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 chief economist and senior adviser to the chairman. 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, Mr. Brill advised committee members about the effects of various tax, trade, health, and Social Security proposals and general economic trends. Prior to his work for the committee, he served on the staff of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers. Mr. Brill began his career in Washington as a research assistant at AEI. He has written on a variety of tax policy issues.
John L. Chapman is an NRI Fellow in Economics at the American Enterprise Institute. His primary fields of interest are corporate finance, industrial organization, and monetary theory and policy. He is currently researching the history and impact of private equity, and examining the effect of leveraged equity investing and buyouts on corporate governance, mergers and the market for corporate control, entrepreneurship, and economic growth. He has held positions in sales, marketing, and strategy consulting and worked for firms including Global Capital Markets Inc., Hewlett-Packard, and IBM.
Douglas Cumming is an associate professor of finance and the Ontario Research Chair at York University Schulich School of Business. He is a research associate at many institutions, including the AEI-Brookings Joint Center for Regulatory Studies, the Groupe d’Economie Mondiale at Sciences Po, Capital Markets CRC, and Venture Capital Experts. Mr. Cumming serves on the editorial boards for the Journal of Business Venturing and Venture Capital: An International Journal of Entrepreneurial Finance. He is also a member of many organizations, including the American Economic Association, American Finance Association, American Law and Economics Association, and the Association for Investment Management and Research.
Steven J. Davis is a visiting scholar at AEI and the William H. Abbott Professor of International Business and Economics at the University of Chicago Graduate Business School. Mr. Davis studies the effect of taxes on work activity, the creation and loss of jobs, the employment impact of wage-setting rules, and other labor market issues. Mr. Davis is a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. He previously taught at Brown University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He also served as a consultant and researcher at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. As a visiting scholar at AEI, Mr. Davis is studying how tax differences in states and countries lead to differences in employment, household work, and leisure time. Mr. Davis is also the vice president of CRA International, Inc.
Tully M. Friedman has thirty-five years experience in finance and more than twenty years as a private equity investor. Prior to forming Friedman Fleischer & Lowe in 1997, he cofounded and served as one of two managing general partners of Hellman & Friedman. From 1984 through early 1997, Hellman & Friedman established private equity partnerships representing more than $2.5 billion and made substantial investments in forty companies, including Levi Strauss; Mattel; Young & Rubicam; Franklin Resources; and Western Wireless, the cell phone company that became T-Mobile. Previously, Mr. Friedman was a managing director of Salomon Brothers Inc., where he founded the firm’s West Coast corporate finance department and served on the firm’s national corporate finance administrative committee. He is currently on the board of directors of The Clorox Company, Kool Smiles Holding Corp., and Mattel, Inc. He is also a trustee, member of the executive committee, and treasurer of AEI, and a trustee of the Telluride Foundation. Formerly, he was president of the San Francisco Opera Association and chairman of Mount Zion Hospital and Medical Center.
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 University Graduate School of Business. He was an economic adviser to the George W. Bush campaign in the 2004 presidential election and 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. Treasury Department 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 Press 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.
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. 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 U.S. Treasury Department; and as a consultant to the Federal Reserve Board, Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and many government agencies.
Michael Jensen is the Jesse Isidor Straus Professor of Business Administration Emeritus at the Harvard Business School. He joined the Monitor Company in 2000 as managing director of the organizational strategy practice. Previously, Mr. Jensen was LaClare Professor of Finance and Business Administration at the William E. Simon Graduate School of Business Administration at the University of Rochester, where he founded the Managerial Economics Research Center and served as its director. He is the author of more than ninety scientific papers and the founder of the Journal of Financial Economics. He served on the steering committee of the Mind Brain Behavior Initiative at Harvard University. Mr. Jensen also cofounded and is currently chairman of Social Science Electronic Publishing, Inc. He is a member of the Barbados Group, a worldwide group of a dozen scholars established to develop the ontological foundations of performance, and he is also former president of the American Finance Association and the Western Economic Association International.
Steven N. Kaplan is currently the Neubauer Family Professor of Entrepreneurship and Finance and the faculty director of the Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship at the Chicago University Graduate School of Business. He is an authority on venture capital, corporate governance, private equity, entrepreneurial finance, corporate control, e-commerce, and corporate finance. Prior to entering academia, Mr. Kaplan held positions at Booz Allen Hamilton Inc. and Kidder, Peabody & Co. Incorporated. He serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of Financial Economics, the Journal of Corporate Finance, and Financial Management. Mr. Kaplan is a research associate with the National Bureau of Economic Research. He also serves on the board of directors of Accretive Health, Columbia Acorn Funds, Morningstar, and on the advisory board of Sterling Capital Partners.
Peter Klein is associate director of the Contracting and Organizations Research Institute and a professor in the division of applied social sciences at the University of Missouri. His research focuses on the boundaries and internal organization of the firm, with applications to corporate diversification, entrepreneurship, innovation, and financial institutions. Mr. Klein held previous positions at the University of California, Berkeley; the University of Georgia; and the Copenhagen Business School. During the 2000–2001 academic year, Mr. Klein was a senior economist with the President’s Council of Economic Advisers.
Kenneth Lehn is the Samuel A. McCullough Professor of Finance at the University of Pittsburgh. His research focuses on corporate finance, including mergers and acquisitions, corporate governance, and capital structure. In addition, he has written on topics relating to the economics of professional sports. Mr. Lehn is a founding editor of the Journal of Corporate Finance. Mr. Lehn has served as a consultant for numerous firms and government agencies, including JPMorgan Chase & Co., Lehman Brothers Inc., The Walt Disney Company, Marriott International Inc., Procter & Gamble, AT&T Wireless, the National Hockey League, the U.S. Department of Justice, and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
Josh Lerner is the Jacob H. Schiff Professor of Investment Banking at the Harvard Business School with a joint appointment in the finance and entrepreneurial management units. He has held previous positions dealing with public policy and technology at the Brookings Institution, a public-private task force in Chicago, and on Capitol Hill. His research focuses on the structure and role of venture capital and private equity organizations. Mr. Lerner founded and organizes two groups at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER): the Entrepreneurship Working Group and the Innovation Policy and the Economy Group. He is a research associate in the corporate finance and productivity programs at NBER. He also serves as a coeditor of the NBER publication Innovation Policy and the Economy. Mr. Lerner is Harvard Business School’s representative on the Harvard University Patent, Trademark and Copyright Committee and the Provost’s Committee on Technology Transfer.
Adam Lerrick is a visiting scholar at AEI and the Friends of Allan H. Meltzer Professor of Economics and director of the Gailliot Center for Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University Tepper School of Business. He is studying international capital markets, particularly the role of hedge funds; international financial crises; sovereign debt restructuring; and economic development, including the impact of aid and the role of multilateral institutions. Mr. Lerrick is an adviser to the Congressional Joint Economic Committee. He served as the senior adviser to the chairman of the International Financial Institution Advisory Commission, where he analyzed the workings of the World Bank and reassessed its role in the global economy. Previously, he was an investment banker with Salomon Brothers and Credit Suisse First Boston.
Annette Poulsen holds the Augustus H. “Billy” Sterne Chair and is the head of the banking and finance department at the University of Georgia Terry College of Business. Ms. Poulsen’s research interests include corporate control, corporate contracting, and international finance. She currently serves as editor of the Journal of Corporate Finance and is also the associate editor of Financial Management, The Journal of Financial Research, and the Journal of Business Research. She was the president of the Financial Management Association International from 2001 to 2002.
Thomas U.W. Pütter is CEO of Allianz Capital Partners in Munich and is responsible for the direct private equity activities of Allianz Group. Since 2005, Mr. Pütter has also acted as managing director of Allianz Alternative Assets Holding in Munich, the Allianz Group’s holding company for its alternative asset investment activities. Prior to joining Allianz, Mr. Pütter was executive director at Goldman Sachs International and was responsible for the German-speaking region private equity business and investment banking services in London from 1992 to 1998. Between June 2005 and April 2007, he served as chairman of the German Private Equity and Venture Capital Association e.V., and in May 2007, he became the chairman of the advisory board. In March 2007, Mr. Pütter joined the advisory board for environmental technology of the German Ministry of the Environment. He holds board positions with a number of privately held companies.
David Ravenscraft is the Julian Price Distinguished Professor of Finance at the University of North Carolina Kenan-Flagler Business School. He is the associate dean of the bachelor of science in business administration program and the former associate dean of OneMBA, the innovative global executive master of business administration program offered in partnership with top schools in Europe, Asia, and Latin America. Mr. Ravenscraft’s research interests include mergers and acquisitions, antitrust, game theory, and hedge funds. He has worked with GE Capital (U.S. and Asia), StoraEnso, Monsanto, National Gypsum, GlaxoSmithKline, Siemens, Reichhold Chemicals, Nortel Networks, the U.S. Department of Justice, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, and the National Science Foundation. Mr. Ravenscraft served seven years at the Federal Trade Commission.
Rick Rickertsen is managing partner of Pine Creek Partners. Pine Creek manages a $50 million private equity fund with the goal of backing entrepreneurial executives in management buyout transactions. Prior to founding Pine Creek, Mr. Rickertsen was the chief operating officer of Thayer Capital and the founding partner of Thayer’s three corporate buyout funds totaling over $1.5 billion. In his twenty-year career in the management buyout world, he has led more than fifty buyouts, including The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company and SAGA Software. He is a director of Convera Corporation, Homeland Security Capital Corp., MicroStrategy, and United Agri-Products. He is the author of two books and is a contributing writer to the Washington Business Journal.
David M. Rubenstein is a cofounder and managing director of The Carlyle Group, one of the world’s largest private equity firms. Prior to cofounding Carlyle in 1987, Mr. Rubenstein practiced law in New York with the firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison; served as deputy assistant to the president for domestic policy in the Carter administration; and practiced law in Washington, D.C., with the firm of Shaw, Pittman, Potts & Trowbridge. Mr. Rubenstein is a member of the board of directors of the Institute for International Economics and Freedom House; the board of trustees of Johns Hopkins University, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, and the Center for Strategic and International Studies; and a member of the visiting committee of the Harvard University Kennedy School of Government and the National Advisory Committee of JPMorgan Chase.
Brian P. Simmons is a partner and one of three founders of Code Hennessy & Simmons LLC (CHS), a Chicago-based private equity investment firm formed in 1988. CHS manages over $2.5 billion of private equity capital commitments through five limited partnerships. As one of three members of CHS’s management committee, Mr. Simmons is actively involved in investment origination and approval, investment management, firm management, and fundraising. He serves as chairman of the board or director of numerous CHS portfolio companies. Prior to founding CHS in 1988, Mr. Simmons was a vice president with Citicorp’s Leveraged Capital Group based in Chicago. Prior to that, he was an officer of Mellon Bank Corporation. Mr. Simmons is a director of the Lincoln Park Zoo, The Greater Chicago Food Depository, The Latin School of Chicago, and the Chicago Public Education Fund.
Kent Smetters is an associate professor at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. He worked for the U.S. Congress from 1995–98 before joining the University in Pennsylvania in 1998 as an assistant professor. He was the Kaiser Visiting Professor of Economics in the Economics Department at Stanford University during the 2000–01 academic year. He was appointed deputy assistant secretary for economic policy of the U.S. Treasury on July 3, 2001, where he served until August 30, 2002. He remains active in Washington, DC, and recently served as a member of the Blue Ribbon Panel on Dynamic Scoring for the Joint Committee on Taxation of the U.S. Congress.
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 U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Tax Analysis, the President’s Council of Economic Advisers, and the congressional Joint Committee on Taxation. Mr. Viard has written on a wide variety of tax and budget issues.
Mike Wright is a professor of financial studies and director of the Centre for Management Buy-out Research at Nottingham University Business School. He has written over twenty-five books and more than 250 papers in academic and professional journals on management buyouts, venture capital, habitual entrepreneurs, corporate governance, and related topics. He served two terms as an editor of Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice and is currently a joint editor of the Journal of Management Studies. Mr. Wright was recently the highest ranking worldwide for publications in academic entrepreneurship.
Karen Wruck is associate dean for the master of business administration programs, Dean’s Distinguished Professor, and professor of finance at the Ohio State University Fisher College of Business. She conducts research and teaches in the fields of financial and organizational economics, specializing in corporate restructuring, financial distress, corporate governance, and management compensation. Ms. Wruck is an associate editor of The Journal of Financial Economics, the Journal of Corporate Finance, The Journal of Financial Research, and European Financial Management. Ms. Wruck serves as an academic director of the Financial Management Association and the Turnaround Management Association.
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