My New Gig

I am happy to announce that I will become the director of the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center on May 17. TPC has established a remarkable record of nonpartisan research on tax and fiscal policy issues over the past eight years, and I am honored to be joining their team.

Here’s the press release from the Urban Institute announcing the appointment:

WASHINGTON, D.C., April 13, 2010 — Donald Marron, who served as a member of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers and as acting director of the Congressional Budget Office, will become the director of the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center May 17.

Marron was a council member in 2008 and 2009. Earlier, he was the deputy director (2005–2007) and acting director (2006) of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

Marron’s White House experience includes stints as a senior economic adviser and consultant to the Council of Economic Advisers (2007–08) and as its chief economist (2004–05). He was with Congress’s Joint Economic Committee from 2002 to 2004, first as the Senate minority’s principal economist and later as the committee’s executive director and chief economist.

Marron succeeds Rosanne Altshuler, who will be returning to Rutgers University after nearly two years with the Tax Policy Center. The eight-year-old center, a joint venture of the Urban Institute and Brookings Institution, is the nation’s leading nonpartisan resource providing objective analyses, estimates, distributional tables, and facts about the federal tax system and proposals to modify it. Last year, Tax Policy Center researchers produced more than 50 reports and used their state-of-the-art tax model to generate over 500 sets of detailed tax estimates.

“Understanding and helping address the nation’s revenue problems require imaginative scholarship, crisp communication skills, and an insider’s knowledge about how good public policy can be made. Donald brings that and much more to the Tax Policy Center,” said Robert Reischauer, president of the Urban Institute.

Since leaving his White House post, Marron has been a visiting professor of public policy at Georgetown University and an economic consultant.

Marron, who holds a doctorate in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was an assistant professor of economics at the University of Chicago’s Graduate School of Business from 1994 to 1998. He is a member of the Bipartisan Policy Center Debt Reduction Task Force and served as a member of the Federal Accounting Standards Advisory Board.

The Tax Policy Center’s leadership also includes two co-directors, William Gale, the Arjay and Frances Miller Chair in Federal Economic Policy at the Brookings Institution, and Eric Toder, an Institute fellow at the Urban Institute.

The Urban Institute is a nonprofit, nonpartisan policy research and educational organization that examines the social, economic, and governance challenges facing the nation. It provides information, analyses, and perspectives to public and private decisionmakers to help them address these problems and strives to deepen citizens’ understanding of the issues and trade-offs that policymakers face.

The Brookings Institution is a private nonprofit organization devoted to independent research and innovative policy solutions. For more than 90 years, Brookings has analyzed current and emerging issues and produced new ideas that matter—for the nation and the world.

P.S. I am also happy to report that I will continue my teaching at the Georgetown Public Policy Institute next year. Should be a fun and busy year.