Speaker Biographies

The Profitability of New York Stock Exchange Specialists

October 8, 2003

Brian C. Becker is the president of Precision Economics, LLC where he specializes in valuation matters. He has written economic reports for a variety of court and public policy settings. Mr. Becker has published approximately two-dozen articles as a supplement to his consulting activities. In addition, he is a frequent speaker before government and private audiences on valuation topics. He has held teaching positions at the Business Schools of Johns Hopkins University, Marymount University, George Washington University, and the University of Pennsylvania.

Kevin A. Hassett

is director of economic policy studies and resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. 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. He was the chief economic adviser 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. Mr. 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.

Randall S. Kroszner

is a visiting scholar at AEI. He is also a professor of economics at the University of Chicago. From 2001 to 2003, Mr. Kroszner was a member of the Council of Economic Advisers, through the executive office of the president and confirmed by the U.S. Senate. From 1987 to 1989, he served as a junior staff economist on the Council of Economic Advisers. He served as a visiting scholar in the research department of the International Monetary Fund in 1993, 1994, 1995, and 2000, and he has served as a visiting scholar at Federal Reserve Banks in Chicago, New York, Minneapolis, Kansas City, and St. Louis. Mr. Kroszner is associate editor of Economics of Governance, the Journal of Economics and Business, and the Journal of Financial Services Research. He is on the editorial advisory board of Regulation and editor of the Journal of Law and Economics.

Peter J. Wallison

joined AEI in 1999 as a resident fellow and as the codirector of AEI’s program on financial market deregulation. As a partner of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP, he practiced banking, corporate, and financial law in the firm’s Washington and New York offices. As the general counsel of the Treasury Department from 1981 to 1985, Mr. Wallison helped develop the Reagan administration’s proposals for deregulating the financial services industry. During 1986 and 1987, Mr. Wallison was counsel to President Ronald Reagan. He is the author of Back from the Brink, a proposal for a system of private deposit insurance; coauthor of Nationalizing Mortgage Risk: The Growth of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac; and The GAAP Gap: Corporate Disclosure in the Age of the Internet; and the editor of Serving Two Masters Yet out of Control: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and Optional Federal Chartering of Insurance Companies, all of which have been published by the AEI Press. More recently, Mr. Wallison is the author of Ronald Reagan: The Power of Conviction and the Success of His Presidency, published in December 2002 by Westview Press.

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