Before joining AEI, Mr. 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, as well as a policy consultant to the Treasury Department during the George H. W. Bush and Clinton administrations. He served as an economic adviser to the George W. Bush 2004 presidential campaign, chief economic adviser to Senator John McCain during the 2000 presidential primaries, senior economic adviser to the McCain 2008 presidential campaign, and economic adviser to the Mitt Romney 2012 presidential campaign.   Mr. Hassett is a columnist for National Review.

Alan Viard was a senior economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas and an assistant professor of economics at Ohio State University prior to joining AEI. He has also worked for the U.S. Treasury Department's Office of Tax Analysis, the White House's Council of Economic Advisers and the Joint Committee on Taxation of the U.S. Congress. Viard is a frequent contributor to AEI's On the Margin column in Tax Notes. In January 2010, he was named by Tax Notes as a nominee for 2009 Tax Person of the Year. Viard is also the co-author of Progressive Consumption Taxation: The X Tax Revisited published in May 2012.