The committee’s unanimous approval of Mankiw came this week by a voice-vote.

Bush named Mankiw as his nominee for the top spot in the three-person Council of Economic Advisors in February, after R. Glenn Hubbard announced that he would be leaving the post. Hubbard helped to craft Bush’s fiscal stimulus package.

Professor of Economics David I. Laibson said in February that the council fills three functions: it operates as a “sounding board” for economic policies proposed by the president; it initiates new ideas and economic policies; and it serves as a liaison between the president and Congress, the public and the United States’s allies.

Mankiw has kept a high profile while at Harvard and is well-regarded by students for his teaching ability and familiar to many beyond Cambridge because of his textbook.

Mankiw is one of several recent appointments made to replace key members of the president’s economic staff.

Former Treasury Secretary Paul H. O’Neill and former economic advisor Lawrence B. Lindsey both resigned in December, while former Securities and Exchange Commission chair Harvey L. Pitt stepped down in November.

—Staff writer Alexander J. Blenkinsopp can be reached at blenkins@fas.harvard.edu.