Speaker Biographies

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act: A Boost to Growth or a Missed Opportunity? Speaker Biographies Janice Eberly is the James R. and Helen D. Russell professor of finance and former chair of the finance department at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. Before joining the Kellogg faculty, she was a faculty member in finance at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Eberly was the assistant secretary for economic policy at the US Treasury from 2011 to 2013. She was the chief economist at the Treasury, leading the Office of Economic Policy. Eberly’s research focuses on finance and macroeconomics. Her current research emphasizes household finance and intangible investment. Her work has been published many academic journals. She has received a Sloan Foundation research fellowship and grant funding from the National Science Foundation. Eberly was an associate editor of the American Economic Review and senior associate editor of the Journal of Monetary Economics. Previously, Eberly served on the staff of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers and on the advisory committees of the Bureau of Economic Analysis and the Congressional Budget Office. She was elected to the executive committee of the American Economic Association in 2008. Eberly was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2013 and is editor of the Brookings Papers on Economic Activity. She has won numerous awards for her teaching and is a member of the board of TIAA-CREF. Eberly received her PhD in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Jason Furman is professor of the practice of economic policy at Harvard Kennedy School. He is also a nonresident senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. Furman spent eight years as a top economic adviser to President Obama, including service as the 28th chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers from 2013 to 2017. Furman played a major role in most of the major economic policies of the Obama administration. Previously, Furman held various posts in public policy and research. In public policy, Furman worked at the Council of Economic Advisers and the National Economic Council during the Clinton administration and at the World Bank. In research, Furman was a director of the Hamilton Project and was a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, and he has served in visiting positions at various universities, including New York University’s Wagner Graduate School of Public Policy. Furman has conducted research in many areas, including fiscal policy, tax policy, health economics, Social Security, technology policy, and domestic and international macroeconomics. In addition to authoring articles for scholarly journals and periodicals, Furman is the editor of two books on economic policy. Furman holds a PhD in economics from Harvard University. Benjamin Harris is a visiting associate professor at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, the chief economist with Results for America, and the chief editor of the Biden Forum. He recently was the chief economist and economic adviser to the vice president of the United States. Following his tenure at the White House, Harris was a senior economic policy adviser with Rokos Capital Management. Earlier in his career, Harris was policy director of the Hamilton Project, a fellow in Economic Studies at the Brookings Institution, and deputy director of the Retirement Security Project. He was also a senior research associate with the Urban Institute and the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center. Before joining the Urban Institute, Harris worked at the White House as a senior economist with the Council of Economic Advisers, where he specialized in fiscal policy and retirement security. He has also been a research economist at the Brookings Institution and a senior economist with the Budget Committee in the US House of Representatives. Harris has also taught as an adjunct professor at the University of Maryland and Georgetown University. He holds a bachelor’s degree in economics from Tufts University, a master’s degree in economics from Cornell University, a master’s degree in quantitative methods from Columbia University, and a doctoral degree in economics from the George Washington University. In 2000, Harris was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to Namibia. Aparna Mathur is a resident scholar in economic policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), where she researches income inequality and mobility, tax policy, labor markets, and small businesses. She also directs the AEI-Brookings Project on Paid Family and Medical Leave, for which she was recognized in the 2017 Politico 50 list. Before joining AEI, Mathur taught economics at the University of Maryland and was an adjunct professor at Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy. Mathur has been published in several top scholarly journals and in the popular press on issues of policy relevance. She has also testified before Congress, and government organizations such as the Congressional Research Service and the Congressional Budget Office have cited her work in their own reports to Congress. Mathur holds a BA from Hindu College at Delhi University, an MA in economics from the Delhi School of Economics, and an MA and PhD in economics from the University of Maryland, College Park. Mark J. Mazur is the Robert C. Pozen director of the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center and a vice president at the Urban Institute. His research interests cover all aspects of tax policy. From 2012 until 2017, he was the assistant secretary for tax policy at the US Department of the Treasury. Mazur served in the federal government for 27 years in various positions, including policy economist at the congressional Joint Committee on Taxation; senior economist at the President’s Council of Economic Advisers; senior director at the National Economic Council; chief economist and senior policy adviser and director of policy at the US Department of Energy; acting administrator of the Energy Information Administration; director of research, analysis, and statistics at the Internal Revenue Service; and deputy assistant secretary for tax analysis in the Office of Tax Policy. Before entering public service, Mazur was an assistant professor in the Heinz College at Carnegie-Mellon University. He has a bachelor’s degree in financial administration from Michigan State University and a master’s degree in economics and doctoral degree in business from Stanford University. Benjamin R. Page is a senior fellow at the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center. He leads the center’s efforts to estimate the macroeconomic effects of tax policy and incorporate those effects into analyses of tax proposals (a process called dynamic analysis). Before joining the Urban Institute, he was involved in dynamic analysis at the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), including macroeconomic analysis of presidential budgetary proposals, the long-term outlook for the federal budget, and the effects of stimulus policies. From 2013 to 2016, he was unit chief of the fiscal policy studies unit of the macroeconomic analysis division of CBO. Page received an AB in economics from Stanford University and a PhD in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Mitchell Petersen is the Glen Vasel professor of finance and director of the Heizer Center for Private Equity and Venture Capital at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. Petersen’s research is in empirical corporate finance—how firms choose which projects they should invest in and how they should fund those projects. He was awarded the Smith-Breeden Prize for Outstanding Paper in the Journal of Finance in 1995 and the Michael Brennan Award for Best Paper in the Review of Financial Studies in 1998 and 2013. Petersen was voted the Kellogg Professor of the Year in 2000, the Executive MBA Outstanding Professor seven times, and the Kellogg Alumni Professor of the Year in 2010. He was awarded the Sidney J. Levy Teaching Award eight times. He is a research associate with the National Bureau of Economic Research and has been an associate editor of the Journal of Finance and the Review of Financial Studies. Petersen was formerly on the board of directors of LR Nelson and the Moody’s Academic Advisory Research Committee. He is a strategic adviser to OCA Ventures. He received his PhD in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Catherine Rampell is an opinion columnist at the Washington Post. She frequently covers economics, public policy, politics, and culture, with an emphasis on data-driven journalism. She is also a political and economic commentator with CNN. Before joining the Post, she wrote about economics and theater for the New York Times. Rampell has received the Weidenbaum Center Award for Evidence-Based Journalism and is a Gerald Loeb Award finalist. She graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Princeton University. .

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