The Tax Policy Center Newsletter
September 6, 2007

Edward M. Gramlich, 1939-2007

We are very sad to report that our colleague, Ned Gramlich, passed away on Thursday morning. Ned was an exceptionally gifted and effective public policy analyst who devoted a substantial portion of his career to public service at the highest levels. The Urban Institute press release announcing his death is reproduced below.

Edward M. Gramlich, the Richard B. Fisher Senior Fellow at the Urban Institute and a member of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System from 1997 to 2005, died this morning at approximately 6:25 a.m. He passed away from leukemia at the Washington Home and Community Hospices. He was 68 years old.

"We were very fortunate to have had Ned as an engaged colleague and member of the Urban Institute family over the past 13 months," said Urban Institute President Robert Reischauer. "His scholarship set an incredibly high standard and served as a model of succinct, timely, relevant, and readable but sophisticated policy analysis.

"Ned's career encompassed an extraordinary range of interesting and challenging positions. At every point he made important contributions to our understanding of a wide variety of policy problems. Above all, Ned was clear thinking, open to new ideas, interested and interesting, gentle and uncommonly generous with his counsel. No one could ask for a better colleague or a truer friend."

Dr. Gramlich joined the Urban Institute in 2006 and focused on community redevelopment, affordable housing, and entitlement issues. His keystone work was Subprime Mortgages: America's Latest Boom and Bust, which he wrote and edited as he was undergoing medical treatment.

Long associated with the University of Michigan, Dr. Gramlich served as interim provost from 2005 to 2006. In 2005, he became the Richard A. Musgrave Collegiate Professor in the university's Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy. He was a professor of economics and public policy at the university from 1976 to 1997, dean of the School of Public Policy from 1995 to 1997, chair of the economics department (1983-86 and 1989-90), and director of the Institute of Public Policy Studies (1979-83 and 1991-95).

President Clinton appointed Dr. Gramlich to the Federal Reserve in 1997. While at the Fed, Dr. Gramlich chaired its Committee on Consumer and Community Affairs, the Airline Transportation Stabilization Board, and the Neighborhood Reinvestment Corporation. His earlier positions include chair of the Quadrennial Advisory Council on Social Security (1994-96), deputy director and acting director of the Congressional Budget Office (1986-87), director of the policy research division at the Office of Economic Opportunity (1971-73), senior fellow at the Brookings Institution (1973-76), and staff member of the research division of the Federal Reserve Board (1965-70).

Dr. Gramlich, who earned a Ph.D. in economics from Yale University, was staff director in 1992 for Major League Baseball's Economic Study Commission. He wrote a popular text on benefit-cost analysis that is now in its second edition (A Guide to Benefit-Cost Analysis, Waveland Press, 1997). Besides Subprime Mortgages, his work for the Urban Institute Press includes The Government We Deserve: Responsive Democracy and Changing Expectations (edited with C. Eugene Steuerle, Hugh Heclo, and Demetra Smith Nightingale, 1998). His other books and articles cover macroeconomic topics, Social Security, housing, budget policy, income redistribution, fiscal federalism, and the economics of professional sports.

Dr. Gramlich is survived by his wife Ruth, children Sarah and Robert, six grandchildren, his parents, two brothers, and a sister.