By Jeffrey Sparshott 
 

WASHINGTON--Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner sat down to dinner Wednesday with university economists and Federal Reserve officials as the Obama administration looks to avoid damaging the economy by going over the so-called fiscal cliff.

Mr. Geithner, the White House's lead negotiator in the deficit-reduction talks with Congress, and Deputy Treasury Secretary Neal Wolin held the closed-press dinner to discuss the state of the economy and financial markets, the Treasury said. The meeting is the latest example of the administration's outreach as it looks to sound out businesses, unions and others while holding talks with congress to avert a potentially damaging mix of spending cuts and tax increases set to begin in January.

The Treasury said the following people attended Wednesday's dinner:

--Meg McConnell, a senior vice president at the New York Fed

--Andrew Lo, a professor of finance at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Sloan School of Management

--John Campbell, an economics professor at Harvard University

--Mark Van Der Weide, a senior associate director at the Fed

--Douglas Diamond, a professor of finance at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business

--Jeremy Stein, a Fed governor

--Markus Brunnermeier, an economics professor at Princeton University

--David Wilcox, a Fed economist

--David Scharfstein, a finance professor at Harvard Business School

--Arvind Krishnamurthy, a finance professor at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management

--Sam Hanson, a business administration professor at Harvard Business School

--Adi Sunderam, a business administration professor at Harvard Business School

Write to Jeffrey Sparshott at jeffrey.sparshott@dowjones.com