Speaker Biographies
Rosanne Altshuler is an associate professor in the economics department at Rutgers University. Ms. Altshuler has published numerous articles on the economics of taxation in scholarly journals and books. Her work has also appeared in Tax Notes and Tax Notes International. Ms. Altshuler recently served as a senior economist to the President’s Advisory Panel of Federal Tax Reform. Prior to joining the panel, she was acting as a special adviser to the Joint Committee on Taxation. Rosanne has served on the board of directors of the National Tax Association and has edited the National Tax Journal since 2001. She has taught at Columbia University, Princeton University, and New York University School of Law, among others.
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. Mr. Auerbach previously taught at Harvard University and the University of Pennsylvania, where he also served as chair of the economics department. Mr. Auerbach was the deputy chief of staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation in 1992 and has been a consultant to several government agencies and institutions in the United States and abroad. A former vice president of the American Economic Association, he was editor of the association’s Journal of Economic Perspectives and is now editor of its new American Economic Journal: Economic Policy. Mr. Auerbach is a fellow of the Econometric Society and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Thomas A. Barthold is the acting chief of staff for the Joint Committee on Taxation, having joined the committee staff in 1987. His primary responsibilities are capital gains taxation, savings incentives, environmental and energy taxes, estate and gift taxation, the taxation of multinational enterprises, the low-income housing tax credit, tax-exempt bonds, and charitable organizations. Before moving to Washington, Mr. Barthold was a member of the economics faculty of Dartmouth College. His publications include studies of capital gain realizations, charitable bequests, and measuring the distribution of the tax burden.
Robin Beran is the director of corporate tax and assistant treasurer for Caterpillar Inc., the world’s largest manufacturer of construction and mining equipment, diesel engines, and industrial gas turbines. Mr. Beran has been the chief tax officer since 1990. He is active with many industry and tax-oriented organizations, including the Forum for Analysis of Corporate Taxation, the Tax Council and the Tax Council Policy Institute, and the MAPI Tax Councils. Mr. Beran spent sixteen years with Price Waterhouse, including two years in technical tax services.
Jared Bernstein joined the Economic Policy Institute in 1992. He is the author of the new book All Together Now: Common Sense for a Fair Economy (Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2006). His areas of research include income inequality and mobility, trends in employment and earnings, low-wage labor markets and poverty, international comparisons, and the analysis of federal and state economic policies. Between 1995 and 1996, Mr. Bernstein held the post of deputy chief economist at the Department of Labor. He is the coauthor of seven editions of the book State of Working America (Economic Policy Institute) and has published extensively in popular and academic venues, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, The American Prospect, and Research in Economics and Statistics .
Robert Carroll is the vice president for economic policy at the Tax Foundation. He oversees the foundation’s tax research program, with a special focus on business taxation and the need for corporate tax reform. Mr. Carroll most recently served as the deputy assistant secretary for tax analysis in the Office of Tax Policy at the Department of the Treasury. Previously, he was a visiting scholar in the Tax Analysis Division of the Congressional Budget Office. From July 2002 to June 2003, Mr. Carroll served as a senior economist for public finance with the president’s Council of Economic Advisers.
Mihir A. Desai is an assistant professor of business administration in the finance and entrepreneurial management units at Harvard Business School. Mr. Desai’s research focuses on international corporate and public finance. Within international corporate finance, he has investigated the determinants of ownership shares and capital structure choice for multinational affiliates, the advantages afforded by the internal capital markets of multinationals, the determinants of dividend remittance policy for multinationals, and the interaction between domestic and international investment decisions by firms. Within international public finance, his research has emphasized the effects of taxation on the export, financing, organizational form, and investment decisions of firms facing multiple tax regimes. Additionally, his work has also addressed the dynamics of international tax competition, the interactions of inflation and taxation in an open economy and the policy choices available to developing countries facing the loss of talent. He is a faculty research fellow in the National Bureau of Economic Research’s Public Economics Program, and his research has been cited in The Economist, BusinessWeek, and the New York Times.
Dhammika Dharmapala is an assistant professor of economics at the University of Connecticut. He is a winner of the National Tax Association’s Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation Award. Mr. Dharmapala has previously been a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University and a visiting assistant professor at the University of Michigan. His research focuses on the areas of public finance, taxation, and the economic analysis of law.
C. Fritz Foley is an assistant professor in the finance unit at Harvard Business School, where he currently teaches the required course in the first-year MBA program . He is also a faculty research fellow in the National Bureau of Economic Research’s International Trade and Investment Program. Mr. Foley’s research focuses on international corporate finance with a particular emphasis on the activities of multinational firms. He has investigated the use of international joint ventures, the determinants of multinational affiliate capital structure and dividend repatriations, the advantages associated with internal capital and labor markets, the impact of capital controls on multinationals, and the effects of stock market valuations on foreign direct investment. His recent work on how intellectual property rights influence international technological transfers has been funded by grants from the National Science Foundation and the World Bank. His academic articles have appeared in several journals, including The Journal of Finance, the Journal of Financial Economics, the Journal of Public Economics, the National Tax Journal, the Review of Financial Studies, and the Quarterly Journal of Economics.
William M. Gentry is an associate professor of economics at Williams College. Previously, he was a faculty member at Duke University and Columbia Business School. Mr. Gentry has also held visiting appointments at Princeton University and Columbia Law School. His research focuses on various aspects of taxation. Currently, he serves on the board of directors of the National Tax Association and on the editorial advisory board of National Tax Association. He has served as a consultant for the Department of Treasury and on the staff of the President’s Advisory Panel on Federal Tax Reform.
Roger H. Gordon is a professor of economics at the University of California, San Diego. He is also currently the editor of the Journal of Economic Literature, former editor of the Journal of Public Economics and the American Economics Review, a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research and the Centre for Economic Policy Research, and a fellow of the Econometric Society. Mr. Gordon’s research focuses on diverse topics in public finance.
Jane G. Gravelle is a senior specialist in economic policy in the Government and Finance Division of the Congressional Research Service (CRS). She specializes in the economics of taxation, particularly the effects of tax policies on economic growth and resource allocation. Recent papers have addressed consumption taxes, dynamic revenue estimating, investment subsidies, capital gains taxes, individual retirement accounts, estate and gift taxes, family tax issues, charitable contributions, and corporate taxation. In addition to her work at CRS, Ms. Gravelle is the author of numerous articles in books and professional journals, including recent papers on the tax burdens across families and tax reform proposals. She is the author of The Economic Effects of Taxing Capital Income (MIT Press, 1994) and coeditor of The Encyclopedia of Taxation and Tax Policy (Urban Institute Press, 1999). She is the editor of the Tax Expenditure Compendium, published every two years by the Senate Budget Committee. Ms. Gravelle is past president of the National Tax Association and received the association’s public service award in 2007.
Harry Grubert is an economist in the Office of Tax Analysis at the Treasury Department. He has published papers on international tax issues in journals such as the Journal of Public Economics, the National Tax Journal, and the Review of Economics and Statistics. Mr. Grubert is an associate editor of International Tax and Public Finance.
Kevin A. Hassett is the director of economic policy studies and a resident scholar at AEI. He is also a weekly columnist for Bloomberg. 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 Columbia Business School. He was an economic adviser to the George W. Bush campaign in the 2004 presidential election and 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 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, including Toward Fundamental Tax Reform (AEI Press, 2005). He has published scholarly articles in the American Economic Review, 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, CBS’s Morning Show, NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, Hardball, Moneyline, and Power Lunch.
James R. Hines Jr. is the Richard A. Musgrave Collegiate Professor of Economics and a professor in the law school at the University of Michigan. He also serves as research director of the business school’s Office of Tax Policy Research. His research concerns various aspects of taxation. Mr. Hines taught at Princeton and Harvard University prior to moving to Michigan in 1997, and he has held visiting appointments at Columbia, the London School of Economics, and Harvard Law School. He is a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, research director of the International Tax Policy Forum, coeditor of the American Economic Association’s Journal of Economic Perspectives. Mr. Hines was formerly an economist in the Department of Commerce.
Douglas J. Holtz-Eakin is a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics and the policy director of John McCain 2008. Mr. Holtz-Eakin most recently served as the director of the Maurice R. Greenberg Center for Geoeconomic Studies and the Paul A. Volcker Chair in International Economics at the Council on Foreign Relations. Prior to that, Mr. Holtz-Eakin served as the sixth director of the Congressional Budget Office, where he was appointed for a four-year term beginning February 4, 2003. He previously served for eighteen months as chief economist for the president's Council of Economic Advisers. Prior to that, Mr. Holtz-Eakin served as a trustee professor of economics at the Maxwell School at Syracuse University. At the Maxwell School, he served as chairman of the department of economics and associate director of the Center for Policy Research.
R. Glenn Hubbard is a visiting scholar at AEI as well as the dean and the Russell L. Carson Professor of Finance and Economics at Columbia University. He is a specialist in public finance, managerial information, and incentive problems in corporate finance and financial markets and institutions. Mr. Hubbard has written more than ninety articles and books, including two textbooks, on corporate finance, investment decisions, banking, energy economics, and public policy. He also coauthored Healthy, Wealthy, and Wise: Five Steps to a Better Health Care System (AEI Press/Hoover Institution, 2005). In a recent book, Tax Policy and Multinational Corporations , he argues that U.S. tax policy significantly affects financing and investment decisions of multinational corporations. Mr. Hubbard has worked as a consultant on taxation and corporate finance for many corporations; as a deputy assistant of the Treasury Department; and as a consultant to the Federal Reserve Board, Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and many government agencies.
William C. Randolph is an economist and a senior analyst for the Tax Analysis Division of the Congressional Budget Office. He served previously as the director for international taxation in the Treasury Department’s Office of Tax Analysis. Mr. Randolph has worked on a wide variety of domestic and international tax policy issues for the U.S. government and has published numerous journal articles in public finance and econometrics.
Gerald F. Seib is the executive Washington editor of the Wall Street Journal, and he writes the paper’s Capitol Journal column. Mr. Seib began writing for the Dallas bureau of the Wall Street Journal in 1978. In 1980, he transferred to the Washington, D.C., bureau and covered the Pentagon and the State Department. In 1982, he became a news editor responsible for the Wall Street Journal’s national political coverage of Washington around the country. In 1985, he was transferred to Cairo to cover the Middle East. In 1987, he returned to Washington, D.C., where he covered the White House and reported on diplomacy and foreign policy. He received the 1990 Gerald Ford Foundation prize for distinguished reporting on the presidency. In 1992, he was awarded the Weintel Prize by the Georgetown University Institute for Diplomacy for his coverage of the Gulf War. In 1998, he won the Merriman Smith award, which honors coverage of the presidency under deadline, and the Aldo Beckman award for coverage of the White House and the presidency. Mr. Seib was part of the team from the Wall Street Journal that won the 2001 Pulitzer Prize in the “breaking news” category for its coverage of the September 11 terrorist attacks. In 2005, Mr. Seib received the William Allen White Foundation Award.
Andrei Shleifer is a professor of economics at Harvard University. Before coming to Harvard in 1991, he taught at Princeton University and the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business. Mr. Shleifer has worked in the areas of comparative corporate governance, law and finance, behavioral finance, and institutional economics. He has published over a hundred articles and four books, including The Grabbing Hand: Government Pathologies and Their Cures (Harvard University Press, 1999), with Robert W. Vishny, and Inefficient Markets: An Introduction to Behavioral Finance (Oxford University Press, 2000). Mr. Shleifer served as the editor of the Quarterly Journal of Economics between 1989 and 1999. He has also served as an associate editor of both the Journal of Finance and the Journal of Financial Economics. He is currently the editor of the Journal of Economic Perspectives and an advisory editor of the Journal of Financial Economics. Mr. Shleifer is a fellow of the Econometric Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 1999, he won the American Economic Association’s John Bates Clark medal.
Jonathan Talisman is a founding member of Capitol Tax Partners. He was assistant secretary of the treasury for tax policy in the Clinton administration and Democratic chief tax counsel for the Senate Finance Committee. Mr. Talisman served as legislation counsel of the Joint Committee on Taxation.
Eric J. Toder is a senior fellow at the Urban Institute and Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, where he specializes in retirement policy and tax policy issues. Between 2001 and 2004, he served as director of the National Headquarters Office of Research at the Internal Revenue Service. Mr. Toder previously held a number of positions in tax policy offices in the U.S. government and overseas, including service as deputy assistant secretary for tax analysis at the Treasury Department, deputy assistant director for tax analysis at the Congressional Budget Office, and consultant to the New Zealand Treasury.
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