Aaron Klein

Aaron Klein is Miriam K. Carliner Chair and senior fellow in Economic Studies at the Brookings Institution, focused on financial technology and regulation; payments; macroeconomics; and infrastructure finance and policy. Prior to joining Brookings in 2016, he directed the Bipartisan Policy Center’s Financial Regulatory Reform Initiative.

Between 2009 and 2012, Klein served as the deputy assistant secretary for economic policy at the Department of Treasury. He worked on financial regulatory reform issues including crafting and helping secure passage of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010. He also played leading roles on responding to the economic crisis, housing finance reform, transportation and infrastructure policy, and Native American policy.

Previously, Klein served as chief economist of the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee for Chairmen Chris Dodd and Paul Sarbanes. He worked on numerous pieces of major legislation, including the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act (aka TARP), Housing and Economic Recovery Act, and the SAFETEA Act of 2005—re-writing America’s surface transportation system.

Klein serves on the Board of the PC Project, a charity dedicated to finding a cure for Pachyonychia Congenita, and the American Academy of Political and Social Science. He serves on a Bellwether Commission at Washington University in Saint Louis, and previously taught at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton school of Business. Klein serves as an external economist for the National Homebuyers Fund, Astro America, provides occasional expert analysis for several groups including Gerson Lerhman Group, AlphaSights, Guidepoint, Raymond James, and the Native American Finance Officers Association, and is an expert witness.

Klein is a graduate of Dartmouth College and the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs.