Speaker Biographies
Alex Brill is a research fellow at AEI. Prior to joining AEI earlier this year, he served for five years on the staff of the House Ways and Means Committee, where he was senior advisor to the chairman and chief economist. In this capacity he led the staff in work on major tax, pension, trade, and health legislation, and oversaw efforts to expand the analytical capability of the Joint Committee on Taxation’s revenue-estimating process. In addition to providing legislative and policy counsel to the chairman, Brill advised committee members about the effects of various tax, trade, health, and social security proposals and general economic trends. Prior to his work at Ways and Means, he served on the staff of the White House Council of Economic Advisers and began his career in Washington as a research assistant at AEI. He has written on a variety of tax policy issues.
Leonard E. Burman is director of the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute, and a visiting professor at Georgetown University. Burman served as deputy assistant secretary of the treasury for tax analysis from 1998 to 2000, and as senior analyst at the Congressional Budget Office from 1988 to 1997. He is the author of a book, The Labyrinth of Capital Gains Tax Policy: A Guide for the Perplexed, and numerous articles, studies, and reports. He is also a commentator for Marketplace. In his recent research he has examined the individual alternative minimum tax, the changing role of taxation in social policy, and tax incentives for savings, retirement, and health insurance.
Daniel Shaviro is a visiting scholar at AEI and is the Wayne Perry Professor of Taxation at NYU Law School. Before entering law teaching, he spent three years in private practice at Caplin & Drysdale and three years as a legislative attorney at the Joint Congressional Committee on Taxation, where he worked extensively on the Tax Reform Act of 1986. In 1987, Shaviro began his teaching career at the University of Chicago Law School, and he joined the NYU School of Law in 1995. Shaviro’s interests include tax and budget policy, entitlements and other transfers, and the political economy of taxation. His books include Taxes, Spending, and the U.S. Government's March toward Bankruptcy (Cambridge University Press, 2007), Making Sense of Social Security Reform (University of Chicago Press, 2000), and Do Deficits Matter? (University of Chicago Press, 1997).
Alan D. Viard is a resident scholar at AEI. Prior to joining AEI, he was a senior economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas and an assistant professor of economics at Ohio State University. He has also worked for the 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 has written on a wide variety of tax and budget issues.
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