Experts

William G. Gale is the Arjay and Frances Miller Chair in Federal Economic Policy in the Economic Studies Program at the Brookings Institution. His research focuses on tax policy, fiscal policy, pensions and saving behavior. He is co-director of the Tax Policy Center, a joint venture of the Brookings Institution and the Urban Institute. He is also director of the Retirement Security Project. From 2006 to 2009, he served as vice president of Brookings and director of the Economic Studies Program.

Prior to joining Brookings in 1992, he was an assistant professor in the Department of Economics at the University of California, Los Angeles, and a senior economist for the Council of Economic Advisers under President George H.W. Bush.

He is the co-editor of several books, including Automatic: Changing the Way America Saves (Brookings 2009); Aging Gracefully: Ideas to Improve Retirement Security in America (Century Foundation, 2006); The Evolving Pension System: Trends, Effects, and Proposals for Reform(Brookings, 2005); Private Pensions and Public Policy (Brookings, 2004); Rethinking Estate and Gift Taxation (Brookings, 2001), and Economic Effects of Fundamental Tax Reform (Brookings, 1996).

His research has been published in several scholarly journals, including the American Economic Review, Journal of Political Economy, and Quarterly Journal of Economics. In 2007, a paper he co-authored was awarded the TIAA-CREF Paul A. Samuelson Award Certificate of Excellence.

He has also written extensively in policy-related publications and newspapers, including op-eds in CNN, the Financial Times, Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post.

Gale serves on the editorial board of several academic journals, and has served on advisory boards for the Government Accountability Office, the Internal Revenue Service, and the Joint Committee on Taxation, and on the Board of the Center on Federal Financial Institutions.

Gale attended Duke University and the London School of Economics and received his Ph.D. from Stanford University in 1987. He lives in Washington, DC, is an avid tennis player, and is a person who stutters. He is the father of two grown children.

Howard Gleckman is a senior fellow in the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center at the Urban Institute, where he edits the fiscal policy blog TaxVox and the daily news summary The Daily Deduction. He is also affiliated with Urban’s Program on Retirement Policy, where he works on long-term care issues.

Before joining Urban, Gleckman was senior correspondent in the Washington bureau of Business Week, where he was a 2003 National Magazine Award finalist. He was a 2006–07 media fellow at the Kaiser Family Foundation and a visiting fellow at the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College from 2006 to 2008.

Gleckman writes two regular columns for Forbes.com, on tax policy and elder care. He is author of the book Caring for Our Parents and speaks and writes frequently on long-term care issues.

Roberton (Bob) Williams is an Urban Institute associate at the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center at the Urban Institute, where he focuses on communicating the Tax Policy Center’s broad range of work through papers, blog posts on TaxVox, extensive interaction with the media, and a broad range of features on the website. Twice given the Urban Institute President’s Award for Communication, Williams has spearheaded the Tax Policy Briefing Book, overseen development of interactive tax returns and four Tax Policy Center tax calculators, and written the popular whiteboard video, “Debunking Myths about Who Pays No Federal Income Tax.” He appears frequently in TV and radio interviews, and is often cited in news articles on tax issues.

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

Williams earned his undergraduate and doctoral degrees in economics at Harvard University.

Donald Marron is an Institute fellow and director of economic policy initiatives at the Urban Institute. He conducts research on tax policy and federal budgeting and identifies opportunities for Urban to develop policy-relevant research on economic and financial issues. From 2010 to 2013, he led the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center.

Before joining Urban, Marron served in senior government positions, including as a member of the President's Council of Economic Advisers and acting director of the Congressional Budget Office. He has also taught at the Georgetown Public Policy Institute and the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business, consulted on major antitrust cases, and been chief financial officer of a health care software start-up.

Marron has broad experience in economic policy issues, including America's fiscal challenges, tax reform, energy and environment, and the financial crisis. He testifies frequently before Congress, appears often at conferences and in the media to discuss economic policy, and works to popularize economics through his blog and writings. He is the editor of 30-Second Economics, a short book that introduces readers to 50 of the most important theories in economics.

Marron currently serves on the boards of FairVote and the Concord Coalition, advises Fair Observer and YieldStreet, and is a senior research fellow at the Climate Leadership Council. He studied mathematics at Harvard College and received his PhD in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Eugene Steuerle is an Institute fellow and the Richard B. Fisher chair at the Urban Institute. Among past positions, he was deputy assistant secretary of the US Department of the Treasury for Tax Analysis (1987–89), president of the National Tax Association (2001–02), codirector of the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, chair of the 1999 Technical Panel advising Social Security on its methods and assumptions, and chair of the 2015–16 National Academy of Sciences Committee on Advancing the Power of Economic Evidence to Inform Investments in Children, Youth, and Families. Between 1984 and 1986, he was the economic coordinator and original organizer of the Treasury’s tax reform effort.

Steuerle is the author, coauthor, or coeditor of 18 books, including Dead Men Ruling, Nonprofits and Government (3rd edition), Contemporary US Tax Policy (2nd edition), and Advancing the Power of Economic Evidence to Inform Investments in Children, Youth, and Families.

He is a founder and chair emeritus of ACT for Alexandria, a community foundation, and is or has been an elected, appointed, advisory panel, or board member for the Congressional Budget Office, Comptroller General of the United States, the Joint Committee on Taxation, Venture Philanthropy Partners, and the National Center on Philanthropy and the Law (chair).

Steuerle received the first Bruce Davie–Albert Davis Public Service Award from the National Tax Association in 2005, distinguished or outstanding alumnus awards from the University of Dayton and St. Xavier High School, and the TIAA-CREF Paul Samuelson award for his book Dead Men Ruling.