Sprinkel Will Head Economic Advisers Panel

President Reagan, taking the first step to revitalize the Council of Economic Advisers he once considered abolishing, on Thursday nominated Treasury Under Secretary Beryl W. Sprinkel to be chairman of the panel.

White House spokesman Larry Speakes said Reagan will quickly fill the remaining two vacancies on the council and increase its professional staff. “It had really fallen into disuse,” Speakes said.

Sprinkel, 61, would succeed Martin A. Feldstein, who resigned last July to return to teaching at Harvard University after a controversial tenure. Feldstein frequently angered White House officials with his gloomy warnings about the dangers of huge budget deficits.

Niskanen to Resign

As expected, William Niskanen, the only remaining member of the council, will resign. Niskanen, who has been the acting head of the panel, had said he would leave if he were not appointed chairman. William Poole, the other member of the panel, returned to teaching at Brown University last month.

At the Treasury Department, Sprinkel was a frequent critic of the Federal Reserve, contending that its failure at times to keep money growth within its target ranges has fostered economic instability. Educated at the University of Chicago, where the economics department has been dominated by the views of conservative free-market economist Milton Friedman, Sprinkel is a monetarist who believes that changes in economic output are almost exclusively determined by changes in the money supply.

Sprinkel, who adamantly opposes government intervention in currency markets to influence the value of the dollar, has also been at odds often with supply-side economists--fellow conservatives who hold the view that tax rates and a stable dollar are far more important in economic policy than the money supply.

In his move from Treasury to the White House, Sprinkel will be following his former boss, Donald T. Regan, who recently became Reagan’s chief of staff in a job swap with Treasury Secretary James A. Baker III.

Speakes made clear that Baker will be the Administration’s chief economic spokesman. Baker had hinted privately that he expected to find a replacement for Sprinkel as undersecretary, and Administration officials said he plans to alter the position significantly, filling it with someone quite different from Sprinkel.