Speaker Biographies

William G. Gale is vice president and director of the Economic Studies Program and the Arjay and Frances Miller Chair in Federal Economic Policy at the Brookings Institution. He conducts research on a variety of economic issues, focusing primarily on tax and fiscal policy, pensions, and saving behavior. He is also co-director of the Tax Policy Center, a joint venture of the Brookings Institution and the Urban Institute. Prior to joining Brookings in 1992, he was an assistant professor in the Department of Economics at the University of California, Los Angeles, and a senior staff economist for the Council of Economic Advisers under President George H. W. Bush. He is the coauthor or co-editor of several books, including Taxing the Future: Fiscal Policy in the Bush Administration (Brookings, 2006), Aging Gracefully: Ideas to Improve Retirement Security in America (Century Foundation, 2006), The Evolving Pension System: Trends, Effects, and Proposals for Reform (Brookings, 2005), Private Pensions and Public Policy (Brookings, 2004), Rethinking Estate and Gift Taxation (Brookings, 2001), and Economic Effects of Fundamental Tax Reform (Brookings, 1996). He has also written numerous scholarly research articles, including publications in the American Economic Review, Journal of Political Economy, and Quarterly Journal of Economics, and has served as editor and editorial board member of several academic journals. He has also written extensively in policy-related publications and newspapers. Gale served on advisory boards for the Government Accountability Office, the Internal Revenue Service, the Joint Committee on Taxation, and the Center on Federal Financial Institutions.

Jane G. Gravelle is a senior specialist in economic policy at the Congressional Research Service (CRS) within the Library of Congress. She has also served at the Labor Department and the Treasury Department’s Office of Tax Analysis, and has taught at Boston University. At CRS, Ms. Gravelle specializes in taxation, particularly the effects of tax policies on economic growth and resource allocation. Her recent papers have addressed consumption taxes, dynamic revenue estimating, investment subsidies, capital gains taxes, individual retirement accounts, estate and gift taxes, family tax issues, and corporate taxation. Ms. Gravelle is the editor of the Tax Expenditure Compendium, published every two years by the Senate Budget Committee. She has published numerous papers in academic journals and is the author of a book, The Economic Effects of Taxing Capital Income (MIT Press, 1994), and coeditor of The Encyclopedia of Taxation and Tax Policy (Urban Institute Press, 1999). Ms. Gravelle is past president of the National Tax Association.

Laurence J. Kotlikoff is a professor of economics at Boston University, a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a fellow of the Econometric Society, and president of Economic Security Planning, Inc., a company specializing in financial planning software. From 1977–83 he served on the faculties of economics of the University of California, Los Angeles and Yale University. In 1981–82 he was a senior economist with the President’s Council of Economic Advisers. Kotlikoff has served as a consultant to the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the Harvard Institute for International Development, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the Swedish Ministry of Finance, the Norwegian Ministry of Finance, the Bank of Italy, the Bank of Japan, the Bank of England, the government of Russia, the government of Bolivia, the government of Bulgaria, the Treasury of New Zealand, the Office of Management and Budget, the U.S. Department of Education, the U.S. Department of Labor, the Joint Committee on Taxation, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, the American Council of Life Insurance, Merrill Lynch, Fidelity Investments, AT&T, and other major U.S. corporations. He has provided expert testimony on numerous occasions to committees of Congress including the Senate Finance Committee, the House Ways and Means Committee, and the Joint Economic Committee. He is the author or coauthor of eleven books and hundreds of professional journal articles. His most recent book, coauthored with Scott Burns, is entitled The Coming Generational Storm (MIT press, 2004). Kotlikoff publishes extensively in newspapers and magazines on issues of deficits, generational accounting, the tax structure, social security, Medicare, health reform, pensions, saving, insurance, and personal finance.

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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