University of Delaware President Harker tapped to succeed Plosser at Philadelphia Fed

The head of the University of Delaware has been selected to be the new president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia.

The bank's board of directors says 56-year-old Patrick T. Harker will succeed Charles Plosser, who retired on March 1. Harker will take over on July 1.

In addition to serving as president of the University of Delaware, Harker was a professor of business administration and a professor of engineering at the university.

Plosser had announced last year that he would retire in March when he reached the bank's mandatory retirement age. He had been a leading "hawk" at the Fed — expressing concerns that the central bank has been too slow to raise interest rates and that this could trigger unwanted inflation in the future.