I was raised to believe that our first allegiance must be to the truth. In the past I’ve been fortunate to work for federal agencies that present facts and data in a nonpartisan fashion. I’m now excited to work at the Urban Institute, where I can similarly apply an evidence-based approach to important policy questions.
Robert McClelland is a senior fellow in the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center. Previously, he worked in the tax analysis division of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), where he examined the impact of federal tax policy on charitable giving and bequests, the realization of capital gains, labor supply, and small businesses. He worked for the CBO from 1999 to 2005 and from 2011 to 2016, and in between, he directed the division of price and index number research at the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
McClelland has published articles in journals such the American Economic Review, Journal of Applied Econometrics, Journal of Public Economics, National Tax Journal, and Review of Income and Statistics. He and John Greenlees wrote an article in the Monthly Labor Review that addressed some of the misconceptions surrounding the Consumer Price Index, and in 2015, he, Tim Dowd, and Athipat Muthitacharoen won the Richard Musgrave Prize for the outstanding article in the National Tax Journal.
McClelland is a member of the Conference on Research in Income and Wealth. He has taught econometrics at Johns Hopkins University, where he won an Excellence in Teaching award in 2006.
McClelland received a BA in economics and environmental studies from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and a PhD in economics from the University of California, Davis.
