Affiliated Staff

Director

Donald Marron, Urban Institute. Marron previously served as a member of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers, as acting director of the Congressional Budget Office, and as executive director of Congress’s Joint Economic Committee. Before his government service, he taught economics and finance at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business and served as chief financial officer of a health care software start-up. Marron was also a visiting professor at the Georgetown Public Policy Institute.

Co-Directors

William Gale, Arjay and Frances Miller Chair in Federal Economic Policy, Brookings Institution. Gale is a former assistant professor of economics at UCLA and senior economist at the Council of Economic Advisers. He is coeditor of Economic Effects of Fundamental Tax Reform, Rethinking the Estate and Gift Tax, and Private Pensions and Public Policies.  Gale is also director of the Retirement Security Project at the Brookings Institution.

Eric Toder, Institute Fellow, Urban Institute. Toder was previously Treasury Deputy Assistant Secretary for Tax Analysis from 1993 to 1996, Director of IRS Research from 2001 to 2004, Deputy Assistant Director for Tax Analysis at the Congressional Budget Office, 1984-88 and 1991-93, and Consultant to the New Zealand Treasury from 1988 to 1991. He is the author and co-author of numerous papers on tax policy, tax administration, and retirement issues.

TPC Staff

Samuel Brown, Research Associate, Brookings Institution. Brown previously worked at the Federal Reserve Board, where he analyzed federal receipts, federal outlays, and state budgetary conditions.

Amanda Eng, Research Assistant, Urban Institute. Eng works with the center’s microsimulation model to estimate distributional and revenue effects of federal tax reforms.

Marisa Faria, Project Manager, Urban Institute. Faria manages the overall operations of TPC including financial management, The Opportunity Fund, outreach and communications and financial and progress reporting requirements for our funders.

Norton Francis, Senior Research Associate, Urban Institute. Francis examines state and local finance issues including tax policy, revenue estimating, and budget issues.

Howard Gleckman, Resident Fellow, Urban Institute. Gleckman is the editor of TaxVox, TPC's tax and budget policy blog and formerly senior correspondent in the Washington bureau of Business Week.

Tracy Gordon, Fellow in Economic Studies at the Brookings Institution. Her research is in state and local public finance as well as political economy and urban economics. She is also an Adjunct Fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California.

Blake Greene, Project Associate, Urban Institute. Greene manages and updates the Tax Policy Center website and listserv, provides general research assistance to senior staff, and assists with media calls, center management, conference planning, and development activities.

Benjamin Harris, Senior Research Associate, Urban Institute. Harris focuses on federal tax and budget policy, state and local public finance, and retirement security. He was previously a senior economist with the President’s Council of Economic Advisers, a research economist with the Brookings Institution, and a senior economist with the House Budget Committee.

Georgia Ivsin, Research Assistant, Urban Institute. Ivsin works with the center’s microsimulation model to estimate distributional and revenue effects of federal tax reforms.

Surachai Khitatrakun Research Associate, Urban Institute. Khitatrakun examines various tax and retirement issues and is responsible for developing and maintaining the TPC’s microsimulation model of the federal tax system. He is also helping to develop the health insurance model HIPSIM.

Elaine Maag, Senior Research Associate, Urban Institute. Maag studies social assistance in the tax system, particularly for low- and middle-income families, and state taxes. She maintains the federal and payroll tax modules of the Transfer Income Model at the Urban Institute.

Abigail Major, Assistant to Co-Director Bill Gale and Project Coordinator, Brookings Institution. Major coordinates a variety of meetings, TPC events, media calls, and development activities.

Hang Nguyen, Research Assistant, Urban Institute. Nguyen works with the center’s microsimulation model to estimate distributional and revenue effects of federal tax reforms.

Jim Nunns, Senior Fellow, Urban Institute.  Nunns was the Director for Individual Taxation in Treasury’s Office of Tax Analysis from 1986 to 2007 and a staff economist in OTA from 1974 to1982.  He served as the Tax Policy Director (2007-10) and as the Tax Research Director (1982-86) for the New Mexico Taxation and Revenue Department. He has authored and co-authored a number of papers on tax policy, distribution of the tax burden, and tax modeling and analysis

Rudolph G. Penner, Institute Fellow and Arjay and Frances Miller Chair in Public Policy, Urban Institute. Penner was Director of the Congressional Budget Office from 1983 to 1987 and Resident Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute from 1977 to 1983. Previous government posts include Assistant Director at the Office of Management and Budget, Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and Senior Staff Economist at the Council of Economic Advisors. He coauthored Updating America’s Social Contract, and edited Taxing the Family.

Bryant Renaud, Research Assistant, Brookings Institution. Renaud previously worked at the Economic Policy Research Institute in Cape Town, South Africa, where he analyzed the impact of social protection policy on social and economic development in low- and medium-income countrie.

Jeffrey Rohaly, Senior Research Methodologist, Urban Institute. Rohaly develops and maintains the TPC’s microsimulation model of the federal tax system.

Joseph Rosenberg, Research Associate, Urban Institute. Rosenberg focuses on federal tax policy, including issues related to business and corporate taxation, consumption taxes, and tax incentives for charitable giving. He also develops and maintains the TPC's microsimulation model of the federal tax system.

Kim Rueben, Senior Fellow, Urban Institute. Rueben examines issues of state and local public finance focusing on state budget issues, intergovernmental relations, municipal bond markets, capital markets and the economics of education. She is also an adjunct fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California.

Fernando Saltiel, Research Assistant, Brookings Institution. Fernando works on state and local fiscal policy, energy taxes, public opinion, and fiscal history.

Yuri Shadunsky, Research Assistant, Urban Institute. Shadunsky researches state budget issues, the effects of state taxation policies on growth, state and local government employment, and other state and local finance issues.

Eugene Steuerle, Institute Fellow and Richard B. Fisher Chair, Urban Institute, was a cofounder and original co-director of TPC.  He has also served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Tax Analysis, Vice President of the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, President of the National Tax Association and original organizer and economic coordinator of the 1984 Treasury study that led to the Tax Reform Act of 1986.  His column can be found at www.governmentwedeserve.org/.

Roberton Williams, Sol Price Fellow, Urban Institute. Williams was at the Congressional Budget Office from 1984 through 2006, most recently as deputy assistant director for tax analysis, and before that an assistant professor of economics at Williams College. He has written numerous papers on tax policy, income distribution, and social welfare programs.

Visting Scholars

Steve Rosenthal, Visiting Fellow, Tax Policy Center. Steve is a tax lawyer who has practiced in Washington, D.C. for over 25 years.  He previously was a partner at Ropes & Gray and, earlier, at KPMG, where he specialized in the taxation of financial institutions and financial products (including derivative contracts).  In the 1990s, Steve was a Legislation Counsel with the Joint Committee on Taxation, where he helped draft tax rules for financial institutions, financial products, capital gains, and similar subjects. Steve is currently a member of the steering committee for the Section of Taxation of the American Bar Association and a Former Chair of the Taxation Section of the District of Columbia Bar Association.

Chris Sanchirico, Samuel A. Blank Professor of Law, Business, and Public Policy at the University of Pennsylvania. Chris has a law degree and a Ph.D. in economics, both from Yale University. In graduate school, his fields of study were mathematical economics and public finance. At Penn Law School, he teaches Federal Income Tax, Taxation of Business Entities, International Taxation, and Tax Policy. Before moving to Penn, Chris taught in the economics department at Columbia University and the University of Virginia School of Law. Chris’s research focuses on a variety of issues in tax policy using a diverse array of methodologies.

Affiliated Scholars

Rosanne Altshuler, Professor in the Economics Department at Rutgers University. She returned to Rutgers University in September of 2010 after spending a year as the Director of the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center. Prior to taking the helm at the Center she was its co-director and a Senior Fellow of the Urban Institute. She served as Senior Economist to the President’s Advisory Panel of Federal Tax Reform (2005) and acting Special Advisor to the Joint Committee on Taxation (2004). She has been a consultant to the U.S. Treasury Department and Finance Canada. Rosanne has served on the Board of Directors of the National Tax Association and edited the National Tax Journal from 2001 through 2006.

Leonard Burman, Daniel Patrick Moynihan Professor of Public Affairs at the Maxwell School of Syracuse University and Director Emeritus of the Tax Policy Center.  Burman was Treasury Deputy Assistant Secretary for Tax Analysis.

Joseph Cordes, Associate Director, Trachtenberg School of Public Policy and Public Administration and professor of economics, public policy and public administration, and international affairs, George Washington University. He was a Brookings economic policy fellow in the Office of Tax Policy, U.S. Department of the Treasury and served as a senior economist on the Treasury's tax reform project in 1984. He also coedited Encyclopedia of Taxation and Tax Policy (Urban Institute Press), now in its second edition.

Daniel Halperin, Stanley S. Surrey Professor of Law, Harvard Law School.  Previously, he taught at Georgetown University Law Center and at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. 

Lawrence Lokken, Hugh Culverhouse Eminent Scholar in Taxation, University of Florida, Levin College of Law.  Previously he taught at New York University, Northwestern University, Duke University, University of Minnesota, and the University of Georgia, as well as universities in the Netherlands, Germany, South Africa, and Poland. 

Affiliated Staff

Henry Aaron, The Bruce and Virginia MacLaury Chair, Senior Fellow, Brookings. Aaron is former director of the Economic Studies Program at Brookings, and former Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation at the Department of Health, Education and Welfare. Among his many books, he is the coeditor of Economic Effects of Fundamental Tax Reform and coauthor of Countdown to Reform: The Great Social Security Debate.

Alan Berube, Fellow, Brookings Institution. Berube's areas of expertise include urban demographics, tax and banking policies for low-income families and communities, and state and local impacts of the Earned Income Tax Credit.

Linda Blumberg, Senior Fellow, Urban Institute. Blumberg served as health policy advisor at the Office of Management and Budget during 1993-1994, working on fundamental health system reform. She and Len Nichols developed a unique microsimulation model to study the effects of health insurance reforms on workers and their employers, including health insurance tax credits.

Lisa Clemans-Cope, Research Associate I, Urban Institute. Clemans-Cope recently completed work on a simulation model of government-funded reinsurance policies.

William Frenzel, Guest Scholar, Brookings Institution. Frenzel is the Chairman of the Advisory Commission on Trade Policy and Negotiations (ACTPN) and was a member of the President's Advisory Panel on Tax Reform (2005), and his Commission to Strengthen Social Security 2002. From 1971 to 1991, he was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives (R-Minn.), where he was Ranking Minority Member of the Budget Committee and Administration Committee, and a member of the Ways and Means Committee. He was a congressional representative to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT).

Ted Gayer, Codirector of Economic Studies and Joseph A. Pechman Senior Fellow, Brookings Institution. Gayer was formerly Associate Professor of Public Policy at Georgetown University, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Economic Policy at the Department of Treasury, and senior economist at the President's Council of Economic Advisors.

Ron Haskins, Senior Fellow, Brookings; Senior Consultant at the Annie E. Casey Foundation. Haskins has served as senior advisor to the president for welfare policy at the White House; majority staff director, Subcommittee on Human Resources, Committee on Ways and Means, U.S. House of Representatives, 1995–2000; and welfare counsel, Republican staff, Subcommittee on Human Resources, Committee on Ways and Means, U.S. House of Representatives, 1986–94.

Harry Holzer, Senior Fellow, Urban Institute.  Holzer was previously Professor of Public Policy, Georgetown University, Institute Fellow, Urban Institute. A former chief economist at the U.S. Department of Labor, Holtzer is the author What Employers Want: Job Prospects for Less-Educated Workers and coeditor of The Black Youth Employment Crisis.

Adam Looney, Senior Fellow, Policy Director for The Hamilton Project, Brookings Institution. Looney's research focuses on tax policy, labor economics, inequality, and social policy. Previously, Looney was the senior economist for public finance and tax policy with the President's Council of Economic Advisers and an economist at the Federal Reserve Board.

Doug Murray, Programmer/Analyst, Urban Institute. Murray is the lead programmer for the TPC web site. He developed and maintains the databases and web scripts for both the TPC and the Urban Institute main website at www.urban.org. He also provides programming support for the Institute's Dynasim3 microsimulation model.

Austin Nichols, Research Associate, Urban Institute. Nichols examines various tax, welfare, disability, and retirement issues. Currently, he is modeling income and poverty dynamics, characterizing the incidence of the EITC, and describing the circumstances and work incentives of low-income working families.

Robert Reischauer, President Emeritus, Urban Institute. Reischauer is a former Director of the Congressional Budget Office and a former Senior Fellow at Brookings. He is the coauthor of Countdown to Reform: The Great Social Security Debate and coeditor of Setting National Priorities: The 2000 Election and Beyond.

Alice Rivlin, Adeline M. and Alfred I. Johnson Chair in Urban and Metropolitan Policy, Brookings. Rivlin is the Chair of the District of Columbia Financial Management Assistance Authority. She is a former Vice Chair of the Federal Reserve Board, former Director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, and former Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation at the Department of Health Education and Welfare. She was the founding Director of the Congressional Budget Office.

Isabel Sawhill, Senior Fellow, Brookings Institution. Sawhill is a former associate director at the Office of Management and Budget, and director of the Budgeting for National Priorities project at Brookings. Among her many books, she is an editor and author (with others) of two of the books in Brookings’ Restoring Fiscal Sanity Series.