Static versus Dynamic Scoring

November 5, 2003

Speaker Biographies

Alan J. Auerbach is the Robert D. Burch Professor of Economics and Law, director of the Burch Center for Tax Policy and Public Finance, and former chair of the Economics Department at the University of California, Berkeley. He is also a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Previously, he taught at Harvard University and the University of Pennsylvania and was deputy chief of staff of the U.S. Joint Committee on Taxation. Mr. Auerbach has been a consultant to several government agencies and institutions in the United States and abroad. He has served as a member of the Executive Committee and as vice president of the American Economic Association and is a fellow of the Econometric Society and the American Academy of Arts and Science.

William Beach is the John M. Olin Senior Fellow in economics and director of the Center for Data Analysis (CDA) at the Heritage Foundation. As CDA director, Mr. Beach oversees Heritage’s original statistical research on Social Security, crime, education, trade, and a host of other issues, ensuring it is both rigorous in its technical scholarship and produced in time to help inform public debate on the issue. Under Mr. Beach’s leadership, Heritage has acquired one of the largest privately-held, public policy databases in the United States, as well as a variety of peer-reviewed analytical models. In addition to acquiring analytical models, Mr. Beach assists in their construction. He was instrumental in developing the state-of-the-art econometric models Heritage uses to estimate how proposed tax changes will likely affect individuals, families, and various business sectors, as well as the overall national economy.

Robert A. Dennis is the assistant director for macroeconomic analysis for the Congressional Budget Office. He has previously served as the director of national economic projections for the National Planning Association and as manager of macroeconomics for Economic Models Ltd. Mr. Dennis is a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Economic Association

Eric M. Engen is a resident scholar at AEI, where his research focuses on tax and budget policy, Social Security, household saving behavior, financial markets, and the macro economy. Mr. Engen is currently working on a book titled Social Security Reform: Sorting out the Sense from the Nonsense. He is the author or coauthor of many academic articles that have been published in the American Economic Review, Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Federal Reserve Bulletin, Journal of Economic Perspectives, Journal of Monetary Economics, National Tax Journal, and Tax Notes. Before joining AEI, Mr. Engen was a section chief and senior economist at the Federal Reserve Board in Washington, D.C. He also was an assistant professor in the Department of Economics at the University of California at Los Angeles and a faculty research fellow with the National Bureau of Economic Research. Mr. Engen received the National Tax Association’s Doctoral Dissertation Award in Government Finance and Taxation in 1992.

Martin Feldstein is the George F. Baker Professor of Economics at Harvard University and president and CEO of the National Bureau of Economic Research. He is also president-elect of the American Economic Association for the year 2003. From 1982 through 1984, Mr. Feldstein was chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers and President Reagan’s chief economic adviser. Mr. Feldstein is a member of the American Philosophical Society, a corresponding fellow of the British Academy, a fellow of the Econometric Society, and a fellow of the National Association of Business Economists. He is also a member of the Trilateral Commission, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Group of 30, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has received honorary doctorates from several universities and is an honorary fellow of Nuffield College, Oxford. In 1977, he received the John Bates Clark Medal of the American Economic Association, a prize awarded every two years to the economist under the age of forty who is judged to have made the greatest contribution to economic science. He is the author of more than 300 research articles in economics. Mr. Feldstein is a director of three corporations (American International Group; HCA; and Eli Lilly) and an economic adviser to several businesses in the United States and abroad. He is a regular contributor to the Wall Street Journal.

Bill Gale is the Arjay and Frances Fearing Miller Chair in Federal Economic Policy in the Economic Studies Program at the Brookings Institution and codirector of the Tax Policy Center, a joint venture of the Urban Institute and Brookings. His areas of expertise include tax policy, budget and fiscal policy, and public and private saving behavior and pensions. Before joining Brookings in 1992, Mr. Gale was an assistant professor in the Department of Economics at the University of California at Los Angeles and a senior staff economist for the Council of Economic Advisers. Mr. Gale has written extensively in academic journals and popular outlets and is coeditor of Rethinking Estate and Gift Taxation, Economic Effects of Fundamental Tax Reform, and two forthcoming volumes on pension reform.

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 advisor to Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.) 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. 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.

Douglas Holtz-Eakin has spent his professional career as an economist in academia and government. He is on leave from Syracuse University, where he holds the post of trustee professor of economics at the Maxwell School. His previous positions at Syracuse include chairman of the Department of Economics and associate director of the Center for Policy Research. Before Syracuse University, he held academic posts at Columbia University and Princeton University. Before joining CBO, Mr. Holtz-Eakin served for eighteen months as chief economist of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers. He also served as senior staff economist for the council in 1989 and 1990. In addition, he has been a faculty research fellow and research associate for the National Bureau of Economic Research, a member of the Economics Advisory Panel to the National Science Foundation, and a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. At the state level, he has served as a consultant for commissions and agencies in Arizona, New York, and New Jersey. Mr. Holtz-Eakin has a broad interest in the economics of public policy. He has studied the role of federal taxes in home ownership, the contribution of inventories to the business cycle, and a wide variety of topics in state and local government finance. Recently, his research has centered around the economics of fundamental tax reform; the effects of public infrastructure on productivity; income mobility in the United States; and the role of families, capital markets, health insurance, and tax policy in the success of business ventures. Mr. Holtz-Eakin has served as editor of the National Tax Journal and has been a member of the editorial boards of a wide range of economic journals including Economics and Politics, Small Business Economics, Journal of Sports Economics, Regional Science and Urban Economics, and Public Works Management and Policy.

Benjamin Page currently serves as principle analyst in the Macroeconomics Analysis Division of the Congressional Budget Office. He also operates the long-term budget model, which he helped design, for the Congressional Budget Office. Mr. Page is also involved in several other projects for the CBO, which include studies in consumption, savings, and social security. Mr. Page has published reports for the Congressional Budget office, as well as in Generational Accounting around the World and the American Economic Review.

Rudolph G. Penner is a senior fellow at the Urban Institute and holds the Arjay and Frances Miller Chair in Public Policy. Previously, he was a managing director of the Barents Group, a KPMG Company. He was director of the Congressional Budget Office from 1983 to 1987. From 1977 to 1983, he was a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. His previous posts in government include assistant director for economic policy at the Office of Management and Budget, deputy assistant secretary for economic affairs at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and senior staff economist at the Council of Economic Advisors. Before 1975, Mr. Penner was a professor of economics at the University of Rochester. He is a past president of the National Economists Club and, in 1989, he was elected to the Board of Directors of NABE and also received the Abramson Prize for the best article published in 1988–89 in business economics. His most recent publications include Updating America’s Social Contract, coauthored with Isabel Sawhill and Timothy Taylor; Errors in Budget Forecasting; Repairing the Congressional Budget Process; and Women and Individual Accounts, with Elizabeth Cove.