June 9, 2004

Speaker Biographies

Ken Ash is deputy director of the directorate for food, agriculture, and fisheries at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in Paris. He shares responsibility for managing a comprehensive program of economic and policy research and analysis relating to the food, agriculture, and fisheries sectors, whose overall aim is to provide information and advice that would better enable countries to pursue further trade liberalization and to achieve sustainable economic growth and employment. Before joining the OECD in April 1999, Mr. Ash was the director-general for economic and policy analysis at Agriculture and Agri-food Canada. His early work experience involved the private sector, and he has worked at various levels of government in the agriculture and food policy arenas since 1978.

Claude E. Barfield is a resident scholar and the director of trade, science, and technology policy studies at AEI. He is the author or editor of a number of books on trade and science policy, including Free Trade, Sovereignty, Democracy: The Future of the World Trade Organization (2001). In 1999, he coauthored Tiger by the Tail: China and the World Trade Organization with Mark Groombridge. Before coming to AEI, he served in the Ford administration, on the staff of the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, and as a costaff director of the President’s Commission for a National Agenda for the Eighties.

Mary Bohman is deputy director for research in the market and trade economics division of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service. She served as the chair of the OECD Working Party on Agricultural Policies and Markets from 1993 to 1994. Working for J. B. Penn, under secretary for farm and foreign agricultural services, she coordinated the content of the USDA policy principles book, Food and Agricultural Policy: Taking Stock for the New Century. From 1990 to 1997, Ms. Bohman was a faculty member in the Department of Agricultural Economics at the University of British Columbia in Canada.

Tassos Haniotis is deputy head of the cabinet of Franz Fischler, EU commissioner for agriculture, rural development, and fisheries, with his main areas of responsibility encompassing external relations, trade, and enlargement, notably in the WTO Round. He joined the cabinet as a member in August 2000, focusing on the midterm review and the subsequent reform of the Common Agricultural Policy, the common market organizations, and the agricultural budget. Having joined the commission (directorate-general for agriculture) in 1989, he was responsible for developing medium-term forecasts and quantitative analyses for EU agriculture within DG Agriculture (1990–1996), and he also served as the agricultural counselor of the European Commission Delegation in the United States (1996–2000).

Kevin A. Hassett is one of the nation’s leading economists and a resident scholar at AEI. Before joining AEI, Mr. Hassett was a senior economist at the Federal Reserve Board of Governors and an associate professor of economics and finance at the Columbia University Graduate School of Business. Mr. Hassett was the chief economic adviser to Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) during the 2000 presidential campaign. He has also served as a policy consultant to the U.S. Department of the Treasury during both the Bush and Clinton administrations and provides advice regularly to numerous Fortune 500 companies. He is also the author of seven books and monographs, most recently, Inequality and Tax Policy and Transitional Costs of Fundamental Tax Reform, both with R. Glenn Hubbard. His latest book, Bubbleology: The New Science of Stock Market Winners and Losers, was published by Crown Business in 2002.

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