to teach--he publicly criticized the weapons appropriations.
Feldstein too has some differences with the Administration. He has been critical of the large deficits, and at one point argued that the third stage of Reagan's three-year income tax cut should be deferred. Even at his confirmation hearings he changed the White House, forecasting next year's growth rate at one full percentage point below the government's figures.
But one aide--who worked under Wiedenbaum and is now working for Feldstein--said that the Harvard professor may be able to exert more influence. Although he refused to comment on Feldstein's first three weeks on the job, Laurence Lindsay, a staff economist, noted that Feldstein's economic specialty places him in a better position to advise the President. He noted that Wiedenbaum's fields of expertise were defense spending and regulation. The first put him at odds with his boss. The second, while important, was not at the forefront of the Reagan program. "If you look at a list of Feldstein's publications, he has written about every general area of taxes and every general area of social spending," Lindsay added.
Feldstein has attained national prominence, not only through such publications, but also as head of the prestigious Cambridge-based consulting firm, the National Bureau of Economic Research. He was reportedly offered the CEA chairmanship when Reagan first took office two years ago, but turned it down to help complete a major bureau study on capital formation.