Michael J. Mandel is an American economist, author, and journalist. He is the chief economic strategist for the Progressive Policy Institute, and president of South Mountain Economies, LLC.
Mandel worked for twelve years at Businessweek. During his last eight years with the magazine, he held the position of chief economist. Mandel wrote more than fifty cover stories for Businessweek, and was the recipient of multiple awards; he won the Gerald Loeb Award in 1998 and was named one of the top 100 business journalists of the 20th century in 2000.
Mandel is senior fellow at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania (Mack Institute for Innovation Management) and was appointed a fellow at the Manufacturing Policy Initiative at Indiana University.
In 1985, he graduated from Harvard University with a Ph.D. in economics, having previously obtained a master's degree in economics, (1981) and a bachelor's degree in applied mathematics (1978). After leaving Harvard, he served as assistant economics professor at New York University Stern School of Business until 1989.