Affiliated Staff

Codirectors

Rosanne Altshuler, Senior Fellow, Urban Institute. Altshuler is a former professor of economics at Rutgers University. She served as Senior Economist to the President's Advisory Panel on Federal Tax Reform in 2005 and was a Special Advisor to the Joint Committee on Taxation and consultant to the U.S. Treasury Department and Canadian Department of Finance. Altshuler has published numerous articles on the economics of taxation and edited the National Tax Journal from 2001 through 2006.

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.

TPC Staff

Joy Falzarano, Project Associate, Urban Institute. Falzarano manages and updates the Tax Policy Center web site and listserve, provides general research assistance, and assists with conference planning and center management.

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. 

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.

Benjamin Harris, Senior Research Associate, Brookings Institution. Harris was formerly the Senior Economist for the Budget Committee in the House of Representatives. His specializes in tax, budget, and retirement policy.

Renee van Wisse Hendley, Senior Associate, Urban Institute. Hendley manages the overall business operations and outreach efforts of TPC, including finances, contracts and grant management, conferences, report writing, and the TPC Opportunity Fund and other fundraising efforts.

Rachel Johnson, Research Assistant, Urban Institute.  Johnson helps maintain the Tax Model and TPC website and tables.  She also provides research on the distributional and revenue effects of current legislation and tax proposals.

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.

Ruth Levine, Research Assistant, Brookings Institution.  Levine helps with research produced using TPC's microsimulation model and other research on tax reform, saving, and the federal budget.

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

Elaine Maag, 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.

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.

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

Jeffrey Rohaly, Senior Research Methodologist, Urban Institute, and Director of Modeling for the Tax Policy Center. Rohaly is responsible for developing and maintaining the TPC’s microsimulation model of the federal tax system.

Carol Rosenberg, Research Associate, Urban Institute. Rosenberg researches the distributional and revenue effects of state and local tax systems and maintains the Tax Policy Center’s Tax Facts database and State and Local Finance Data Query System.

Joseph Rosenberg, Research Associate I, Urban Institute. Rosenberg's research focus includes corporate and business taxation.  He also develops and maintains the TPC's microsimulation model of the federal tax system.

Kim Rueben, Senior Research Associate, 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.

Eugene Steurle, Richard B. Fisher Institute Fellow, Urban Institute.  Steurle returns after having served as Vice President of the Peter G. Peterson Foundation in New York City.  His work spans many issues including taxes, fiscal policy, foundations, children's budget issues, health care costs, non-profit sector, entitlements and retirement security.

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.

Roberton Williams, Senior 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.

Affiliated Scholars

Lily Batcheler, Professor of Law and Public Policy, Codirector of the Furman Academic Program, and Director of the Leadership Program in Tax Law and Fiscal Policy, New York University School of Law.

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.

Tracy Gordon, Assistant Professor, School of Public Policy, University of Maryland.  Gordon teaches public finance, public management, and social policy.

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.

Dana Campbell, Web Communications Manager, Urban Institute. Dana oversees the design, architecture and content management of the TPC web site and works with the team to develop new and exciting ways to present the wealth of TPC research via the web.

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).

Bowen Garrett, Senior Research Associate, Urban Institute. Garrett led the development of the Health Insurance Policy Simulation Model (HIPSM), a microsimulation model of health insurance coverage reforms. Garrett was recently co-principal investigator of Urban Institute’s participation in the State Coverage Initiative’s Reinsurance Institute (RI). He research interests include employer-sponsored insurance, Medicaid and the uninsured, and Medicare’s prospective payment systems. Prior to joining the Urban Institute in 1998, Dr. Garrett was a post-doctoral research fellow in the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Scholars in Health Policy Research Program at the University of California, Berkeley.

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

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, 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.