Thomas J. Sargent, a macroeconomist, joined New York University as the first W.R. Berkley Professor in September 2002, a joint appointment by the Economics Department at NYU's Faculty of Arts and Sciences and the Stern School of Business. He was awarded the 2011 Nobel Prize in Economics, shared with Princeton University's Christopher Sims, for his empirical research on cause and effect in the macroeconomy.

Professor Sargent was a professor of economics at the University of Minnesota from 1975 to 1987, the David Rockefeller Professor at the University of Chicago from 1992 to 1998 and the Donald Lucas Professor of Economics at Stanford University from 1998 to 2002. He has been a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution since 1987.

Professor Sargent earned his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1968 and was a first lieutenant and captain in the U.S. Army. He was a university medalist as Most Distinguished Scholar in the Class of 1964 and won the Nemmers Prize in Economics in 1997. Professor Sargent was elected a fellow of the National Academy of Sciences and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, both in 1983.

Professor Sargent is past president of the Econometric Society, the American Economic Association and the Society for Economic Dynamics.

Among his books are Rational Expectations and Econometric Practice, with Robert E. Lucas Jr., University of Minnesota Press, 1981; The Big Problem of Small Change, with Francois Velde, Princeton University Press, 2002; Recursive Macroeconomic Theory, with Lars Ljungqvist, MIT Press, 2004; and Robustness, with Lars Peter Hansen, Princeton University Press, 2008.