September 13, 2004

Speaker Biographies

Kevin A. Hassett is director of economic policy studies and a resident scholar at AEI. 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 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 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.

Stephen Hess is senior fellow emeritus at the Brookings Institution and distinguished research professor of media and public affairs at the George Washington University. His most recent book, Media and the War on Terrorism, coedited with Marvin Kalb, won the Arthur Rowse Award for Press Criticism. He is presently writing a book on how foreign correspondents cover the United States.

John R. Lott Jr. is a resident scholar at AEI. Mr. Lott has held positions at the University of Chicago, Yale, Stanford, UCLA, Wharton, and Rice and was the chief economist at the U.S. Sentencing Commission during 1988 and 1989. Mr. Lott has published over ninety articles in academic journals. He is the author of The Bias against Guns; More Guns, Less Crime: Understanding Crime and Gun Control Laws; and more recently, a book on antitrust policy titled Are Predatory Commitments Credible? Who Should the Courts Believe?. Opinion pieces by Mr. Lott have appeared in publications such as the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, USA Today, and the Chicago Tribune.

Norman J. Ornstein is a resident scholar at AEI. He serves as an election analyst for CBS News, writes for USA Today as a member of its Board of Contributors, and authors a regular column titled “Congress Inside Out” for Roll Call. In 1997 and 1998, he was cochair, with Leslie Moonves (president of CBS Television), of the President’s Advisory Committee on the Public Interest Obligations of Digital Television Broadcasters. He is the former codirector of the Renewing Congress Project and served as a member for the Commission on the Future International Financial Architecture, Council on Foreign Relations. Mr. Ornstein is codirecting a multiyear effort, called the Transition to Governing Project, to create a better climate for governing in the era of the permanent campaign, and he is also the senior counselor for the Continuity of Government Commission. He is a member of the Board of Directors of the Public Broadcasting System and of the Board of Trustees of the U.S. Capitol Historical Society and serves as a senior adviser to the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. Mr. Ornstein is the author of several books, including Intensive Care: How Congress Shapes Health Policy, Vital Statistics for Congress, and most recently, The Permanent Campaign and Its Future, all coauthored with Thomas E. Mann. He is a former professor at Catholic and Johns Hopkins Universities.

Donald O. Parsons is professor and chair of the Department of Economics and director of the Research Program in Labor and Social Insurance at George Washington University. He came to George Washington University in January 1998. He previously served as professor of economics at the Ohio State University and has held appointments at the University of Siena (Italy) as a Fulbright professor (1991); Centre for Socio-legal Studies (Wolfson College, Oxford University) as visiting scholar (1993); Copenhagen Business School as visiting professor (1998); and Soong Sil University as distinguished foreign scholar, Brain Korea 21 Project, 2001. Mr. Parsons’s primary professional interests are in the areas of labor economics and social insurance design. Although he has undertaken research on a variety of human resource topics, including the economics of intergenerational wealth transfers, trade union behavior, and minimum wages, he has focused on the economics of employment contracting, especially job training, wage policy and worker turnover, and retirement policies. He has also written extensively on the social security disability system, considering its impact on labor markets and its optimal design. His current work centers around the foundations of the U.S. “unemployment insurance” system, including private severance pay plans.

Jack Shafer is a Slate editor at large. He edited two city weeklies, Washington City Paper and SF Weekly, before joining Slate prior to its 1996 launch. Mr. Shafer has written on new media, the press, and drug policy for publications big (New York Times Magazine) and small (Inquiry). His “Press Box” column appears several times a week in Slate.

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