Speaker Biographies
November 10, 2005
Leonard Burman is a senior fellow at the Urban Institute and co-director of the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center. He is an expert in public finance and in modeling the effects of government policies on individuals' and firms' decisions. He has held high-level positions in both the executive and legislative branches, serving as deputy assistant secretary for Tax Analysis at the Treasury Department from 1998 to 2000, and as senior analyst at the Congressional Budget Office. At the Treasury Department, he was responsible for the development and economic analysis of tax policy proposals. He played a lead role in the design of the administration's proposal for Universal Savings Accounts, aimed at expanding retirement savings for the millions of workers who currently lack coverage. Mr. Burman is also a visiting professor at Georgetown University's Public Policy Institute, and had previously taught economics at George Washington University and Bates College. Mr. Burman is the author of The Labyrinth of Capital Gains Tax Policy: A Guide for the Perplexed, and numerous articles, studies, and reports. Mr. Burman's current research is focused on the changing role of taxation in social policy, pension and retirement policy, and tax policy with respect to health insurance.
Jonathan Gruber is a professor of economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he has taught since 1992. He is also the director of the Program on Children at the National Bureau of Economic Research, where he is a research associate. He is a co-editor of the Journal of Health Economics, and an associate editor of the Journal of Public Economics. He has received an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Research Fellowship, a FIRST award from the National Institute on Aging, and the Kenneth Arrow Award for the Best Paper in Health Economics in 1994. He was also one of 15 scientists nationwide to receive the Presidential Faculty Fellow Award from the National Science Foundation in 1995. During the 1997-1998 academic year, Mr. Gruber was on leave as deputy assistant secretary for economic policy at the Treasury Department. Mr. Gruber's research focuses on the areas of public finance and health economics. His recent areas of interest include the economics of employer-provided health insurance, the efficiency of our current system of delivering health care to the indigent, the effect of the Social Security program on retirement behavior, and the economics of smoking.
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 Graduate School of Business of Columbia University. 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 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, including the AEI book on tax reform, Toward Fundamental Tax Reform. 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, CBS’s Morning Show, Newshour with Jim Lehrer, Hardball, Moneyline, and Power Lunch.
Charles Murray is the W.H. Brady Scholar in Culture and Freedom at AEI. A political scientist by training, he researches family, culture, crime, education, and welfare. His most recent book, published in 2003, is Human Accomplishment: The Pursuit of Excellence in the Arts and Sciences, 800 B.C. to 1950 (HarperCollins, 2003). His other works include Losing Ground: American Social Policy, 1950–1980 (Basic Books, 1984); In Pursuit: Of Happiness and Good Government (Simon & Schuster, 1988); The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life (with Richard J. Herrnstein, Free Press, 1994); and What It Means to Be a Libertarian: A Personal Interpretation (Broadway Books, 1997).
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