Speaker Biographies

Christopher D. Carroll is professor of economics at the Johns Hopkins University and a research associate for the National Bureau of Economic Research in the programs on monetary economics and economic fluctuations and growth. Mr. Carroll previously worked at the Federal Reserve Board in Washington, D.C., where his responsibilities included preparation of the forecast for consumer expenditure. After moving to the Johns Hopkins University in 1995, he spent 1997–98 working at the President’s Council of Economic Advisers in Washington, where his responsibilities included analysis of Social Security reform proposals, tax and pension policy, and bankruptcy reform. Mr. Carroll’s research has primarily focused on consumption and saving behavior, with an emphasis on reconciling the empirical evidence from both microeconomic and macroeconomic sources with theoretical models. In addition to articles in economics journals, he is the author of Encyclopedia Britannica articles on consumption-related topics. He was the recipient of an Alfred P. Sloan foundation early career fellowship and of the TIAA-CREF/Samuelson Certificate of Excellence for his work on precautionary saving behavior over the life cycle. He is an associate editor of the Review of Economics and Statistics, Journal of Business and Economic Statistics, Berkeley Electronic Journal of Macroeconomics. His recent research has focused on the dynamics of expectations formation, particularly on how expectations reflect households’ learning from each other and from experts. This focus flows from a career-long interest in consumer sentiment and its determinants.

Steven J. Davis is a visiting scholar at AEI, a research associate with the National Bureau of Economic Research, a vice president with CRA International, and the William H. Abbott Professor of International Business and Economics at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business (on leave in 2007), where he has taught since 1986. Davis was previously a visiting professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a former Hoover Institution National Fellow at Stanford University. He has published widely on employment and wage behavior, job loss and worker mobility, the effects of labor market institutions, business dynamics, competition issues, industrial organization, economic fluctuations, and other topics. His research appears in The American Economic Review, the Journal of Political Economy, The Quarterly Journal of Economics, and other leading scholarly journals. He is the recipient of numerous research grants, including several from the U.S. National Science Foundation. Davis has broad experience in commercial consulting activities. In the antitrust area, he has testified and consulted on price discrimination, exclusionary practices, and collusive behavior. In the areas of mortgage lending and consumer finance, he has testified on class certification, liability, and damages. He has also offered testimony and analysis on damages in breach of contract, reasonable royalties, and lost earnings. Previous consulting engagements include matters involving auto leasing, commercial lending, financial institution goodwill, pharmaceuticals, savings institutions, software products and markets, subprime lending, viatical settlements, and workers’ compensation insurance.

Kevin A. Hassett is the director of economic policy studies and a senior fellow at AEI. He is also a weekly columnist for Bloomberg and National Review. 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.

Annamaria Lusardi is a professor of economics at Dartmouth College. She is also a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, a member of the Technical Review Committee for the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ National Longitudinal Surveys Program, and a member of the Academic Advisory Board of the Center for Private Equity and Entrepreneurship at the Tuck School of Business. Ms. Lusardi’s main areas of research are saving, Social Security and pensions, financial literacy and financial education, and entrepreneurship. In addition, she has designed surveys on financial literacy for the U.S. Health and Retirement Study, the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, the RAND Internet Panel, and the Dutch Central Bank Panel. She has won numerous research awards, including a research fellowship from the Irving B. Harris Graduate School of Public Policy Studies at the University of Chicago, a faculty fellowship from the John. M. Olin Foundation, and junior and senior faculty fellowships from Dartmouth College. In fall 2006, she participated as a U.S. delegate in the G8 conference in Moscow on improving financial literacy.

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