Speakers
An Economic Framework for Effective Policymaking
Paul Atkins
Commissioner
U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission
Paul S. Atkins was appointed by President George W. Bush to be a commissioner of the Securities and Exchange Commission on July 29, 2002. His term expires in 2008.
Commissioner Atkins’ 22-year career has focused on the financial services industry and securities regulation. Before his appointment as commissioner, he assisted financial services firms in improving their compliance with SEC regulations and worked with law enforcement agencies to investigate and rectify situations where investors had been harmed. The largest of these investigations involved the Bennett Funding Group, Inc., a $1 billion leasing company that perpetrated the largest "Ponzi" fraud in U.S. history, in which more than 20,000 investors lost much of their investment. Assisting the company’s court-appointed bankruptcy trustee, he served as crisis president of Bennett’s sole surviving subsidiary. By stabilizing its finances and operations and rebuilding and expanding its business, Commissioner Atkins improved its share value for the remaining investors by almost 2000%.
From 1990-94, Commissioner Atkins served on the staff of two former chairmen of the SEC, Richard C. Breeden and Arthur Levitt, ultimately as executive assistant and counsellor, respectively. Under Chairman Breeden, he assisted in efforts to improve regulations regarding corporate governance, enhance shareholder communications, strengthen management accountability through proxy reform, and decrease barriers to entry for small businesses and middle market companies to the capital markets. Under Chairman Levitt, he was responsible for organizing the SEC's individual investor program, including the first investor town hall meetings, an SEC consumer affairs advisory committee, and other investor education efforts, including the original Invest Wisely brochures regarding the fundamentals of the retail brokerage relationship and mutual fund investment.
Commissioner Atkins began his career as a lawyer in New York City, focusing on a wide range of corporate transactions for U.S. and foreign clients, including public and private securities offerings and mergers and acquisitions. He was resident for 2½ years in his firm's Paris office and admitted as conseil juridique in France in 1988.
A member of the New York and Florida bars, Commissioner Atkins received his J.D. from Vanderbilt University School of Law in 1983 and was Senior Student Writing Editor of the Vanderbilt Law Review. He received his A.B. from Wofford College in 1980 and was a member of Phi Beta Kappa. Originally from Lillington, North Carolina, Commissioner Atkins grew up in Tampa, Florida. He is married with three sons, aged 13, 10 and 7.
Katherine Baicker
Member
Council of Economic Advisers
Dr. Katherine Baicker was nominated by President Bush on September 22, 2005 and confirmed by the Senate on November 4, 2005 to serve as a Member of the Council of Economic Advisers.
Katherine Baicker received her BA in economics from Yale in 1993, and her PhD in economics from Harvard in 1998. She is an associate professor in the department of public policy at the School of Public Affairs at UCLA, and a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research in the public economics program. From 2001-2002 Dr. Baicker served as a senior economist at the Council of Economic Advisers. Her research areas include health economics, welfare, and public finance, with a particular focus on the financing of health insurance, spending on public programs, and fiscal federalism.
Dr. Baicker’s research has been published in the American Economic Review, the Journal of Public Economics, the Review of Economics and Statistics, and Health Affairs. She has served on the faculty of the Economics Department at Dartmouth College, the Center for the Evaluative Clinical Sciences and the Department of Community and Family Medicine at Dartmouth Medical School, and in the Harris School of Public Policy at the University of Chicago. Dr. Baicker’s research has been featured in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Business Week, and on National Public Radio, and has been funded in part by the National Institutes of Health.
Dean Baker
Co-Director
Center for Economic Policy and Research
Dean Baker is co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, DC. He previously worked as a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute and an assistant professor at Bucknell University. His blog, Beat the Press , features commentary on economic reporting. He received his Ph.D in economics from the University of Michigan.
He has written numerous books and articles, including The United States Since 1980, Cambridge University Press, forthcoming 2007; The Conservative Nanny State: How the Wealthy Use the Government to Stay Rich and Get Richer, Center for Economic and Policy Research, 2006; Social Security: The Phony Crisis (with Mark Weisbrot), University of Chicago Press, 1999; "Asset Returns and Economic Growth," (with Brad DeLong and Paul Krugman), Brookings Papers on Economic Activity (2005); "Financing Drug Research: What Are the Issues," Center for Economic and Policy Research, 2004; "Medicare Choice Plus: The Solution to the Long-Term Deficit Problem," Center for Economic and Policy Research, 2004; The Benefits of Full Employment (with Jared Bernstein), Economic Policy Institute, 2004; "Professional Protectionists: The Gains From Free Trade in Highly Paid Professional Services," Center for Economic and Policy Research, 2003; "The Run-Up in Home Prices: Is It Real or Is It Another Bubble," Center for Economic and Policy Research, 2002.
His book Getting Prices Right: The Battle Over the Consumer Price Index (M.E. Sharpe, 1997) was a winner of a Choice Book Award as one of the outstanding academic books of the year. He also was also the author of the weekly online commentary on economic reporting, the Economic Reporting Review (ERR), from 1996 - 2006. He has worked as a consultant for the World Bank, the Joint Economic Committee of the U.S. Congress, and the OECD's Trade Union Advisory Council. His columns have appeared in many major media outlets including the Atlantic Monthly, the Washington Post, and the London Financial Times. He is frequently cited in economics reporting in major media outlets, including the New York Times, Washington Post, CNBC and National Public Radio.
Jared Bernstein
Director of Living Standards Program
Economic Policy Institute
Jared Bernstein joined the Economic Policy Institute in 1992. He is the author of the new book, "All Together Now: Common Sense for a Fair Economy." His areas of research include income inequality and mobility, trends in employment and earnings, low-wage labor markets and poverty, international comparisons, and the analysis of federal and state economic policies. Between 1995 and 1996, he held the post of deputy chief economist at the U.S. Department of Labor. He is the co-author of eight editions of the book The State of Working America and has published extensively in popular and academic venues, including The New York Times, Washington Post, American Prospect, and Research in Economics and Statistics.
Brian A. Bethune
Director, Financial Economics
Global Insight
Dr. Bethune is Director of Financial Economics for Global Insight's United States Macroeconomics Group. Prior to this, he was Manager, Business Economics Group for Caterpillar Inc., and senior financial economist for the Bank of Montreal/Harris Bank Group. He has worked on special assignments at the World Trade Organization, Geneva, Switzerland, and the Institute of International Finance, Washington D.C. Bethune is responsible for high-frequency economic analysis and the weekly financial report. In addition, Bethune develops and supports US macroeconomic model resources for credit and financial markets, interest and borrowing rates, the flow of funds, government debt and deficits, government expenditures, and taxation.
His areas of Expertise at Global Insight include: Federal Reserve analysis and monetary policy decisions; Credit market dynamics, financial regulation, and the flow of funds; Interest rates, borrowing rates, financial modeling, and the yield curve; High-frequency US economic developments and their impact on equity, bond, and currency markets; Government budgets and debt; Government policies: revenues, expenditures, and policy simulations
Bethune is the author of several professional and academic articles that have appeared in publications such as Business Economics, as well as in the Canadian Tax Journal. Bethune holds a Doctorate of Philosophy in international economics from the University of Geneva, Switzerland. He also holds a Master of Arts from McMaster University, Canada, and a Certificate in Advanced Monetary Economics from the Kiel Institute of World Economics, Kiel, Germany.
Stuart M. Butler
Vice President, Domestic and Economic Policy Studies
The Heritage Foundation
Stuart Butler has been generating ideas for The Heritage Foundation since 1979, when the young British scholar joined the still relatively obscure conservative think tank as a Policy Analyst specializing in urban issues.
Now as Heritage's Vice President of Domestic and Economic Policy Studies, Butler's ideas continue to change the course of public policy in America. Take "enterprise zones," which encourage development in blighted neighborhoods by offering entrepreneurs and investors tax and regulatory relief if they start businesses in the area. Butler introduced them in his first paper for Heritage 20 years ago. It caught the attention of then-Rep. Jack Kemp, R-N.Y., who co-sponsored legislation in Congress (with then-Democratic Rep. Robert Garcia of the South Bronx) based on Butler's idea. There are now at least 70 zones in cities across the country. And almost all politicians nowadays-liberal and conservative-will say they support some form of "enterprise zones" when asked how to help America's inner-cities.
His bipartisan approach to solving urban problems is typical of his approach. He has gained a reputation and respect in policy circles for his willingness to reach across the ideological divide to develop bipartisan solutions to problems. And he has attained a similar reputation in academic circles. In 2002 he spent a semester at Harvard University as a Fellow at the Institute of Politics. Currently he is an Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University Graduate School.
Butler has played a major role in shaping the policy debate on a wide range of domestic policy issues from health care and Social Security to welfare reform and privatizing government services. Perhaps that's why National Journal, Washington's most influential magazine of politics and policy, named him in the 1980s as "one of 150 individuals outside government who have the greatest influence on decision-making in Washington."
Butler grew up in a sheep-farming district about 80 miles south of Manchester, England, the son of a mechanic who left school at age 13. His down-to-earth roots influence his approach to policy. Although he has the requisite academic credentials-degrees in physics and math and a doctorate in American economic history from the University of St. Andrews in Scotland-Butler is no ivory-tower scholar. In his early days as a Policy Analyst, for example, he visited tenements in the South Bronx and Washington, D.C., to discuss with residents how conservative ideas, such as tenant ownership of public housing, would make them better off.
In the 1990s, Butler led the debate over health-care reform, arguing for a system based on consumer choice and market competition. His manifesto "A National Health System for America," published in 1989 with Edmund Haislmaier, explained how distortions in the tax code have created a health-care system that denies individual choice and drives up costs. When President Clinton took office in 1993 and launched his effort to nationalize health care, Butler was one of the most-quoted experts in the country on why the scheme wouldn't work. Even many liberal pundits thought Butler's approach was superior, with then-Editor of The New Republic Michael Kinsley calling it "the simplest, most promising, and in an important way, the most progressive idea for health care reform." More recently, National Journal again noted Butler's influence, calling him one of Washington's twelve "key players" on health care.
Butler's ideas on reforming Medicare, the giant government health program for senior citizens, have been just as central to the debate. Sen. John Breaux, D-La., Chairman of the congressionally chartered National Bipartisan Commission on the Future of Medicare, put forward a reform plan that relied heavily on Butler's recommendations.
In addition to the dozens of research papers he has written for Heritage, Butler is the author of three books, "Enterprise Zones: Greenlining the Inner Cities" (1981), "Privatizing Federal Spending" (1985), and "Out of the Poverty Trap" (1987), co-authored with Anna Kondratas. Over a decade after its publication, "Out of the Poverty Trap" still garners attention. A New York Times story on Dec. 8, 1999, mentioned the book in a story on the "poverty industry," citing the passage where Butler wrote, "It is the middle-class members of this industry, and not the poor, who truly are most dependent on welfare spending."
Butler also has been published in leading academic journals, such as the Journal of the American Medical Association, and in leading newspapers, including The New York Times. He has been profiled by The Washington Post and has appeared on all the leading television networks commenting on policy issues. And he has testified before Congress dozens of times on a range of policy issues
Steven J. Davis
Vice President
CRA International
Steven J. Davis is a Vice President with CRA International and the William H. Abbott Professor of International Business and Economics at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business (on leave in 2007), where he has taught since 1986. He is also a Research Associate with the National Bureau of Economic Research, a Visiting Scholar with the American Enterprise Institute, a former visiting professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a former Hoover Institution National Fellow at Stanford University.
Dr. Davis has published widely on employment and wage behavior, worker mobility, job loss, the effects of labor market institutions, business dynamics, industrial organization, economic fluctuations, and other topics. His research appears in the American Economic Review, the Journal of Political Economy, the Quarterly Journal of Economics and other leading scholarly journals. He is the recipient of numerous research grants, including several from the U.S. National Science Foundation
Davis also has experience in commercial consulting activities. In the antitrust area, he has testified and consulted on price discrimination, exclusionary practices and collusive behavior. In the areas of mortgage lending and consumer finance, he has testified on class certification, liability and damages. He has also offered testimony and analysis on damages in breach of contract, reasonable royalties and lost earnings. Previous consulting engagements include mattes involving auto leasing, energy shocks, commercial lending, pharmaceuticals, savings institutions, software markets, sub-prime lending and workers’ compensation insurance.
Jorg W. Decressin
Division Chief, European Policies Division, European Departmen
International Monetary Fund
Heading the European Policies Division at the IMF, Jörg Decressin develops economic policy advice to the Eurogroup, the European Commission, and the European Central Bank. A German national, he joined the IMF after he obtained his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1993. He has published on labor an capital market adjustment in Europe, the reform of the Stability and Growth Pact, and is currently working on an book on financial integration in Europe, to be published by the IMF in May 2007 (Integrating Europe’s Financial Markets).
James Diffley
Director, U.S. Regional Service
Global Insight
James Diffley is Managing Director of Global Insight’s U.S. Regional Services Group, with overall responsibility for Regional Services, including the Regional Core Macroeconomic Service and the Global Insight Real Estate & Construction Service. Since 1998, he has supervised the quarterly economic forecast of the 50 states and over 300 metropolitan areas of the United States. He regularly makes presentations of these regional economic forecasts and analysis to clients, conferences, governmental bodies, and the press.
He is also responsible for customized consulting projects. These have included long-term projections of cigarette consumption, forecasts of capital gains realizations, analysis of the economic impact of the securities industry on New York State, analysis of the impact of changing oil prices on local economies, and the economic impact of various facilities locations.
Diffley came to Global Insight through WEFA, Inc. Prior to joining WEFA, Diffley was supervising tax analyst with the New Jersey Division of Taxation's Office of Tax Analysis from 1988 to 1996, where he was responsible for developing the state economic forecast for the state executive budget and for business tax revenue forecasting. Diffley did his Doctorate of Philosophy training in economics at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, completing all requirements but the dissertation. From 1982 to 1987, he was on the economics faculty at Adelphi University in New York.
Douglas G. Duncan
Chief Economist
Mortgage Bankers Association of America
Douglas G. Duncan is chief economist and senior vice president at the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA). As leader of MBA's Research and Business Development Group, Duncan is responsible for providing economic and policy analysis services in the areas of real estate finance, legislative and regulatory proposals and industry trends for MBA and its members. He also oversees the education products and services of the association as well as its Industry technology committees and standards efforts. He has oversight responsibility for the Research Institute for Housing America (RIHA), the Mortgage Industry Standards Maintenance Organization, the Secure Identity Standards Accreditation Corporation (SISAC) and Lender Technologies Corporation (MISMO).
Since joining MBA in 1992, Duncan has served as director and senior director of MBA's Research and Business Development Group. During his tenure in these positions, Duncan broadened and deepened MBA's understanding of mortgage market and mortgage company data for purposes of policy analysis and industry economic analysis including company performance benchmarking. Duncan also oversees mortgage industry technology initiatives and standards development, including the development of data standards, electronic mortgages and secured electronic transactions technology.
Prior to joining MBA, Duncan served as a LEGIS fellow with the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Banking, Finance and Urban Affairs. Duncan received his doctorate from Texas A&M University, B.S. and M.S. degrees from North Dakota State University and A.A. degree from Fergus Falls Community College.
Karen Dynan
Chief, Housing and Real Estate Finance Section
Federal Reserve Board
Karen Dynan is Chief of the Housing and REal Estate Finance Section, Division of Research and Statistics, at the Federal Reserve Board.
She has been at the Federal Reserve Board since 1992. She has also served as a Senior Economist, Council of Economic Advisers, 2003-2004, and has been an Assistant Visiting Professor at Johns Hopkins University. Her fields of interest are Consumption, Macroeconomics, and Consumer Finance.
She has an A.B., Applied Math/Economics, Brown University, 1985, and a Ph.D., Economics, Harvard University, 1992.
J. D. Foster
Associate Director for Economic Policy
Office of Management and Budget
William Gale
Senior Fellow
The Brookings Institution
William Gale is vice president and director of the Economic Studies Program at the Brookings Institution and the Arjay and Frances Miller Chair in Federal Economic Policy. He conducts research on a variety of economic issues, focusing particularly on tax policy, fiscal policy, pensions and saving behavior. He is also co-director of the Tax Policy Center, a joint venture of the Brookings Institution and the Urban Institute.
Gale attended Duke University and the London School of Economics and received his Ph.D. from Stanford University in 1987.
Prior to joining Brookings in 1992, he was an assistant professor in the Department of Economics at the University of California, Los Angeles, and a senior staff economist for the Council of Economic Advisers under President George H.W. Bush.
He is the co-author or co-editor of several books, including Taxing the Future: Fiscal Policy in the Bush Administration (Brookings, 2006); Aging Gracefully: Ideas to Improve Retirement Security in America (Century Foundation, 2006); The Evolving Pension System: Trends, Effects, and Proposals for Reform (Brookings, 2005); Private Pensions and Public Policy (Brookings, 2004); Rethinking Estate and Gift Taxation (Brookings, 2001), and Economic Effects of Fundamental Tax Reform (Brookings, 1996).
He has also written numerous scholarly research articles, including publications in the American Economic Review, Journal of Political Economy, and Quarterly Journal of Economics, and has served as editor and editorial board member of several academic journals. He has also written extensively in policy-related publications and newspapers.
Gale has served on advisory boards for the Government Accountability Office, the Internal Revenue Service, the Joint Committee on Taxation and the Board of the Center on Federal Financial Institutions.
He lives in Fairfax, Virginia, with his wife Julie, who is a psychologist, their children Danny, 16, and Becca, 13, and two golden retrievers.
Thomas D. Gallagher
Senior Managing Director
ISI Group, Inc.
THOMAS D. GALLAGHER is a Senior Managing Director and Head of Policy Research for the International Strategy and Investment Group Inc. Tom runs ISI’s Washington office, which analyzes the financial market implications of policy actions and political developments for institutional investors. His 20 years in Wall Street jobs have been spent at ISI and Lehman Brothers. Prior to that, Tom worked for 8 years in the Federal government, mainly on Capitol Hill.
ISI’s Washington team has been ranked #1 the last four years on the Institutional Investor's All-Star Team, which is based on a survey of money managers. He is on the Editorial Advisory Board of Mental Floss magazine. Tom was a regular panelist on “Wall Street Week with Louis Rukeyser” and served on the Community First Bankshares Board of Directors.
Tom has degrees from the University of South Dakota and the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. He is also a Chartered Financial Analyst.
Howard Gruenspecht
Deputy Administrator
Energy Information Administration
Over the past 25 years, Dr. Gruenspecht has worked extensively on electricity policy issues, including restructuring and reliability, regulations affecting motor fuels and vehicles, energy-related environmental issues, and economy-wide energy modeling. Before joining EIA, he was a Resident Scholar at Resources for the Future. From 1993 to 2000, Dr. Gruenspecht served as Director of Economic, Electricity and Natural Gas Analysis in the Department of Energy's (DOE) Office of Policy, having originally come to DOE in 1991 as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Economic and Environmental Policy. His accomplishments as a career senior executive at DOE have been recognized with two Presidential Rank Awards.
Prior to his service at DOE, Dr. Gruenspecht was Senior Staff Economist at the Council of Economic Advisers (1989-1991), with primary responsibilities in the areas of environment, energy, regulation, and international trade. His other professional experience includes service as a faculty member at the Graduate School of Industrial Administration, Carnegie-Mellon University (1981-1988), Economic Adviser to the Chairman of the U.S. International Trade Commission (1988-1989), and Assistant Director, Economics and Business, on the White House Domestic Policy Staff (1978-1979).
Dr. Gruenspecht received his B.A. from McGill University in 1975 and his Ph.D. in Economics from Yale University in 1982.
William F. Hagy III
Rural Development Deputy Administrator, Business Programs
U.S. Department of Agriculture
As the Rural Development Business Programs, Deputy Administrator since July 1996, Mr. Hagy administers a combined loan and grant portfolio of over $6.5 billion and budget appropriations for fiscal year 2007 of $1.6 billion. This is done through the organizational structure of two National Office Divisions with 34 employees and a nationwide field organization serving the 50 States, the Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, and the Western Pacific Territories.
Under his direction, Business Programs are administered for the Rural Development mission area including the Business and Industry Guaranteed/Direct Loan, Rural Business Opportunity Grant, Rural Business Enterprise Grant, Rural Economic Development Loan/Grant, Renewable Energy Systems/Energy Efficiency Improvements Program, Biomass Research and Development Grant, and the Intermediary Relending Programs. Mr. Hagy has received extensive financial management training and is a recipient of the Vice President Gore’s National Performance Review Hammer Award for his efforts in streamlining the Business and Industry Guaranteed Loan Program regulation, which reduced the number of application forms and automated the application process. Mr. Hagy was the recipient of the Secretary of Agriculture Honor Award in Fiscal Year 2003 for Superior Service to the Department in the delivery of Business Programs.
Ethan Harris
Chief Economist
Lehman Brothers
Mr. Harris is managing director and chief economist at Lehman Brothers in New York. He is responsible for the firm’s forecast and analysis of the US economy. In this capacity Ethan has written extensively about the linkages between geopolitical events and the economy, the unique nature of the current business cycle, and the outlook for monetary and fiscal policy. Mr. Harris’ work has received extensive coverage and in both the print and broadcast media. In 2006 his team earned the number one ranking among economists for the fixed income Institutional Investor poll. Ethan joined Lehman Brothers in 1996.
Prior to joining Lehman Brothers, Ethan worked for nine years at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. At the Bank he served as the research officer in charge of the Domestic Division, and as the assistant to the President of the Bank. Ethan also worked for several years as an international economist at JP Morgan.
Mr. Harris has a PhD in Economics from Columbia University, where he was a University Fellow. He earned a BA in economics from Clark University.
Steve Harris
Senior Vice President and Special Counsel
Apco Worldwide
Steve Harris joined Apco Worldwide as senior vice president and special counsel in March 2007. Prior to that, Harris served at Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs as majority and Democratic staff director and chief counsel to the full committee, as well as staff director and chief counsel to the securities subcommittee. He worked with Sen. Paul Sarbanes during consideration and passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, and is widely credited as a primary engineer of the sweeping reform legislation that dramatically changed the U.S. securities, accounting and corporate governance landscape.
During more than two decades working in Congress, Harris was deeply involved in all aspects of the committee’s legislative process where he dealt extensively with all sectors of the financial services industry. The committee’s jurisdiction also included consumer protection; economic stabilization and defense production; export controls and foreign trade promotion; federal monetary policy, including the Federal Reserve System; and federal subsidies to commerce and industry. Harris has experience in handling crises, including the Whitewater investigation, Enron and WorldCom.
Prior to his service on the committee, Harris served as counsel to the late former Cong. Barbara Jordan (D-TX) and was a representative to President Carter’s National Commission for the Review of Antitrust Laws and Procedures. A member of the D.C. Bar Association, Harris was an attorney with the Legal Services Corporation and the Office Economic Opportunity. He started his career working at Time, Inc. He is a member of the Executive Council of the Federal Bar Association Securities Law Committee, and on the Board of Directors of the Washington Campus.
Kevin A. Hassett
Director, Economic Policy Studies
American Enterprise Institute
Kevin A. Hassett is director of Economic Policy Studies and Resident Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. Before joining AEI, Dr. Hassett was a senior economist at the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System and an associate professor of economics and finance at the Graduate School of Business of Columbia University. He was the chief economic advisor to John McCain during the 2000 primaries. He has also served as a policy consultant to the U.S. Department of the Treasury during both the former Bush and Clinton administrations. He holds a B.A. from Swarthmore College and a Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania.
Dr. Hassett is a member of the Joint Committee on Taxation's Dynamic Scoring Advisory Panel. He is the author, coauthor or editor of six books on economics and economic policy. He has published scholarly articles in the American Economic Review,the Economic Journal,the Quarterly Journal of Economics,the Review of Economics and Statistics,the Journal of Public Economics, and many other professional journals. His popular writings have been published in the Wall Street Journal, the Atlantic Monthly, USA Today, the Washington Post, and numerous other outlets. His economic commentaries are regularly aired on radio and television including recent appearances on the Today Show, the CBS Morning Show, Newshour with Jim Lehrer, Hardball, Moneyline, and Power Lunch
Devon Herrick
Senior Fellow, National Center for Policy Analysis
Chair, NABE Health Economics Roundtable
Devon Herrick, Ph. D., concentrates on health care issues, such as Internet-based medicine, health insurance and the uninsured, as well as pharmaceutical drug issues. Other areas which Dr. Herrick focuses on include managed care, patient empowerment, medical privacy and technology-related issues.
Dr. Herrick has been responsible for the NCPA's computer and information services, as well as oversight of the design and maintenance of the NCPA's award-winning Web site - Idea House. He has training in financial analysis and health economics, and has conducted several major research projects for the NCPA, having published several research studies and papers on health policy. Herrick is a sought-after speaker on health policy issues.
Prior to joining the NCPA, Dr. Herrick was a research assistant at the Bruton Center for Development Studies at the University of Texas at Dallas. The Bruton Center integrates geographic information systems, spatial analysis, and exploratory data analysis in the social sciences, applying research on trends, forces, and public policy. In addition, he spent six years working in health care accounting and financial management for a Dallas-area health care system.
Dr. Herrick received a Ph.D. in Political Economy and a Master of Public Affairs from the University of Texas at Dallas with a concentration in economic development. Dr. Herrick's dissertation research examined patient empowerment through empirical analysis of the Internet and disease advocacy.
He also holds an MBA with a concentration in finance from Oklahoma City University and an MBA from Amber University, as well as a BS in accounting from the University of Central Oklahoma.
Douglas Holtz-Eakin
Economic Policy Chair
John McCain 2008, The Exploratory Committee
Michael T. Kiley
Chief, Macroeconomic and Quantitative Studies Section
Federal Reserve Board
Michael Kiley is Chief of the Macroeconomic and Quantitative Studies Section, Division of Research and Statistics at the Federal Reserve Board. His fields of interest are Macroeconomics, Monetary Economics, and Econometrics and Statistics.
He has been at the Board of Governors since 1996, and has also served at the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development. He has also been a Lecturer at The Johns Hopkins University, and Visiting Assistant Professor, The University of Michigan at Ann Arbor.
He has a B.A., Economics, from the University of Delaware, 199. He has an M.A. and a Ph.D. from the University of Maryland at College Park.
Jeffrey R. Kling
Senior Fellow and Deputy Director of Economic Studies
Brookings Institution
Jeffrey Kling is Deputy Director and Senior Fellow in the Economic Studies program at the Brookings Institution. Kling is co-director of the Policy Evaluation Project, which coordinates the selection, design, implementation, and analysis of randomized experiments conducted in partnership with private firms and government agencies that test policy innovations. He is also currently examining unemployment insurance, Medicare prescription drug insurance, and other aspects of social insurance in the U.S.
Over the past ten years he has led interdisciplinary teams of researchers in studies of housing vouchers and the effects of moving out of high-poverty neighborhoods, based on extensive data collection about experiences of families in HUD’s Moving To Opportunity randomized voucher experiment. He has also examined the effects of incarceration on reintegration into the labor market after release from prison. He was awarded a Faculty Early Career Development Award from the National Science Foundation and a Scholar Award from the W. T. Grant Foundation for his work integrating qualitative and quantitative research methods in identifying the causal effects of public policies. The results of this research have been published in leading journals, including the American Economic Review, Econometrica, and the Quarterly Journal of Economics.
Kling has previously served as Assistant Professor of Economics and Public Affairs in the Department of Economics and the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University, Special Assistant to the Secretary at the United States Department of Labor, and Assistant to the Chief Economist at the World Bank. He is a graduate of Harvard University where he was elected Phi Beta Kappa with a bachelor’s degree in Economics he and holds a PhD in Economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Randall S. Kroszner
Governor
Federal Reserve Board
Randall S. Kroszner took office on March 1, 2006, to fill an unexpired term ending January 31, 2008.
Before becoming a member of the Board, Dr. Kroszner was Professor of Economics at the Graduate School of Business of the University of Chicago from 1999 to 2006. He was also Assistant Professor (1990-1994) and Associate Professor (1994-1999) at the University. Dr. Kroszner was Director of the George J. Stigler Center for the Study of the Economy and the State and editor of the Journal of Law & Economics. He was a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, and a director at the National Association for Business Economics. Dr. Kroszner also was a member of the Federal Economic Statistics Advisory Committee at the Bureau of Labor Statistics in the Department of Labor.
Before joining the Board, Dr. Kroszner served the Federal Reserve System in several roles. He was a visiting scholar at the Board of Governors and a research consultant and a member of the Academic Advisory Panel at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. Dr. Kroszner also has been a visiting scholar at the Federal Reserve Banks of New York, St. Louis, Kansas City, and Minneapolis.
Dr. Kroszner was a member of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) from 2001 to 2003. While at the CEA, he was heavily involved in formulating the policy response to corporate governance scandals, as well as in advising on a wide range of domestic and international issues, including banking and financial regulation, government-sponsored enterprises, pension reform, corporate governance reform, terrorism risk insurance, tax reform, currency crisis management, sovereign debt restructuring, the role of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), international trade, and economic development.
Dr. Kroszner has been a visiting scholar at the Securities and Exchange Commission; the IMF; the Stockholm School of Economics, Sweden; the Free University of Berlin, Germany; Stockholm University, Sweden; and the London School of Economics. He was the John M. Olin Visiting Fellow in Law and Economics at the University of Chicago Law School and the Bertil Danielson Visiting Professor of Banking and Finance at the Stockholm School of Economics.
Dr. Kroszner’s research interests include conflicts of interest in financial services firms, international financial crises, corporate governance, debt restructuring and bankruptcy, and monetary economics.
Dr. Kroszner was born on June 22, 1962, in Englewood, New Jersey. He received an Sc.B. (magna cum laude) in applied mathematics-economics (honors) from Brown University in 1984 and an M.A. (1987) and Ph.D. (1990), both in economics, from Harvard University
Jun Kurihara
Fellow, Center for Business and Government, Kennedy School of Government
Harvard University
Jun Kurihara, a Senior Fellow, was a Senior Economist at the Fujitsu Research Institute (FRI) in Japan. His research focuses on Japan's industrial rejuvenation from the perspective of venture capital activity. In addition to his work with FRI, he has taught at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, chaired the Working Group on Economic Statistics and served as a Senior Member of the Japan Statistics Council for the Government of Japan. Kurihara earned his Masters degree in 1993 from Kyoto University. While at M-RCBG, he is conducting research on Japan's response to globalization with Dennis Encarnation, Director of the Asia-Pacific Policy Program.
Kevin Lindemer
Executive Managing Director-Energy
Global Insight
Kevin Lindemer is the Executive Managing Director for Energy at Global Insight based in Lexington, MA with 22 years of experience in the oil and downstream industries. Prior to joining Global Insight in July 2005, he was the Director of Strategy and Business Development at Irving Oil Corporation in Saint John, NB for two and half years and a Senior Director in the Oil Practice at Cambridge Energy Research Associates (CERA) in Cambridge, MA for 14 years. Prior to joining CERA, Mr. Lindemer was a planning and strategy analyst for CENEX Petroleum based in St. Paul, MN.
Mr. Lindemer is an expert on the global oil industry and has specialized on downstream (refining and marketing) operations. He has worked on consulting and research projects around the world in the oil and downstream oil business. In addition, he has written several papers covering many aspects of the oil industry.
Mr. Lindemer has a Master's Degree in Agricultural and Applied Economics from the University of Wyoming and a Bachelor of Science Degree from the University of Minnesota.
Lawrence B. Lindsey
President and CEO
The Lindsey Group
Larry Lindsey is President and Chief Executive Officer of The Lindsey Group. He has held leading positions in government, academia, and business. Prior to forming The Lindsey Group, he held the position of Assistant to the President and Director of the National Economic Council at the White House and was the Chief Economic Advisor to candidate George W. Bush during the 2000 Presidential campaign.
Dr. Lindsey also served as a Governor of the Federal Reserve System from 1991 to 1997, as Special Assistant to the President for Domestic Economic Policy during the first Bush Administration, and as Senior Staff Economist for Tax Policy at the Council of Economic Advisers during President Reagan's first term. Dr. Lindsey served five years on the Economics faculty of Harvard University and held the Arthur F. Burns Chair for Economic Research at the American Enterprise Institute. From 1997 until 2001 he was Managing Director of Economic Strategies, a global consulting firm.
Dr. Lindsey earned his A.B. Magna Cum Laude from Bowdoin College and his M.A. and Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University. He was awarded the Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation Award by the National Tax Association and named the Citicorp Wriston Fellow for Economic Research at the Manhattan Institute. He is the author of numerous articles and two books: The Growth Experiment and Economic Puppet Masters.
Michael C. Lynch
President
Strategic Energy & Economic Research, Inc.
Mr. Lynch has over twenty years of experience analyzing international energy, particularly oil and gas markets. He has numerous publications in four languages and speaks regularly at international conferences. He is the primary author of Global Petroleum SEER and Global Petroleum Outlook, which provide short- and long-term oil market analyses.
Mr. Lynch's previous work has included computer modeling of the world oil market and estimation of the economics of supply for both world oil and natural gas, including LNG supply, and market behavior under normal and disrupted conditions. He has also given testimony and advice to committees of the U.S. Congress and the United Nations, the World Bank and the International Energy Agency.
Before coming to Strategic Energy & Economic Consulting , Inc., Mr. Lynch was Vice President of Oil Services at WEFA, Inc. Prior to coming to WEFA he was Director, Asian Energy and Security, at the Center for International Studies, M.I.T., as well as a Lecturer in the Diplomatic Training Program at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University. Prior to that, he held a number of research positions at M.I.T., as well as serving as a senior associate for the Washington International Energy Group. His work consisted primarily of advising corporations, governments and industry associations on world oil and gas markets and energy security policy.
Donald B. Marron
Deputy Director
Congressional Budget Office
Donald B. Marron is with the Congressional Budget Office where he has served as Deputy Director and Acting Director. Prior to that, Dr. Marron served as Chief Economist for the President's Council of Economic Advisers. In that capacity, he analyzed a broad range of fiscal, regulatory, and macroeconomic policies and directed a team that monitored the state of the economy and developed economic forecasts.
Prior to holding that post, Dr. Marron was the Executive Director and Chief Economist of the Congress's Joint Economic Committee, where he led a team that advised Members of Congress and Congressional staff about the performance of the economy, fiscal policy challenges, and the impacts of legislative proposals.
Before his government service, Dr. Marron was chief financial officer of a medical software start-up in Austin, Texas, and a principal and senior associate with the Washington, D.C., office of Charles River Associates, where he provided business consulting and litigation support to companies in a variety of industries. He also served as an assistant professor of economics at the University of Chicago's Graduate School of Business from 1994 to 1998, where he taught courses in microeconomics, entrepreneurial finance and private equity, and environmental policy.
Dr. Marron has published articles on a broad range of topics, including tax policy, intellectual property, and energy and environmental policy.
Robert T. McGee
Chief Economist
United States Trust Company NA
Tim McGee is Chief Economist at U.S. Trust. He is responsible for the economic forecast and other economic research with a focus on investment strategy. In addition, he serves on the Finance and Investment Strategy Committees.
Prior to joining U.S. Trust, Mr. McGee was a strategist and economist with UFJ and Tokai Banks. He is well known in Japan for his regular market column in the Nikkei Financial Daily. In 2000, Business Week magazine recognized him for making the most accurate forecast in its annual survey of economists. More recently, both Bloomberg and USA Today recognized him for outstanding forecasting accuracy. He has appeared on CNBC, Reuters, and Bloomberg TV and has often been quoted in various publications like the Wall Street Journal and Financial Times.
Mr. McGee began his career in the academic world teaching at Florida State University and New York University. He also spent three years at the New York Federal Reserve Bank and one year as a fellow at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Studies. He has published numerous articles in academic journals.
Tim received his B.S. from the Georgia Institute of Technology and his M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Wisconsin. Some of his memberships include the American Economic Association, the National Association of Business Economics, The Forecasters Club of New York and the Money Marketeers. He currently serves as Chairman of the American Banker Association’s Economic Advisory Committee. In that capacity he will also serve on the ABA Government Relations Committee. Recently, he joined the New York City Economic Advisory Panel.
Joseph Minarik
Director of Research
Committee for Economic Development
Joseph J. Minarik is the Senior Vice President and Director of Research at CED. Dr. Minarik leads policy research projects on CED’s agenda, including; economy and the federal budget; globalization; trade; early childhood education; campaign finance reform; and digital copyright.
From 1981 to 1986, Dr. Minarik worked closely with Congressional Democrats, including Senator Bill Bradley, on efforts to reform the Federal income tax. Dr. Minarik published Making Tax Choices (Urban Institute Press, 1985) and many articles on this issue, testified before the Congress on numerous occasions, served on the faculty of the two retreats of the House Ways & Means Committee, and worked informally with policymakers on the evolution of the legislation.
In 1991 and 1992, Dr. Minarik served as Executive Director for Policy and Chief Economist of the Budget Committee of the House of Representatives, for then-Chairman Leon E. Panetta. When Chairman Panetta was nominated as Director of the Office of Management and Budget in 1993, Dr. Minarik became OMB’s Associate Director for Economic Policy, and worked on the formulation and adoption of President Bill Clinton’s 1993 economic program. When the Federal budget became a leading issue in 1995 and 1996, Dr. Minarik worked with then-Chief of Staff Panetta and new OMB Director Alice M. Rivlin in the formulation of the Administration’s program to eliminate the budget deficit, which evolved into the bipartisan balanced budget agreement of 1997.
Dr. Minarik joined CED in January 2005 from his position as Policy Director and Chief Economist for the House Budget Committee.
Dr. Minarik received three graduate degrees in economics from Yale University, earning his Ph.D. in 1974. He received his B.A. in economics from Georgetown University in 1971.
Joe and his wife Eileen live in Reston, VA. They have two grown daughters are expecting their first grandchild.
Norm Ornstein
Senior Fellow
American Enterprise Institute
Norman J. Ornstein is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research. He also serves as an election analyst for CBS News and writes a weekly column called "Congress Inside Out" for Roll Call newspaper. He has written for the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Foreign Affairs, and other major publications, and regularly appears on television programs like The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, Nightline, and Charlie Rose.
He serves as senior counselor to the Continuity of Government Commission, working to ensure that our institutions of government can be maintained in the event of a terrorist attack on Washington; his efforts in this area are recounted in a profile of him in the June 2003 Atlantic Monthly. His campaign finance working group of scholars and practitioners helped shape the major law, known as McCain/Feingold, that reformed the campaign financing system. Legal Times referred to him as "a principal drafter of the law" and his role in its design and enactment was profiled in the February 2004 issue of Washington Lawyer. He is also co-directing a multi-year effort, called the Transition to Governing Project, to create a better climate for governing in the era of the permanent campaign.
He is a member of the Board of Directors of the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) and the Campaign Legal Center and of the Board of Trustees of the U.S. Capitol Historical Society. He was elected as a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2004. His many books include The Permanent Campaign and Its Future; Intensive Care: How Congress Shapes Health Policy, both with Thomas E. Mann; and Debt and Taxes: How America Got Into Its Budget Mess and What to Do About It, with John H. Makin. The Broken Branch: How Congress Is Failing America and What Can Be Done about It, co-authored by Thomas E. Mann, is published by Oxford University Press.
Peter Orszag
Director
Congressional Budget Office
The Director of CBO is responsible for ensuring that all duties of the organization, as specified by law, are performed effectively, appropriately, and in a timely manner. The Director regularly consults with the budget committees to ensure that the agency's work and capacities meet and keep pace with Congressional demands.
Peter R. Orszag is the seventh Director of CBO. His four-year term began on January 18, 2007.
Before joining CBO, Dr. Orszag was the Joseph A. Pechman Senior Fellow and Deputy Director of Economic Studies at the Brookings Institution. While at Brookings, he also served as Director of The Hamilton Project, which provides a platform for scholars to offer proposals for promoting broad-based economic growth; Director of the Retirement Security Project, which focuses on promoting retirement security; and Codirector of the Tax Policy Center, a joint venture with the Urban Institute providing analysis of tax issues.
In previous government service during 1997 and 1998, Dr. Orszag served as Special Assistant to the President for Economic Policy and Senior Economic Adviser at the National Economic Council. In 1995 and 1996, he was Senior Adviser and Senior Economist at the President's Council of Economic Advisers. His first appointment with the Council was as a staff economist in 1993 and 1994.
Dr. Orszag graduated summa cum laude in economics from Princeton University and obtained an M.Sc. and a Ph.D. in economics from the London School of Economics, which he attended as a Marshall scholar. He has coauthored a number of books, including Protecting the Homeland 2006/7 (2006), Aging Gracefully: Ideas to Improve Retirement Security in America (2006), and Saving Social Security: A Balanced Approach (2004), and coedited American Economic Policy in the 1990s (2002). His main areas of research have been pensions, Social Security, budget policy, higher education policy, homeland security, macroeconomics, and tax policy--topics on which he has published widely in academic journals.
Alex Pollock
Resident Scholar
American Enterprise Institute
Alex J. Pollock has been a resident fellow at AEI since July 2004, focusing on financial policy issues, including government-sponsored enterprises, Social Security reform, accounting standards, and the issues raised by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. Previously he spent thirty-five years in banking, including twelve years as president and chief executive officer of the Federal Home Loan Bank of Chicago, while also writing numerous articles on financial systems and management. He is a director of Allied Capital Corporation, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, the Great Lakes Higher Education Corporation, the International Union for Housing Finance, and chairman of the board of the Great Books Foundation.
Adam Posen
Senior Fellow
Peterson Institute for International Economics
Adam Posen, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics since 1997, focuses on macroeconomic policy in the industrial democracies, European and Japanese political economy, economics and national security, and central banking issues. A widely cited expert on monetary policy, he has been a visiting scholar at central banks worldwide, including on multiple occasions at the Federal Reserve Board, the European Central Bank, and the Deutsche Bundesbank. In 2006 he was on sabbatical from the Peterson Institute as a Houblon-Norman Senior Fellow at the Bank of England. He has also been a consultant to several US government agencies (including the Departments of State and Treasury and the Council of Economic Advisors); the European Commission; the Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry; and the International Monetary Fund on fiscal, monetary, trade, and foreign policy issues.
Dr. Posen is the author of the forthcoming Institute book Reform and Growth in a Rich Country: Germany, which is partially supported by a major grant from the German Marshall Fund of the United States, and Restoring Japan’s Economic Growth (Institute for International Economics, 1998; Japanese translation, 1999); coauthor with Ben Bernanke et al. of Inflation Targeting: Lessons from the International Experience (Princeton University Press, 1999); and editor and part-author of three collected volumes: The Euro at Five: Ready for a Global Role? (Institute for International Economics, 2005), The Future of Monetary Policy (Blackwell, forthcoming), and The Japanese Financial Crisis and its Parallels with U.S. Experience (Institute for International Economics, 2000; Japanese translation, 2001). He has also published more than 30 papers on monetary and fiscal policy in leading economics journals, academic and central bank conference volumes. He cofounded the refereed journal International Finance (Blackwell).
He is a frequent contributor to the opinion page of the Financial Times and has also published in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Die Zeit, and Nihon Keizai Shimbun, among many other leading newspapers and magazines. He is the economics editor of The International Economy magazine and appears frequently on financial news television programs. He also is a private consultant on fixed-income markets and central bank behavior to some of the leading global financial companies and private investment firms.
From 1994 to 1997, he was an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, where he advised senior management on monetary strategies (including inflation targeting), the G-7 economic outlook, and European monetary unification. In 1993–94, he was Okun Memorial Fellow in Economic Studies at the Brookings Institution and won the Amex Bank Review Awards Silver Medal for his dissertation research on central bank independence. In 1992–93, he was resident in Germany as a Bosch Foundation Fellow. He received his Ph.D. and his A.B. (Phi Beta Kappa) from Harvard University, where he was a National Science Foundation Graduate Fellow.
Dr. Posen is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and has served on a number of Council task forces, as well as a member of the Steering Committee of the Princeton Project on National Security. He has been a fellow at the American Academy in Berlin (in 2001), fellow of the CESifo Research Network, and research associate of the Center for the Japanese Economy and Business of Columbia University.
Marshall Reinsdorf
Economist
Bureau of Economic Analysis
Dr. Marshall Reinsdorf has been a senior research economist at the Bureau of Economic Analysis since 2000. Previously he did research on the CPI and other price measurement questions at the Bureau of Labor Statistics. He holds a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Maryland.
Diane Lim Rogers
Chief Economist
House Budget Committee
Diane Lim Rogers is currently the House Budget Committee’s Chief Economist, serving Chairman John Spratt and other Democratic members of the Committee. From February 2006 to January 2007 she was Research Director of the Budgeting for National Priorities project at the Brookings Institution. While at Brookings she published several opinion pieces emphasizing the importance of fiscal responsibility and a paper on “Reducing the Deficit through Better Tax Policy.” She was also a member of the “Fiscal Wake-Up Tour” (organized by the Concord Coalition) along with U.S. Comptroller General David Walker and scholars from other leading think tanks.
From 2004 to 2006 Dr. Rogers served as Chief Economist for the House Ways and Means Committee Democrats, and prior to that was a Principal Economist covering tax and budget policies for the Joint Economic Committee Democrats. She was a Senior Economist on the staff of the Council of Economic Advisers during the last year of the Clinton Administration and first 100 days of the Bush Administration, and in President Clinton’s final Economic Report of the President (2001) drafted the sections extolling the merits of fiscal discipline. Dr. Rogers has also worked at the Urban Institute and the Congressional Budget Office, and was Assistant Professor of Economics at Penn State University.
Dr. Rogers coauthored (with Don Fullerton) the book Who Bears the Lifetime Tax Burden?, published by the Brookings Institution in 1993, emphasizing the distributional and incentive effects of broad-based taxes, and in 1997 coauthored (with Joyce Manchester) a Congressional Budget Office study on the economic effects of fundamental tax reform. Her most recent areas of research have focused on the economic effects of the Bush tax cuts, federal income tax policy more generally, interactions between federal- and state-level government programs, and the long-term budgetary pressures associated with demographic change. She continues to teach as an Adjunct Professor for the Economics Department and School of Public Policy and Public Administration at George Washington University.
Dr. Rogers received her B.A. in Economics from the University of Michigan in 1983, her M.A. from Brown University in 1984, and her Ph.D. from the University of Virginia in 1991. Her husband, John, is an economist at the Federal Reserve Board, and they have four children.
Jeffrey Schott
Senior Fellow
Peterson Institute for International Economics
Jeffrey J. Schott joined the Peterson Institute for International Economics in 1983 and is a senior fellow working on international trade policy and economic sanctions. During his tenure at the Institute, Schott was also a visiting lecturer at Princeton University (1994) and an adjunct professor at Georgetown University (1986–88). He was a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (1982–83) and an official of the US Treasury Department (1974–82) in international trade and energy policy. During the Tokyo Round of multilateral trade negotiations, he was a member of the US delegation that negotiated the GATT Subsidies Code. Since January 2003, he has been a member of the Trade and Environment Policy Advisory Committee of the US government.
Schott is the author, coauthor, or editor of several books on trade, including Trade Relations Between Colombia and the United States (2006), NAFTA Revisited: Achievements and Challenges (2005), Free Trade Agreements: US Strategies and Priorities (2004), Prospects for Free Trade in the Americas (2001), Free Trade between Korea and the United States? (2001), NAFTA and the Environment: Seven Years Later (2000), The WTO After Seattle (2000), Restarting Fast Track (1998), The World Trading System: Challenges Ahead (December 1996), The Uruguay Round: An Assessment (1994), Western Hemisphere Economic Integration (1994), NAFTA: An Assessment (1993), North American Free Trade: Issues and Recommendations (1992), Economic Sanctions Reconsidered: History and Current Policy (second edition, 1990), Completing the Uruguay Round (1990), Free Trade Areas and U.S. Trade Policy (1989), and The Canada-United States Free Trade Agreement: The Global Impact (1988), as well as numerous articles on US trade policy and the GATT.
Schott holds a BA degree magna cum laude from Washington University, St. Louis (1971), and an MA degree with distinction in international relations from the School of Advanced International Studies of Johns Hopkins University (1973).
Keith Schwer
Director, Center for Business and Economic Research
University of Nevada Las Vegas
R. Keith Schwer is director of The Center for Business and Economic Research and a member of the UNLV Economics Department faculty. Specializing in economic impact analysis, econometric modeling, feasibility analysis, and survey research, Dr. Schwer is recognized as an authority on the business and economic environment of Las Vegas, the state of Nevada, and the region. He manages the annual Las Vegas Perspective survey, serves on numerous state and local advisory boards, and acts as a resource person for televison, radio, and print media. Professor Schwer has more than 25 years of experience in business and economics research in major university programs in Maryland, Nevada, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Vermont, and Wyoming. He authors many reports and conducts both basic and applied research. Some of his recent academic research has appeared in the Annals of Regional Science, Journal of Applied Economics, the Review of Regional Studies, the Journal of Gambling Studies, the Journal of Insurance Issues, Review of Black Political Economy, Environment and Planning A, Journal of Cultural Economics, Environment and Behavior, Journal of Travel Research, International RegionalScience Review, Journal of Media Economics, and the Journal of Applied Business Research. He is a member of the American Economic Association, the Western Economics Association, the Western Regional Science Association, and the Southern Nevada Area Population Projections and Estimation Committee. He received his PhD in economics from the University of Maryland, and has two decades of teaching experience at the undergraduate and graduate levels.
Mark W. Seetin
Senior Vice President, Government Affairs
American Stock Exchange
Samantha M. Slater
Director, Congressional and Regulatory Affairs
Renewable Fuels Association
Samantha Slater is the Director of Congressional and Regulatory Affairs. Slater most recently served as Director of Public Policy for the National Corn Growers Association (NCGA) and before that as Manager of State & Regional Affairs for the Electric Power Supply Association.
Slater has a bachelor’s degree in international studies from the American University in Washington, D.C.
Judith Solomon
Senior Fellow
Center on Budget and Policy Priorities
Solomon joined the Center in January 2005 as a Senior Fellow specializing in Medicaid and SCHIP with a focus on state level issues.
Before coming to the Center, Solomon was a Senior Policy Fellow at Connecticut Voices for Children and Executive Director of the Children's Health Council where she directed the Council's work on policy analysis, outreach, education and training, and independent oversight of health care services provided through Connecticut’s Medicaid managed care program.
She also has worked as a legal services attorney specializing in the area of public benefits and has taught a course on Medicaid and SCHIP at the Yale University School of Medicine (Department of Epidemiology and Public Health).
She is a graduate of the University of Connecticut and Rutgers University School of Law in Newark.
Eva Srejber
First Deputy Governor
The Riksbank
Eva Srejber is the First Deputy Governor and first vice chairman of the Executive Board. Ms Srejber is the Governor’s alternate on the ECB General Council and represents the Riksbank on the EU’s Economic and Financial Committee. She is also a member of the ESCB’s International Relations Committee. Ms Srejber is an economist and has previously been head of the Riksbank’s Monetary and Foreign Exchange Policy Department, a member of the Board of the IMF, and Deputy CEO of Swedbank, where she was responsible, among other things, for EMU issues. She is responsible for presenting proposals to the Executive Board regarding asset management.
John Spratt
Chairman
House Budget Committee
John Spratt grew up in York,South Carolina, where he still lives. He graduated from York High School and Davidson College. At both schools, he was president of the student body. He won a Marshall Scholarship to Oxford and earned a law degree from Yale. He served as a captain in the Army from 1969-71, and was awarded the Meritorious Service Medal. In 1971, he came home to practice law. He was county and school district attorney, president of the Bank of Fort Mill, owner of a farm and small insurance agency. Active in his community, he was an elder at First Presbyterian Church, president of the Chamber of Commerce and United Way, and chairman of the Board of Divine Saviour Hospital.
First elected to Congress in 1982, John Spratt is the Chairman of the Budget Committee and a negotiator of the Balanced Budget Agreement of 1997. He sits one seat from the chair of the Armed Services Committee, and he co-chairs the Textile Caucus, the Bearing Caucus, and the Nuclear Energy Caucus.
John is married to Jane Stacy of Filbert, South Carolina, a graduate of Winthrop and Smith, and former school teacher. They have three daughters. Susan and her husband, David Tendler, are doctors, and have three children: Lily, Jack, and Max. Sarah and her husband, Brian Brennan, are doctors also, and have one child: Grace. Catherine is an attorney.
Phillip L. Swagel
Assistant Secretary for Economic Policy
U.S. Treasury Department
Phillip L. Swagel was sworn in as Assistant Secretary for Economic Policy on December 11, 2006. He advises the Secretary on all aspects of economic policy, including current and prospective macroeconomic developments and the development and analysis of the Administration’s economic initiatives.
Mr. Swagel was a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute from March 2005 through October 2006, where he conducted research on domestic and international economic issues. He served as chief of staff at the White House Council of Economic Advisers from July 2002 to February 2005, and was a senior economist at the Council from August 2000 to July 2001. Mr. Swagel was also previously an economist at the Federal Reserve Board and the International Monetary Fund, and has taught courses on macroeconomics and international economics at Northwestern University and the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business. He has published articles in academic journals and the mainstream press on topics including economic growth, international trade, and international finance.
Mr. Swagel graduated from Princeton University with an AB in economics, and received his PhD in economics from Harvard University. He lives in Maryland with his wife and three children.
Mark W. Seetin
Senior Vice President
Government Affairs
American Stock Exchange
Mark Seetin is Senior Vice President of Government Affairs at the American Stock Exchange. The Government Affairs department has primary responsibility for corporate policy development and implementation at federal and state governmental levels as well as international governmental issue response. The department serves as an interface with governmental authorities at local, state, federal and international levels. Responsibilities include drafting corporate testimony and coordinating communications with Congress as well as other federal and state level legislative and regulatory bodies
Prior to joining Amex, Mark served as a consultant to both the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), and the United States Department of Energy (DOE). From 1990 to 2004, Mr. Seetin served as Vice President of Government Affairs for the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX). Prior to joining NYMEX, Mr. Seetin served as Legislative Assistant to former U. S. Senator, Rudy Boschwitz (MN); working in the areas of Agriculture, Banking, and International Trade. From 1979-83 Mr. Seetin held the position of Commissioner of Agriculture for the State of Minnesota.
Mr. Seetin received a bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Minnesota.
Charles Steindel
Senior Vice President
Federal Reserve Bank of New York
Charles Steindel is a Senior Vice President in the Macroeconomic and Monetary Studies Function. He oversees the Group's analysis and forecasts of U.S. economic conditions. His research interests include consumer spending and saving and productivity growth. He has served as president of the Money Marketeers of New York University and the Forecasters Club of New York. He received his bachelor's degree from Emory University and his Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
His fields of interest include: Chain weighting measuring gdp, Consumer behavior, Cycle capital spending balance sheet, Growth and Productivity, Inflation estimates productivity growth, Investment, Manufacturing, Private saving, Productivity growth, Saving, Saving economic growth, Stock market consumption, Tax rebate.
Gertrude Tumpel-Gugerell
Member of the Executive Board
European Central Bank
Ms Tumpel-Gugerell graduated in economics and social sciences from the University of Vienna (Master degree with honours in 1975, PhD in 1981). In 1975, she joined the Oesterreichische Nationalbank. From 1981 to 1984, Ms Tumpel-Gugerell served as Advisor in the Cabinet of the Minister of Finance. After re-joining the Oesterreichische Nationalbank, she held various positions (including Comptroller General in charge of developing strategic planning and auditing) and was nominated Vice Governor in 1998, being responsible for the Economics and Financial Markets Department. She was Austria’s Alternate Governor of the International Monetary Fund and member of the Economic and Finance Committee. In 2003 Ms Tumpel-Gugerell joined the European Central Bank as Member of the Executive Board, being responsible for market operations (between 2003 and 2006), for human resources, budget and organisation (since 2006) and for payment systems (since 2003). Ms Tumpel-Gugerell has published on issues of economic policy, financial stability and regulation and has addressed the public in many speeches.
Lynn E. Turner
Managing Director of Research
Glass Lewis & Co
Lynn E. Turner is managing director of research at Glass Lewis & Co., an analytical proxy and financial research firm that evaluates the corporate governance and financial transparency of U.S. and international public companies. Mr. Turner was Chief Accountant at the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) from 1998 to 2001, where he oversaw the development of U.S. accounting, disclosure and auditing standards and the coordination of international accounting standards. Mr. Turner was previously an audit partner with Coopers & Lybrand (now PricewaterhouseCoopers) where he was responsible for the High Technology Audit Practice. He has been vice president and chief financial officer of an international semiconductor company as well as a professor of accounting at Colorado State University.
Gregory R. Valliere
Chief Strategist
Stanford Washington Research Group
Gregory R. Valliere is a Senior Vice President and co-founder of the Washington Research Group, which has provided political, economic and industry research for institutional investors for more than thirty years.
Mr. Valliere coordinates WRG’s political and economic research, focusing on how Congress and the White House shape fiscal policies. He is also responsible for coverage of the Federal Reserve Board’s interest rate policies.
Mr. Valliere has been covering economic and political developments in Washington for institutional investors for the past 30 years, first at The Washington Forum, the predecessor of the Washington Research Group. A co-founder of the group, Mr. Valliere joined The Washington Forum in 1974 and became chief political analyst, and editor of The Washington Forum’s publications. In 1980, Mr. Valliere was named Research Director. Currently he is WRG’s chief strategist.
He began his career in 1972 at “F-D-C” Reports, a trade publication that monitors the pharmaceutical industry, where he became Chief Congressional Correspondent and later News Editor. While in college, he was an intern at The Washington Post.
He is a regular guest on Cable News Network’s “Ahead of the Curve” and frequently appears on CNN’s “Moneyline,” CNBC’s “Market Wrap,” Fox TV’s “Your World With Neil Cavuto,” the “Nightly Business Report,” which appears on most PBS stations, and Reuters Financial Television.
Mr. Valliere earned a degree in Journalism in 1973 from The George Washington University, where for several years he taught a course in newsletter writing.
Anthony M. Yezer
Professor of Economics
The George Washington University
Professor Yezer is a member of the Department of Economics of The George Washington University where he directs the Center for Economic Research. He teaches courses in regional economics, urban economics, microeconomics, and the economics of crime. He has been a Fellow of the Homer Hoyt School of Advanced Studies in Real Estate and Urban Economics since 1991.
He served as an expert witness for the Federal Trade Commission testifying in connection with the trade regulation rule governing Consumer Credit Practices. His research interests have included the measurement and determinants of credit risk in lending, the effects of regulations on credit supply, and fair lending. He recently served on the National Research Council’s Panel on Disaster Research Needs in the Social Sciences.
His articles have appeared in the Journal of Finance, Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, Economic Inquiry, Journal of Law and Economics, Real Estate Research, Journal of Economic Perspectives, Land Economics, Journal of Economics and Business, Journal of Urban Economics, Journal of Regional Science, Regional Science and Urban Economics, and Southern Economic Journal. He edited the monograph Fair Lending Analysis: A Compendium of Essays on the Use of Statistics, currently serves on the editorial boards of five journals and is editor of the American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association monograph series.
Professor Yezer received a Bachelor's degree from Dartmouth College, continued his studies at the London School of Economics and Political Science where he earned an M.Sc. degree, and holds a Doctoral degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was Rhodes Scholarship finalist and received a National Collegiate Athletic Association Scholar-Athlete Fellowship.
