Lee Branstetter is a Professor of Public Policy and Economics at Carnegie Mellon University. Branstetter is also a a nonresident Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics and a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research. From 2011-2012, he served as the Senior Economist for International Trade and Investment on the staff of President Barack Obama's Council of Economic Advisers.

Prior to coming to Carnegie Mellon, he was the Daniel J. Stanton Associate Professor of Business and the Director of the International Business Program at Columbia Business School. Branstetter has also taught at the University of California, Davis, where he was the Director of the East Asian Studies Program, and at Dartmouth College. He has served as a Consultant to the OECD Science and Technology Directorate, the Advanced Technology Program of the U.S. Department of Commerce, and the World Bank. In recent years, Branstetter has been a Research Fellow of the Keio University Global Security Research Institute and a visiting fellow of the Research Institute of Economy, Trade, and Industry in Japan. Branstetter holds a B.A. in Economics and Mathematical Methods in the Social Sciences (MMSS) from Northwestern University, and he earned his Ph.D. in Economics at Harvard in 1996.