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Catherine D. Wolfram

Official · Treasury

Type
Person
Role
Official · Treasury
Updated
  • Pandemic-program role: Acting Assistant Secretary for Economic Policy in 2021; she ran the Treasury office that published the department's recovery analysis during the post-pandemic rebound; the direct connection to PPP/EIDL is thin and indirect (PPP had stopped taking applications at the end of May 2021).
  • Institution · office: Treasury · Office of Economic Policy · Type: acting
  • Tenure (relief-relevant): Joined Treasury in March 2021 (Haas announcement); signed the Treasury Borrowing Advisory Committee Economy Statement as Acting Assistant Secretary for Economic Policy in August 2021 (jy0303) and on Nov 1, 2021 (jy0453), shortly before Benjamin Harris was sworn in (see his profile); the MIT faculty profile records her later Treasury service as Deputy Assistant Secretary through 2022.

The job (role mechanics)

  • Level / appointment: Acting (never Senate-confirmed to the Assistant Secretary post); her underlying appointment was Deputy Assistant Secretary for Climate and Energy Economics (MIT faculty profile), performing the duties of the Assistant Secretary.
  • Reports to: Secretary of the Treasury (Janet Yellen).
  • Core responsibility: While acting, lead the Office of Economic Policy (Treasury's economic analysis, forecasting, and the Economy Statement for the Treasury Borrowing Advisory Committee) during the recovery.
  • Pay: Not documented.
  • Expectations / mandate: Same office mandate as the confirmed Assistant Secretary, held on an acting basis pending a confirmed appointee.
  • Tenure norm: Acting service is temporary by design (subject to the Federal Vacancies Reform Act); she relinquished the acting duties when Harris was sworn in.

Who they are

Catherine D. Wolfram is an energy and environmental economist. She joined Treasury in 2021 to work on energy and climate policy (Haas announcement) and served as Acting Assistant Secretary for Economic Policy for much of 2021 (Treasury releases jy0303 and jy0453), before a confirmed nominee arrived.

Education

  • Ph.D., Economics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1996).
  • A.B., Economics, Harvard University (1989).

Career before

  • Cora Jane Flood Professor of Business Administration and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at the Haas School of Business, UC Berkeley (faculty since 2000); took public-service leave to join Treasury in 2021.
  • Directed the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) Environment and Energy Economics Program.
  • Earlier: Assistant Professor of Economics at Harvard.

Role in the pandemic relief programs

  • Nexus (thin/indirect): Wolfram's portfolio was climate and energy economics. Her PPP/EIDL connection is institutional: for roughly seven months in 2021 she was the acting head of the Office of Economic Policy, the office that produces Treasury's recovery analysis and that had earlier published the PPP job-preservation work.
  • As Acting Assistant Secretary she signed the Office of Economic Policy's recurring Economy Statement for the Treasury Borrowing Advisory Committee (e.g., the Nov 1, 2021 statement, just before Harris took office), the office's quarterly read on the post-pandemic economy.
  • Her later Treasury work (2022–23) concerned the price cap on Russian oil (MIT faculty profile) .

Documents written or signed

Career after / where they are now

  • Returned to academia. As of 2025–26 she is the William Barton Rogers Professor in Energy and Professor of Applied Economics at the MIT Sloan School of Management (a move from UC Berkeley Haas).
  • Affiliations listed on the MIT profile include NBER, Brookings and the Harvard Kennedy School.

Sources held in this archive

Original source documents and archived captures

Sources (first-party)

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