Filling out economic team

The fourth and final member of President-elect Barack Obama's economic brain trust has Cambridge connections -- and was the subject of something of a furor in academia earlier this year.

Christina Romer, a well-regarded economist who graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was named today as chairwoman of the Council of Economic Advisers. She joins Timothy Geithner as treasury secretary and former Harvard president Lawrence Summers as senior White House economics adviser as the key members of Obama's economics team.

Romer, who is at the University of California at Berkeley, could be at Harvard now. But her move to the university was nixed in May by President Drew Gilpin Faust, perplexing and infuriating some faculty members at both universities.

The economics department at Harvard had voted to offer Romer tenure, and her husband David was expected to take a post at the Kennedy School of Government. But Faust vetoed the appointment, without public explanation.