President Biden is expected to decide as soon as this week whether to appoint Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell or governor Lael Brainard to a four-year term leading the central bank beginning next February.

Because Ms. Brainard’s views on inflation and interest rates have been similar this year to Mr. Powell’s, policy continuity seems likely no matter who is chosen.

Mr....

President Biden is expected to decide as soon as this week whether to appoint Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell or governor Lael Brainard to a four-year term leading the central bank beginning next February.

Because Ms. Brainard’s views on inflation and interest rates have been similar this year to Mr. Powell’s, policy continuity seems likely no matter who is chosen.

Mr. Biden met each candidate separately for interviews on Nov. 4, and he was joined in the Oval Office for those meetings with only one other adviser, National Economic Council Director Brian Deese, according to people familiar with the matter.

Each meeting was scheduled for one hour, though Ms. Brainard’s ran slightly over the allotted time, one of these people said. Some people familiar with the matter said Ms. Brainard’s meeting went better than expected.

Members of Mr. Biden’s economic team and several Democratic lawmakers have favored Mr. Powell for a second term. But resistance from some progressive Democrats, who want someone more committed to toughening financial regulation and addressing climate change at the Fed, has complicated the White House’s calculus for months.

Fed governor Lael Brainard has urged waiting longer to start winding down the central bank’s bond-buying stimulus program than some of her colleagues.

Photo: Al Drago/Bloomberg News

Mr. Biden’s senior advisers remain focused on securing Democratic support for their $1.85 trillion social-spending and climate package. They have seen little reason to decide on the Fed leadership, given that it could upset lawmakers no matter whom the president picks and that Mr. Biden needs all Democrats to support his spending plans amid unified Republican opposition.

Mr. Powell, 68, is a Republican and former private-equity executive who was nominated in 2011 by then-President Obama to join the Fed board and tapped in 2017 by then-President Trump to lead the central bank.

Ms. Brainard, 59, is a Democrat and an economist who joined the Fed in 2014 after working in the Obama Treasury Department and the Clinton White House on international economic issues.

Mr. Biden said on Nov. 2 he would announce decisions “fairly quickly” on the Fed. In addition to the chair’s position, Mr. Biden has one vacancy to fill on the seven-member board of governors, with two more seats he can fill by January. Mr. Powell is unlikely to stay on the Fed board if someone succeeds him as chairman, and his departure could give Mr. Biden as many as four seats to fill by February.

Mr. Biden’s political fortunes might be tied to how the next Fed chair responds to a period of high inflation that is lasting longer than the central bank or the White House anticipated.

Fed officials will have to decide whether or when to raise interest rates to restrain inflation. If they move too little or too late, they risk letting inflation get worse for longer. If they move too much or too soon, they risk causing an economic downturn.

Here is a look at some frequently asked questions about any policy distinctions between Mr. Powell and Ms. Brainard:

How would they differ on monetary policy?

The two appear to be closely aligned. Ms. Brainard has argued at least as forcefully as Mr. Powell that inflationary pressures, which have been caused by pandemic-related disruptions, are likely to abate. This summer, she was an advocate for waiting longer to start winding down the Fed’s bond-buying stimulus program than some of her colleagues.

Ms. Brainard was a significant contributor to the revamped policy framework that Mr. Powell unveiled in August 2020, which dropped the Fed’s traditional practice of raising rates to pre-empt inflation as the labor market tightened.

Advocates for Ms. Brainard, including Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz, praise her for at times challenging the conventional thinking in macroeconomics and the Fed. In October 2015, Ms. Brainard signaled unease with then-Fed Chairwoman

Janet Yellen’s push to raise interest rates from near zero by highlighting risks of weaker global growth and softer inflation, though she voted for the rate increase.

Before and after the pandemic prompted the Fed to cut interest rates to near zero last year, she spoke approvingly of a strategy that might provide additional stimulus once rates were pinned near zero by committing to buy Treasury securities in whatever amounts needed to peg certain yields at low levels. The Fed didn’t adopt the approach.

At other junctures, however, Ms. Brainard has signaled greater vigilance than some colleagues against allowing the economy to overheat. For example, in the second half of 2018, as the unemployment rate dropped below 4% and deficits rose because of increased federal spending and tax cuts under the Trump administration, Ms. Brainard said the Fed might need to raise interest rates for another year or two to slow the economy. Instead, market tumult at the end of the year and an unexpected decline in inflation led the Fed to halt rate increases in early 2019.

How might they react differently to a period of higher inflation?

It is hard to tell because the current situation is so unusual. Mr. Powell led his colleagues to start reducing their asset purchases this month at a pace that, if maintained, would conclude the program by June. The Fed has said it wouldn’t want to raise interest rates until after the program ends.

Mr. Powell accelerated the Fed’s plans to taper the purchases, as inflation proved more stubborn than anticipated. Through the summer, he said he expected elevated inflation to fade on its own and highlighted the importance of maintaining easy money to boost a labor-market recovery. But recently, he has signaled less conviction both that inflation will quickly return to the Fed’s 2% goal or that the economy can return to pre-pandemic employment levels before the central bank lifts rates.

Ms. Brainard’s recent public statements and comments from economists backing her for the job suggest she is more concerned that the Fed will move too soon rather than too late to pull back its economic-stimulus efforts.

When the Fed was raising rates in September 2018, however, Ms. Brainard said she “would not hesitate” to accelerate the pace of increases if “underlying inflation were to move abruptly and unexpectedly higher.”

Does higher inflation weaken the case for Mr. Powell’s reappointment?

Analysts say that is less likely because Ms. Brainard this year has staked out a position favoring easier monetary policy. “Biden may be reluctant to nominate someone who is seen in the market as more dovish, given the way he is being attacked by Republicans for today’s very elevated inflation,” said Laurence Meyer, a former Fed governor, in a note to clients on Friday.

Are there other policy issues where Mr. Powell and Ms. Brainard have more concrete differences?

Regulation: The most obvious split has been on financial regulation. Since Mr. Powell became chairman in 2018, she has dissented on 23 board votes, often to protest against loosening banking rules imposed after the 2008 financial crisis. Ms. Brainard has also supported adjusting a new regulatory tool developed after the 2008 crisis called a countercyclical capital buffer and objected in 2019 to the Fed’s decision not to activate the measure.

Digital currency: Among the six sitting Fed governors, Ms. Brainard has spoken the most enthusiastically about the central bank adopting a digital dollar while raising warnings about the risks of unregulated private digital money. With China moving ahead to implement its own government-issued digital currency, “it’s just very hard for me to imagine that the U.S., given the status of the dollar in international payments, wouldn’t come to the table in that circumstance with a similar kind of offering,” she said on Sept. 27.

In public, Mr. Powell has been more hesitant. “I’m legitimately undecided on whether the benefits outweigh the costs or vice versa,” he told lawmakers on July 15.

Climate change: Under Mr. Powell, the Fed this year has established two committees designed to evaluate the risks that climate poses to the banking sector and to the financial system as a whole. But he has been sensitive to potential political blowback, given the U.S. political divisions over how or whether to address climate change.

Ms. Brainard has detailed ways for the Fed to direct the biggest banks to manage climate-related risks as part of a broader effort to monitor potential hazards to the financial system. “It’s an area where the U.S. has been behind, and we need to catch up,” Ms. Brainard said in October.

Write to Nick Timiraos at nick.timiraos@wsj.com and Ken Thomas at ken.thomas@wsj.com