Miles Kimball

Miles Spencer Kimball is an American economist who is currently the Eugene D. Eaton Jr. Professor of Economics at the University of Colorado Boulder. From 1987 to 2016, he was professor of economics and research professor of survey research at the University of Michigan. He is also a research associate of the National Bureau of Economics Research. He is a columnist for the online international business magazine Quartz, where his column coauthored with Noah Smith, "There is one key difference between kids who excel at math and those who don't" was the second most popular article in 2013. Other popular columns have focused on education, immigration policy, how to get into PhD programs in economics, geopolitics, gay marriage, sexism in economics, the Reinhart and Rogoff controversy and negative interest rates. On his blog, "Confessions of a Supply Side Liberal," he has been an advocate for eliminating the zero lower bound on nominal interest rates in order to make deep negative interest rates a viable monetary policy option. Three former Federal Reserve officials, Don Kohn, Ben Bernanke and Narayana Kocherlakota, can be seen discussing his proposal for eliminating the lower bound on interest rates here. Many of his blog posts have been translated into Japanese and some into Thai. Kimball is a Unitarian-Universalist lay preacher after having departed from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints around the age of 40. He has a special interest outside his professional field of economics in the fields of nutrition and fasting.