Home

Atif Mian is Theodore A. Wells '29 Professor of Economics and Public Affairs at Princeton University, and Director of the Julis-Rabinowitz Center for Public Policy and Finance at the Woodrow Wilson School. He holds a bachelors degree in Mathematics with Computer Science and Ph.D. in Economics from MIT. Prior to joining Princeton in 2012 he taught at the University of California, Berkeley and the University of Chicago Booth School of business. Professor Mian's work studies the connections between finance and the macro economy. His latest book, House of Debt, with Amir Sufi builds upon powerful new data to describe how debt precipitated the Great Recession. The book explains why debt continues to threaten the global economy, and what needs to be done to fix the financial system. House of Debt is critically acclaimed by The New York Times, Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal,The Economist, and The Atlantic among others. Professor Mian's research has appeared in top academic journals, including theAmerican Economic ReviewQuarterly Journal of EconomicsJournal of FinanceReview of Financial Studies and Journal of Financial Economics.

“Mian and Sufi are convinced that the Great Recession could have been just another ordinary, lowercase recession if the federal government had acted more aggressively to help homeowners by reducing mortgage debts. The two men — economics professors who are part of a new generation of scholars whose work relies on enormous data sets — argue . . . that the government misunderstood the deepest recession since the 1930s. They are particularly critical of Timothy Geithner, the former Treasury secretary, and Ben Bernanke, the former Federal Reserve chairman, for focusing on preserving the financial system without addressing what the authors regard as the underlying and more important problem of excessive household debt. They say the recovery remains painfully sluggish as a result.”
(Binyamin Appelbaum, New York Times)

“Atif Mian and Amir Sufi, our leading experts on the macroeconomic effects of private debt, have a new blog [www.houseofdebt.org]— and it has instantly become must reading.”
(Paul Krugman, New York Times)

“Distills lessons about the crisis from their recent research into one easily digestible package.”
(Economist)