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2003 Annual Meeting Speakers

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Martine Aubert
Senior Vice-President, Chief Economist
CREDIT COMMERCIAL DE FRANCE a member of the HSBC Group

Martine is the Head of Economic Research of Credit Commercial de France, consultant to the top management, the different businesses of the Bank as the subsidiaries. As a consultant to the retail banking she has a particular interest in medium size companies.

Before her appointment as Head of Research, she held different positions in other CCF departments: the financial department, the subsidiary “Economie et Finance” and the Asset Management Department.

As other experience, she has been economics lecturer with French banking association for three years. She is editor of regular articles in French economic newpapers and magazines as well as radio and TV interviews particularly on the Euroland.

Martine is a Member of the Board of small industrial and financial companies and
Vice-President of the French Association of Business Economists.


Stephen G. Cecchetti
Professor of International Economics and Finance
Brandeis Unviversity

Stephen G. Cecchetti is currently Professor of International Economics and Finance at the International Business School, Brandeis Unviversity. He is also a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, an organization of distinguished academic economists who specialize in policy-oriented empirical studies of national and world economies; and a consultant to central banks around the world. Prior to joining the faculty at Brandeis, he was Professor of Economics at Ohio State University. From August 1997 to September 1999, he was Executive Vice President and Director of Research at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, as well as Associate Economist of the Federal Open Market Committee. He also served as a visiting professor of economics at several institutions, including the University of Melbourne in 1996, Boston College in 1994 and 1995, and Princeton University in 1992 and 1993.

In addition to his teaching at Ohio State University, Professor Cecchetti has been editor of the Journal of Money, Credit and Banking since 1992, and on the editorial boards of the American Economic Review, the Journal of Economic Literature, the Ohio State University Press, and the Economic Policy Review of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. He has published over fifty articles in academic and policy journals on a variety of topics, including banking, securities markets and monetary policy.

Professor Cecchetti received a S.B. in Economics from M.I.T. in 1977, and a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of California at Berkeley in 1982.

 

 



Gary L. Ciminero, CFA
Executive Director,
Rhode Island House Policy Office

Mr. Ciminero has over thirty-five years of professional experience in the public and private sectors. He heads up the House Policy Office of the Rhode Island Legislature and is the financial and economic advisor to the House on economic forecasting and development, education and the workforce, tax and fiscal policy, the economics of health and gaming, and revenue forecasting.

His public information/outreach activities on behalf of the House include sharing economic forecast expertise in published newspaper articles, television interviews on economic matters, and making dozens of presentations and speeches annually.

In his prior position, for thirteen years he served as Chief Economist of Fleet Financial Group (now FleetBoston Financial). His analyses and economic forecasts of the national, regional, and financial sectors set the environment for corporate-wide planning and investment policy for Fleet Investment Advisors.

Before joining Fleet, he was senior vice president and manager of macroeconomic forecasting for Merrill Lynch in New York City. At his prior position he directed applications of the Industry Financial Service for Data Resources Incorporated of Lexington, MA (now Global Insights). Earlier he held investment and research positions with The Boston Company and the Washington DC practice of Booz, Allen & Hamilton.

A survey panelist for Blue Chip Financial Forecasts, MMS International, Philadelphia Fed Surveys, and IDEA/Economic Surveyline, London, Mr. Ciminero’s opinions on economic issues have frequently appeared in press, broadcast, and Internet media at the national and regional levels.

A member of NABE’s Board of Directors, he also serves as Co-Chair of the 2003 Annual Meeting, and Chair of the Regional-Utility Roundtable. A Director of the New England Economic Project, Mr. Ciminero was also NEEP’s Past President. His other professional affiliations include the Boston Security Analysts Society, Association for Investment Management & Research, and the Boston Economic Club.

Recently earning the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) designation, Mr. Ciminero is also an instructor in the education program of the Boston Security Analysts Society.

Holding a BS degree from Case Institute of Technology and a Master’s degree from MIT’s Sloan School of Management, he was a Ph. D. candidate in Business Economics at Harvard University.




Ross C. DeVol
Director of Regional Economics
Milken Institute

Ross C. DeVol is Director of Regional Economics at the Milken Institute. He oversees the Institute’s research efforts on the dynamics of comparative regional growth performance. Since joining the Institute, DeVol quickly put his group in the national limelight with groundbreaking research on technology and its impact on regional and national economies. He is an expert on the new intangible economy and how regions can prepare themselves to compete in it. He is examining the effects of technology, research and development activities, international trade, human capital and labor-force skills training, entrepreneurship, early-stage financing and quality-of-place issues on the geographic distribution of economic activity. Particular focus on these issues is made in the context of California, the world’s 5th largest economy.

He completed a significant study in July 1999, “America’s High-Tech Economy: Growth, Development, and Risks for Metropolitan Areas”–an examination of how clusters of high-technology industries across the country affect economic growth in those regions. Released in September, 2002, the study “State Technology and Science Index: Comparing and Contrasting California,” analyzes investments in science and technology -- from higher education to industry research and development -- and their role in deciding the fates of regional economies. He has authored studies examining how to harness the research and innovation capacity of a region to build high-tech clusters based on new technologies.

He co-authored a study analyzing the factors that have lured technology industries into several cities and what lessons might be applicable to other urban centers. He was the principle author of an April, 2001 study commissioned by former Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan’s office examining the impact of a potential entertainment industry strike on the Los Angeles and California economies. He was the principle author of the study released in January, 2002 which examined how the terrorist attacks where affecting travel and tourism and other industries across the country. He also authored a study on the impact of 9/11 on the Los Angeles Economy. In June, 2002 he was the principle author of a study examining the economic impact of a sales tax reduction on manufacturing equipment in California. In August, 2002 he was co-author of “Manufacturing Matters: California’s Performance and Prospects” which analyzed the importance of manufacturing to the state’s economy.

He co-authored with Institute Research Fellow, Rob Koepp, released in February, 2003, “The Economic Contributions of Health Care to New England,” constituted the first detailed examination of the concentration, innovation capacities, growth and economic multiplier impacts of health care in New England, each of the six states in the region and compared and contrasted the region to all other regions. He authored the article “The Economic Geography of U.S. Healthcare,” published in the Third Quarter, 2003 edition of the Milken Institute Review which is the first comprehensive benchmarking of the nation’s leading health care clusters.

His most recent research report, “Best Performing Cities: Where America’s Jobs are Created” researched which cities are creating jobs and economic opportunity and described the factors determining long-term success. This is a continuation of the research previously that was published annually by Forbes.

Prior to joining the Institute, DeVol was senior vice president of Global Insight, Inc. (formerly Wharton Econometric Forecasting), where he supervised their Regional Economic Services group. DeVol supervised the respecification of Global Insight’s regional econometric models and played an instrumental role on similar work on its U.S. Macro Model originally developed by Nobel Laureate Lawrence Klein. He was the firm’s chief spokesman on international trade. He also served as the head of Global Insight’s U.S. Long-Term Macro Service and authored numerous special reports on behalf of the U.S. Macro Group.

DeVol was previously director of economic planning at CSX Transportation, where he was responsible for U.S. macroeconomic and industry analysis. He was also an economist at Chase Econometrics and an economic analyst at Union Pacific.

DeVol appears on national television and radio programs to discuss a variety of economic topics such as CNN’s Moneyline and NPR’s Talk of the Nation. He is frequently quoted in printed media such as The Wall Street Journal, Investor’s Business Daily, Los Angeles Times, Forbes, The Economist, Time, Business Week and many others.

DeVol received his M.A. in economics from Ohio University.




Daniel R. DiMicco
Vice Chairman, President, & CEO
Nucor Corporation

Daniel DiMicco is an outspoken leader on the issue of trade. He recently assumed chair of the American Iron and Steel Institute, an association of North American companies engaged in the iron and steel industry. Its membership accounts for about 70 percent of the raw steel produced in the United States, Canada, and Mexico. Nucor is the largest recycler in the United States. Nucor and its affiliates are manufacturers of steel products, with operating facilities in ten states. It employs over 8,000 workers, and sales are in excess of $4.0 billion per year.



Michael R. Englund
Chief Economist
MMS International

Dr. Michael R. Englund oversees the economic and financial market outlook for MMS International, which is the world’s largest real time economic and financial consulting firm. Dr. Englund’s specialty is Federal Reserve policy and the near-term outlook for monthly and quarterly U.S. economic data. His responsibilities include managing the firm’s North American analytical staff, and overseeing the editorial standards for MMS commentary globally

Dr. Englund began his career at MMS International in 1982, and remained with the firm during a twelve-year period starting in 1990 when the company became a division of Standard & Poor’s. Dr. Englund has held numerous positions of increasing responsibility throughout his twenty-one year tenure, including the role of Chief Market Economist for Standard & Poor’s, where he was a member of the Standard & Poor’s Forecast Council.

Dr. Englund received his Ph.D. in Economics and M.A. in Statistics from the University of California at Berkeley. He also spent a year at the London School of Economics, and received his B.A. in Economics from Middlebury College in Vermont. Dr. Englund is a past Chairman of the Financial Roundtable of the National Association for Business Economics (NABE). He was also previously a member of the Board of Directors for NABE from 1998 to 2001, and was President of the San Francisco NABE Chapter from 1997 to 1998. He is also a survey panel member of the Philadelphia Federal Reserve’s Livingston Survey, the Blue Chip Financial and Economic Forecasts Survey, and the NABE survey of professional forecasters.



Robert L. Evans (Bob)
Managing Partner
Symphony Technology Group

Prior to joining Symphony, Bob was chief operating officer of i2 Technologies, Inc. and earlier was the President and COO of Aspect Development (Aspect was acquired by i2 for $9.3B in 2000). From 1993 through 1998, Bob was the managing partner of Accenture's Supply Chain Practice in the Americas. Bob began his career at Caterpillar Inc. where he founded and served as President of Caterpillar Logistics Services, Inc., a supply chain services company. He holds both a BA and MA in Quantitative Economics.

Bob serves on the boards of Qiva, Worldchain, Trigo, Symphony Services, Agilysis and Servigistics. Bob also serves as a Special Limited Partner at both Accel Partners and Bessemer Venture Partners.


 


William T. Gavin
Vice President and Economist
Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis


Joined the bank staff on May 1, 1994
Education: Ph.D. Economics, Ohio State University, August 1982, B.A. Economics,
Xavier University, Cincinnati Ohio, June 1970
Previous Experience: Research Department, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland.
Areas of Interest: Macroeconomic Dynamics and Monetary Policy Rules


Cynthia Glassman
Commissioner
Securities and Exchange Commission

Cynthia A. Glassman was appointed by President Bush to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and sworn in on January 28, 2002.

Prior to being appointed Commissioner, Dr. Glassman spent over 30 years in the public and private sectors focusing on financial services regulatory and public policy issues. She spent the first 12 years of her career at the Federal Reserve, first at the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia and subsequently at the Board of Governors, where her positions included Chief of the Financial Reports Section and Special Assistant to Governor Henry C. Wallich. While at the Board of Governors, Dr. Glassman spent one year on assignment to the U.S. Department of the Treasury as Senior Economist in the Office of Capital Markets Legislation during the Carter Administration. Subsequently, she spent two years at Economists Incorporated, eight years at Furash & Company, where she was the Managing Director for the financial services regulatory and public policy practices, and five years at Ernst & Young, in the Risk Management and Regulatory Practice and the Quantitative Economics and Statistics group.

Dr. Glassman taught economics at the University of Cambridge, England, where she remains a Senior Member of Lucy Cavendish College. She has served on the Boards of the Federal Reserve Board Credit Union, the National Economists Club, Women in Housing and Finance, and the Commission on Savings and Investment in America, and was on the Executive Advisory Committee for the Bank Administration Institute's Certified Risk Professional Certification Program.

Dr. Glassman received her M.A. and Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Pennsylvania and her B.A. in Economics from Wellesley College.



Robert R. Glauber
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer,
NASD


Robert R. Glauber has served as NASD's Chairman and Chief Executive Officer since September 2001, after becoming its CEO and President in November 2000. NASD is the largest self-regulatory body in the securities industry and the leading private-sector provider of financial regulatory services in the world.
Since 1996, Mr. Glauber has been an active member of the NASD Board. During the development of the plan to spin-off Nasdaq, he chaired the Board's Fairness Committee to provide an independent assessment of the spin-off plan. The Fairness Committee carefully reviewed and considered the objectives, terms and conditions of the spin-off plan, which was modified in a number of important respects based on recommendations of the Committee. In addition to his role as Chairman of the Fairness Committee, Mr. Glauber served as Chairman of the NASD Board's Finance Committee.

Mr. Glauber served as Under Secretary of the Treasury for Finance from 1989 to 1992. Prior to that, he was a professor of finance at the Harvard Business School. After leaving the Treasury, he was a lecturer at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. In 1987 Mr. Glauber served as Executive Director of the Task Force on Market Mechanisms ("Brady Commission") appointed by President Reagan to study the October 1987 stock market crash.

As Under Secretary of the Treasury for Finance, Mr. Glauber was the senior officer responsible for Treasury's domestic policy. Major policy initiatives during this period included the bailout of the S&L industry and a total overhaul of S&L regulation; legislation to modernize commercial bank regulation by permitting interstate branching and broader bank services; and revision of the auction procedures for selling Treasury securities in response to the Salomon Brothers bidding scandal.
Mr. Glauber received his B.A. from Harvard College in Economics and his doctorate from the Harvard Business School. He joined that school's faculty in 1964, specializing in corporate finance and investment banking. In his last years on the Business School faculty, he was faculty chairman of the school's Advanced Management Program for senior executives.

Mr. Glauber presently serves as a director of Moody's Corporation, XL Capital, Ltd. (a Bermuda-based insurer, Measurisk and The American Stock Exchange. He previously served on the boards of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, a number of the Dreyfus mutual funds, and the Investment Company Institute. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Boston Committee on Foreign Relations, the International Advisory Board of the Korean Financial Supervisory Service, and is past president of the Boston Economic Club.

 


Allen Grommet
Senior Economist
Cambridge Consumer Credit Index

Allen Grommet holds a Ph.D. in economics from Michigan State University and has served as Chief Economist for the U.S. House Budget Committee in Washington, D.C. He has worked with the financial investment staffs of Chemical Bank, Equitable Life, Merrill Lynch and the Coffee, Sugar and Cocoa (futures) Exchange in New York. He also worked with Money Magazine and ABC News in developing and marketing an index measure of consumer confidence. Dr. Grommet has worked extensively with alternative tax legislation and economic forecasts as well as helped develop small- and medium-size business projections. Since 2001 he has worked with Cambridge helping to develop the Cambridge Consumer Credit Index. He works with financial and forecasting economists to explain and help analyze developments in the consumer sector. He writes the monthly Economic Analysis on each month’s index survey. As an independent Financial Advisor, Dr. Grommet works with private and business clients to develop investment strategies, financial plans, insurance protection proposals, education and retirement plans and estate tax programs. In recent years he has worked with consumers to develop risk strategies protecting against market volatility and sinking equity prices.

 

 

Charles L. Hill, CFA
Director of Research
Thomson First Call

Charles L. Hill, CFA, is director of research for Thomson First Call, a leading industry brand within Thomson Financial’s Investment Management Group. First Call is the source for real-time broker research and quantitative data serving the global financial community, delivering integrated content from over 800 brokerage firms to 50,000 institutional desktops worldwide.

Appointed to his position in 1992, Mr. Hill serves as the chief financial analyst for First Call earnings data. He is quoted frequently by leading business and financial media outlets worldwide.

First Call provides accurate, comprehensive coverage on more than 18,000 companies in 60 countries, and offers analyst notes, full-text research reports, analyst estimates and fundamental data, customized to the needs of individual users.

Mr. Hill has more than 25 years of experience in the field of financial analysis. Prior to joining First Call, he was vice president at Scudder, Stevens & Clark, Inc., performing securities analysis on technology companies. Mr. Hill has also worked in several capacities at Kidder, Peabody & Co.; Bache (now Prudential); Quantum Associates; and IBM.

Mr. Hill holds a master of business administration degree from Harvard University. He received a bachelor of science degree in chemical engineering and a bachelor of arts degree in history from the University of Delaware.

Mr. Hill resides in Ipswich, MA.


Douglas Holtz-Eakin
Director
Congressional Budget Office

Douglas Holtz-Eakin is the sixth Director of the Congressional Budget Office, where he was appointed for a four-year term beginning February 3, 2003. Dr. Holtz-Eakin previously served for 18 months as Chief Economist for the President's Council of Economic Advisers, where he also served as Senior Staff Economist in 1989 and 1990.

Dr. Holtz-Eakin is Trustee Professor of Economics at the Maxwell School, Syracuse University, where he has served as Chairman of the Department of Economics and Associate Director of the Center for Policy Research. He also has served as editor of the National Tax Journal, associate editor of the Journal of Human Resources, and as a member of the editorial board for Economics and Politics, Journal of Sports Economics, Regional Science and Urban Economics, and Public Works Management and Policy.

In the past, he has held academic appointments at Columbia University and Princeton University. Since 1985 he has been a faculty research fellow and research associate for the National Bureau of Economic Research. From 1996 to 1998 he served as a member of the Economics Advisory Panel to the National Science Foundation. He also has worked as a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. He has been a consultant to the New Jersey State and Local Expenditure and Revenue Policy Commission, the State of Arizona Joint Select Committee on State Revenues and Expenditures, and the New York State Office for the Aging. He has served as a member of the Board of Economic Advisers for the Ways and Means Committee, as well as the Executive Director, Tax Study Commission, New York State Assembly.

Dr. Holtz-Eakin has a long-standing and broad interest in the economics of public policy. He has studied the role of federal taxes in home ownership, the contribution of inventories to the business cycle, and a wide variety of topics in state and local government finance. Much of his research has centered on the economics of fundamental tax reform, productivity effects of public infrastructure; income mobility in the United States; and the role of families, capital markets, health insurance, and tax policy in the start-up and survival of entrepreneurial ventures.



R. Glenn Hubbard
Russell L. Carson Professor of Economics and Finance,
Columbia University
and former chair,
Council of Economic Advisers

R. Glenn Hubbard is Russell L. Carson Professor of Economics and Finance, and Co-Director of The Entrepreneurship Program at Columbia University, where he has also served as Senior Vice Dean of the Graduate School of Business. Prior to joining the Columbia faculty in 1988, he taught at Northwestern. He received his Ph.D. in economics from Harvard in 1983. He has also served as a visiting professor at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, the Graduate School of Business of the University of Chicago, and the Harvard Business School, and as a John M. Olin Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research, where he remains a research associate. From 1991-1993, he was Deputy Assistant Secretary (Tax Analysis) of the U.S. Treasury Department.

Hubbard has recently returned to Columbia, after serving as Chair of the Council of Economic Advisors.

Hubbard’s research interests span public economics, macroeconomics, corporate finance, and industrial organization. A prolific author, Hubbard has authored a textbook on financial markets and institutions, edited volumes on financial economics and international tax policy, and written more than 90
scholarly articles. In addition to his responsibilities at Columbia, and the National Bureau of Economic Research, Hubbard is the director of the program on tax policy at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, DC. He is or has been a consultant to the U. S. Department of the Treasury, Federal
Reserve Bank of New York, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, the National Science Foundation, and numerous private corporations. Hubbard, his wife Constance, and their sons Raph and William live in New York.



Ellen Hughes-Cromwick
Director, Corporate Economics & Strategic Issues,
Ford Motor Company

Ellen Hughes-Cromwick joined Ford in 1996. Ellen directs the corporate economics group with major responsibility for the Company's global economic and automotive industry forecasts used to support business strategy, finance, and planning. She leads the group's effort on special industry studies and strategic issues that provide input to the Company's evaluation of business risks and opportunities in global markets. Ellen oversees the group's publications, including the Global Business Summary, and provides presentations to both external groups and internal customers. Ellen serves on the Company's Treasury Matters Committee, Global Risk Management Committee and advises the finance team on business issues relating to the global external environment for the automotive industry.

Prior to joining Ford, Ellen was a senior economist at Mellon Bank from 1990 to 1996. Her major responsibilities included the monthly U.S. macroeconomic forecast, credit markets outlook, and industry analysis. Ellen began doing research on emerging markets for Mellon’s clients and for its trade finance business in 1994, focusing on selected Latin and Asian markets as well as South Africa.

Before her experience at Mellon, Ellen was assistant professor of economics at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut. She also served for two years as a staff economist on the President's Council of Economic Advisers during the Reagan Administration. Ellen received her Bachelor's Degree in Government and French Language at the University of Notre Dame, a Master's Degree in International Development and a Ph.D. in Economics at Clark University in Massachusetts.

Ellen serves on the Board of the National Association for Business Economics, the nationwide organization representing nearly 3,000 members who apply business economics in the public sector, academia, and in the private sector. She also is a board member of Operation ABLE, a nonprofit organization that provides training and career counseling to mature workers in the local community.


Warren Jestin
Senior Vice-President and
Chief Economist
Scotiabank


Dr. Jestin is Scotiabank’s Chief Economist and has been with the Bank for over 25 years. His Scotia Economics team provides in-depth research on global economic, policy and financial market developments. Warren is also Senior Vice-President of the Bank’s Public and Corporate Affairs Department, which includes corporate communications, government relations, corporate sponsorships and donations.

Before joining Scotiabank, Warren spent a number of years working in the Research Department at the Bank of Canada and teaching in the economics departments of several Canadian universities. He is currently on the Board of The University of Guelph Heritage Fund and is on the Board of Advisors of The Frank H. Sobey Faculty of Commerce at St. Mary’s University. Warren earned an MA in Economics at the University of Guelph in 1971and was awarded his doctorate from the University of Toronto in 1977.

Warren has been involved with economic policy committees of the Canadian and Ontario Chambers of Commerce and the Toronto Board of Trade. He also is on the Board of the Markham-Stouffville Hospital Foundation. In his role as Chair of Scotiabank’s Sponsorship and Donations Committee, Warren works closely with a wide variety of Canadian charitable institutions.

 


Stephen King
Managing director of Economics and Strategy
Global Head of Research
HSBC

Stephen King is the managing director of economics and strategy and, in addition, is the global head of research for HSBC. He is directly responsible for HSBC’s global economic coverage and co-ordinates the research of HSBC economists, strategists and analysts from all over the world.

Stephen has been at HSBC for fourteen years. Before his appointment as managing director of economics in 1998, he had been responsible for HSBC’s specific views on Europe. He was consistently highly ranked in the various investor surveys, achieving first place in the Extel survey for three successive years. Before his time on Europe, Stephen spent three years covering the Japanese economy.

Over the last year, Stephen has written “The Consumer Takes It All”, a look at the winners and losers from the new economy, and “Decline and Fall”, a medium term assessment of the prospects for recovery in a “post-bubble” environment. These pieces are natural progressions from “Bubble Trouble” (1999), a study of financial bubbles which anticipated the collapse in share prices in 2000 and the US recession in 2001. All three pieces were widely reported in the world’s media. During his five years covering Europe, he produced a number of major research publications, including “EMU: Four Endings and a Funeral” and “Strainspotting”, which addressed a number of key issues regarding the euro.

Since 2001, Stephen has been writing a weekly column for “The Independent”, one of the UK’s leading newspapers. He also writes occasional columns for “Handelsblatt”, Germany’s major financial newspaper. He has provided written and oral evidence on the economic effects of globalisation for the House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee.

Stephen’s career began at H.M.Treasury, where he was an economic adviser within the civil service. During his time there, he provided advice to ministers on developments within the UK economy. He also spent 18 months working as private secretary to Sir Terence (now Lord) Burns, the Government’s then chief economic adviser.

Stephen studied economics and philosophy at Oxford.




Frederick T. Knickerbocker
Associate Director for Economic Programs
Bureau of the Census

Mr. Knickerbocker became the Associate Director for Economic Programs, Bureau of the Census, in March, 1995. In that position he is responsible for nearly 100 separate monthly, quarterly, and annual economic and business surveys, for the economic and government censuses taken every 5 years, and for preparation of many of the nation's principal economic indicators.

From 1981 until 1995, Mr. Knickerbocker served as the Executive Director of the Economics and Statistics Administration, Department of Commerce. In the late 1970s, he served as the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Industry Policy and the Deputy Assistant Secretary for International Policy Coordination within the Department of Commerce. In the first half of the 1970s, he was a member of the faculty of the Harvard Business School. Throughout the 1960s he was an executive in the international operations of Eli Lilly and Company, with several postings overseas. Prior to that, he was a pilot in the United States Air Force.

Mr. Knickerbocker was educated at Williams College (B.A.), University of Pennsylvania, Wharton School (M.B.A.), and Harvard University (D.B.A.).

He is married, has two grown children, and is a resident of Chevy Chase, Maryland.



Elinda Fishman Kiss
Teaching Professor, Department of Finance
University of Maryland

Elinda Fishman Kiss is a Teaching Professor in the Department of Finance at the Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland.

She has served as an Associate Professor in the Departments of Finance and Accounting at Rutgers University School of Business - Newark and New Brunswick. Prior to teaching at Rutgers she was Corporate Treasurer of Custom Equipment Manufacturing, held various management positions at the Resolution Trust Corporation, and was Vice President of PSFS Bank, Assistant Vice President of Citicorp Investment Bank, and a Commercial Lender at First Pennsylvania Bank. She has also worked as an Economist at the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System and at the U.S. Treasury.

Dr. Kiss has also taught Finance and Economics at: The College of New Jersey, Drexel University, Pennsylvania State University, The College of New Jersey, Temple University, Wellesley College, West Chester University, and The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

Dr. Kiss received her Ph.D. and MA degrees from the University of Rochester and her BA Cum Laude from Washington University in St. Louis.

Elinda Kiss is a member of the Board of Directors of NABE and of Board of Directors of the Financial Management Association. She is past president of the Philadelphia Council for Business Economics.

Her primary areas of research include: European Central Bank, Bank Regulation, Bank Management, Fixed Income Securities, and World Sugar Markets.
Her primary areas of teaching include: Corporate Finance, Investment Analysis and Management, Financial Institutions Management, Financial Instruments and Markets, Managerial Finance, Managerial Economics, Microeconomics, International Finance, Financial Accounting, Accounting for Managers, Financial Statement Analysis, International Banking and Capital Markets.


Randall S. Kroszner
Professor of Economics,
University of Chicago

Randall S. Kroszner was confirmed by the United States Senate on November 28, 2001, and was appointed by President George W. Bush on November 30, 2001, as a Member of the Council of Economic Advisers. His responsibilities at the Council include emerging markets, international finance, corporate governance, banking, financial, and insurance regulation, and domestic macroeconomics. Dr. Kroszner is on leave from the University of Chicago's Graduate School of Business where he is Professor of Economics. He is also on leave from his positions as Editor of the Journal of Law & Economics and Associate Director of the George J. Stigler Center for the Study of the Economy and the State.

Dr. Kroszner has served as a consultant to the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, the Swedish Finance Ministry, the Federal Reserve Banks of Chicago, Kansas City, Minneapolis, New York, and St. Louis, the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, Deutsche Bank, Lexecon Inc., and G. T. Management (Asia). Dr. Kroszner has been a Visiting Professor at the Stockholm School of Economics, the Institute for International Economic Studies at the University of Stockholm, and the Free University of Berlin. During 1999-2000, he was the John M. Olin Fellow in Law and Economics at the University of Chicago Law School. He is a Faculty Research Fellow of the National Bureau of Economic Research. He is on leave from his position as an Associate Editor of the Economics of Governance, Journal of Economics and Business, and the Journal of Financial Services Research. His research interests include the economics and politics of international and domestic banking and financial regulation, corporate governance, debt restructuring, monetary economics, and antitrust. In the Graduate School of Business, he has taught classes on Money and Banking and International Financial Institutions and Markets. In the Law School, he has taught the Political Economy of the Regulation of Financial Institutions.

His paper on the “Changes in Managerial Ownership since the Great Depression” won the Brattle Prize for best paper in corporate finance published in the Journal of Finance in 1999. His more than 50 articles have appeared in scholarly journals, including the American Economic Review, Journal of Political Economy, Quarterly Journal of Economics, Journal of Finance, and Journal of Financial Economics, in policy journals, including The Public Interest and Regulation, and in many books, including The New Palgrave Dictionary of Money and Finance. He has co-authored Explorations in the New Monetary Economics (Blackwell, 1994) and co-edited The Economic Nature of the Firm: A Reader (Cambridge University Press, 1996). His work on financial regulation and financial crises has been featured in articles in The Economist, Business Week, Forbes, The Financial Times, and New York Times. Dr. Kroszner has testified before the U.S. Congress on issues ranging from the expansion of bank powers and bank mergers to improvements in government statistics. He has been quoted widely in the trade and popular press and has participated in numerous radio and television programs.

Dr. Kroszner received his Ph.D. from the economics department of Harvard University in 1990 and graduated magna cum laude from Brown University in 1984.

 


Steven Landefeld
Director
Bureau of Economic Analysis

Dr. Landefeld has been Director of the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) since 1995. BEA is the statistical agency within the Department of Commerce responsible for the national, international, regional, and industry accounts -- including such estimates as Gross Domestic Product (GDP), personal income, corporate profits, the U.S. balance of payments, State and local area personal income, U.S. capital stocks, input-output estimates, foreign direct investment estimates, and GDP-by-industry.

Prior to becoming Director of BEA, Dr. Landefeld served in a number of other capacities at the Bureau, including Acting Director, Deputy Director, and Associate Director for International Economics. While at BEA, he has led a number of pioneering efforts in statistics, including the introduction of unbiased estimates of real GDP and prices, the development of monthly estimates of trade in goods and services, alternative balance of payments accounts, integrated economic and environmental accounts, and the use of data exchanges with foreign banks to improve international capital estimates.

Dr. Landefeld also has led a number of managerial improvements at the Bureau including the introduction of a performance-based personnel system, the development of "private-sector" financial accounts (BEA was one of the first Bureaus in the Department to receive an unqualified opinion from an outside auditor on its financial statement), and the move from an antiquated mainframe to an integrated micro-computer network (BEA was the first major statistical agency to successfully make such a move).

Before coming to BEA, Dr. Landefeld held a number of positions, including Chief of Staff for the President's Council of Economic Advisers, Director of the Business Issues Analysis Division at the Department of Commerce, and Research Assistant Professor at Georgetown University. He has authored numerous professional articles and has received the Henri Willem Methorst Medal from the International Statistical Institute, two Abramson Scroll Awards from the National Association of Business Economists, and Gold, Silver, and Bronze Awards from the Department of Commerce for his work. Dr. Landefeld has served on numerous professional committees and working groups including those of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, the International Monetary Fund, the United Nations, and the Conference on Research in Income and Wealth.

 

 

Joe Leonard
CEO and Chairman
AirTran Airways

Joe Leonard is chairman and chief executive officer of AirTran Holdings, Inc. and its subsidiary, AirTran Airways, Inc. A 30-year veteran of the commercial air transport industry, Leonard most recently served as president and CEO of AlliedSignal, Inc.’s Aerospace Marketing, Sales & Service organization, where he was credited with creating and implementing a growth strategy of making service a business for the company. Prior to joining AlliedSignal, Leonard held a wide range of executive and key management positions at Eastern Air Lines American Airlines, Northwest Airlines, and the Boeing Company. He recently testified before Congress regarding the mergers of several major airlines. “Opening airports to low fare providers like AirTran can and will discipline the major airlines,” he said. “It will spawn a new generation of low fare providers like AirTran and Jet Blue.”

 

N. Gregory Mankiw
Chair
Council of Economic Advisers

Dr. N. Gregory Mankiw was appointed by the President and sworn into office as Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers on May 29, 2003.

Dr. Mankiw is on leave from Harvard University where he is Professor of Economics. As a student, he studied economics at Princeton University and MIT. As a teacher, he has taught macroeconomics, microeconomics, statistics, and principles of economies. He even spent one summer long ago as a sailing instructor on Long Beach Island

Dr. Mankiw is a prolific writer and a regular participant in academic and policy debates. His research includes work on price adjustment, consumer behavior, financial markets, monetary and fiscal policy, and economic growth. His published articles have appeared in academic journals, such as the American Economic Review, Journal of Political Economy, and Quarterly Journal of Economics, and in more widely accessible forums, such as The New York Times, The Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Fortune.

He has written two popular textbooks - the intermediate-level textbook "Macroeconomics" (Worth Publishers) and the introductory textbook "Principles of Economics" (South- Western/Thomson), Together, these two books have sold about a million copies and have been translated into seventeen languages. In addition to his teaching, research, and writing, Professor Mankiw is a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, an adviser to the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston and the Congressional Budget Office, and a member of the ETS test development committee for the advanced placement exam in economics. Dr. Mankiw lives in Wellesley, Massachusetts, with his wife and three children.


Jonathan McCarthy
Economist
FRB of New York


Jonathan McCarthy currently is an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, a post he has held since September 1992. He was a visiting economist at the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland, in 1997-98.

He received his Ph.D. in economics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1992. He has been a member of NABE since 2001.



Duncan H. Meldrum

Chief Economist
Air Products & Chemicals, Inc.
NABE Vice President


Duncan Meldrum is the Chief Economist for Air Products and Chemicals, Inc., a $5.5 billion industrial gas and chemicals company serving customers in over 30 countries. As Chief Economist, he assesses the impact of the economic environment on the company’s performance for the executive management team and develops global economic assumptions for the company’s operating plans. He provides operating groups with pricing assistance, contract support and market analyses. He also serves as the company’s economics spokesperson.

He received a B.S. degree from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1973, a M.S. degree in Operations Research from the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School in 1974, and a Ph.D. in Economics from Lehigh University in 1992. He is a member of the Advisory Committee to the U.S. Census Bureau. He serves as a director on the boards of the APCI Federal Credit Union and the nonprofit Parkette National Gymnastics Center. His other professional associations include the Conference of Business Economists, the National Business Economic Issues Council, and the American Economics Association.

 


Allan Meltzer
Allan H. Meltzer University Professor of Political Economy and Public Policy
Carnegie Mellon University

Allan Meltzer, the Allan H. Meltzer University Professor of Political Economy and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University is, since 1989, also a Visiting Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington. He has been a Visiting Professor at Harvard, University of Chicago, University of Rochester, the Yugoslav Institute for Economic Research, the Austrian Institute for Advanced Study, the Getulio Vargas Foundation in Rio de Janeiro and the City University, London. He has served as a consultant for several Congressional committees; the President's Council of Economic Advisers, the U.S. Treasury Department, the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, the World Bank, foreign governments and central banks. He has been a member of the President's Economic Policy Advisory Board. In 1988-89, he was an acting member of the President's Council of Economic Advisers. Since 1987, he has been Honorary Adviser to the Institute for Monetary and Economic Studies of the Bank of Japan.

In 1999-2000, he served as Chairman of the International Financial Institution Advisory Commission, known as the Meltzer Commission. The Commission proposed major reforms of the International Monetary Fund and the development banks.

Dr. Meltzer's writings have appeared in numerous journals, including the business press here and abroad. He is the author of several books and more than 300 papers on economic theory and policy. From 1973 to 1996, he was co-editor of the Carnegie-Rochester Conference Series on Public Policy, the Journal of Economic Literature, and the Journal of Finance. His career includes experience as a self-employed businessman, management adviser, and consultant to banks and financial institutions. He is a director of the Sarah Scaife Foundation, the Commonwealth Foundation, and Stillhalter Vision.

From 1973 to 1999 Professor Meltzer was chairman of the Shadow Open Market Committee. The members of the committee are economists from banks, business, and academic institutions organized to issue policy statements about current events to government agencies and to the public.

In 1983, Professor Meltzer received a medal for distinguished professional achievement from the University of California, Los Angeles. He is a past president of the Western Economic Association and a Fellow of the National Association of Business Economists. He is a distinguished fellow of the American Economic Association. Additional information on background and career can be found in the current issue of Who's Who in the United States.



Richard O. Michaud
President and Chief Investment Officer
New Frontier Advisors LLC

Richard O. Michaud is President and Chief Investment Officer of New Frontier Advisors LLC. Dr. Michaud’s research and consulting has focused on portfolio optimization, asset allocation, investment strategies, global equity management, stock valuation technology, statistical methods in finance, financial planning theory, behavioral finance, portfolio analysis and trading costs. He has a Ph.D. in mathematics from Boston University and has taught investment management at Columbia University.

Dr. Michaud is co-inventor (with Robert O. Michaud) (U.S. patent, December 1999) of a new optimization method for improving the investment value of equity portfolios and asset allocations in practice and of the first rigorous portfolio rebalancing procedure. New Frontier Advisors has exclusive worldwide rights to the patent.

Prior professional positions include: Director, Research and Development, Acadian Asset Management; Director, Research and New Product Development, State Street Bank and Trust Co.; Head, Equity Analytics, Merrill Lynch; Director, Quantitative Investment Services, Prudential Securities.
He is a Graham and Dodd Scroll winner for his work on optimization, a former Director of the "Q" Group and an Editorial Board member of the Financial Analysts Journal and Journal of Investment Management. He has published a number of papers in academic and professional journals and two books: Efficient Asset Management: A Practical Guide to Stock Portfolio Optimization and Asset Allocation, Oxford University Press 1998; Investment Styles, Market Anomalies, and Global Stock Selection, Association for Investment Management Research (AIMR) 1999.


D. Quinn Mills
Alfred J. Weatherhead Jr. Professor of Business Administration
Harvard Business School

Daniel Quinn Mills teaches about leadership, strategy, organizations, and human resources; he also advises major corporations and consulting companies. He is a prolific author. A recent book, Broken Promises, sets forth the strategy that IBM adopted in the 1990s to turn itself around. His books also describe his views and efforts on many economic fronts. He helped bring to a close the cycle of wage-push inflation that damaged the economy in the 1960s and 1970s. In the early eighties, he was one of the first to examine the impact of demographics on management and consumption. He helped start interest in moving from management to leadership in business and helped define and establish the new management approach of empowerment. He is widely and often quoted in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times and Business Week.

 

 

Ralph Monaco
Economist
Office of Economic Policy, U.S. Treasury Department

 



Tim O’Neill
Executive Vice-President and Chief Economist
Bank of Montreal Group of Companies

NABE Vice President

Dr. O'Neill was appointed to his current position in October 1994. He joined the Bank of Montreal in 1993 as Senior Vice President and Deputy Chief Economist. Prior to joining the Bank he held the position of President of the Atlantic Provinces Economic Council from 1988 to 1993. For 12 years before that he taught in the Department of Economics at St. Mary's University in Halifax. He served as a consultant to several provincial governments, as well as to the Canadian federal government.

Dr. O'Neill is a native of Sydney, Nova Scotia. He received his B.A. degree (with Honours) at St. Francis Xavier University, his M.A. at the University of British Columbia, and his Ph.D. at Duke University, North Carolina. His academic awards include the Mackenzie King Scholarship and the Donner Fellowship.

In his teaching, research and consulting activities, Dr. O'Neill focused extensively on the structure and performance of the North American economy. Areas covered in his publications and public presentations have ranged from macroeconomic forecasts and assessment of key sectors of the economy, to examination of broader themes such as the employment effects of technological change, and the economic impact of illiteracy.

Dr. O'Neill is currently a Director of the Canadian Foundation for Economic Education and the ABC CANADA Literacy Foundation and is a member of the National Statistics Council.

Dr. O’Neill is the first Canadian, non-U.S. based economist to be elected to the Board of Governors of the Washington-based National Association for Business Economists (NABE).



Peter R. Orszag
Joseph A. Pechman Senior Fellow in Economic Studies
The Brookings Institution

Peter R. Orszag is the Joseph A. Pechman Senior Fellow in Economic Studies at The Brookings Institution and a Co-Director of the Tax Policy Center, a joint venture of the Urban Institute and Brookings Institution. He previously served as Special Assistant to the President for Economic Policy at the White House, as Senior Economist and Senior Adviser on the President’s Council of Economic Advisers, and as an economic adviser to the Russian Government.

His areas of expertise include fiscal and tax policy, Social Security, pensions, higher education, macroeconomics, and homeland security.

Dr. Orszag graduated summa cum laude in economics from Princeton University, and obtained a M.Sc. and a Ph.D. in economics from the London School of Economics, which he attended as a Marshall Scholar.

He is the co-editor of American Economic Policy in the 1990s (MIT Press: 2002), and a co-author of Protecting the American Homeland: A Preliminary Analysis (Brookings Institution Press: 2002). His other recent publications include: “The Process of Economic Policy-Making During the Clinton Administration,” (with Jonathan Orszag and Laura Tyson), in Frankel and Orszag, eds., American Economic Policy in the 1990s; “The Budget Outlook: Options for Restoring Fiscal Discipline,” (with Alan J. Auerbach and William G. Gale), Brookings
Institution Policy Brief Number 100
, June 2002; “An Assessment of the Proposals of the President's Commission to Strengthen Social Security,” (with Peter A. Diamond), Contributions to Economic Analysis and Policy, Volume 1, Issue 1, Article 10, 2002;“ Interdependent Security: Implications for Homeland Security Policy and Other Areas” (with Howard Kunreuther and Geoffrey Heal), Policy Brief #108, Brookings Institution, October 2002; “The Economic Effects of Long-Term Fiscal Discipline,” (with William G. Gale), Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center Discussion Paper No. 8, April 2003;“ Private Pensions: Issues and Options ” (with William G. Gale), Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center Discussion Paper No. 9, April 2003; “The Real Fiscal Danger” (with William Gale), Tax Notes, April 21, 2003; and “State Fiscal Constraints and Higher Education Spending,” (with Thomas Kane and David Gunter), Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center Discussion Paper No. 12, May 2003.

Dr. Orszag has testified on numerous occasions before Congress and is a regular
commentator on economic policy in the national press.



William H. Overholt
Asia Policy Chair
RAND Center for Asia Pacific Policy

William H. Overholt holds the Asia Policy Chair at RAND’s California headquarters.

Previously Dr. Overholt was Joint Senior Fellow at Harvard University, and he remains an Associate in Research with Harvard’s Asia Center. He will also be Distinguished Visiting Professor at Yonsei University in South Korea for part of 2003/4. Before that, he spent 21 years in bank research, including 16 in Hong Kong. He served as Head of Strategy and Economics at Nomura’s regional headquarters in Hong Kong from 1998 to 2001, and as Managing Director and Head of Research at Bank Boston's regional headquarters in Singapore. During 18 years at Bankers Trust, he ran a country risk team in New York from 1980 to 1984, then was regional strategist and Asia research head based in Hong Kong.

At Hudson Institute 1971 to 1979, Dr. Overholt directed planning studies for the U.S. Department of Defense, Department of State, National Security Council, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and Council on International Economic Policy. As Director of Hudson Research Services, he did strategic planning for corporations.

Dr. Overholt is the author of five books, including The Rise of China (W.W. Norton, 1993), which won the Mainichi News/Asian Affairs Research Center Special Book Prize. The others are: Political Risk (Euromoney, 1982); and (with William Ascher) Strategic Planning and Forecasting (John Wiley, 1983). He is principal co-author of: Asia's Nuclear Future (Westview Press, 1976) and The Future of Brazil (Westview Press, 1978). With Zbigniew Brzezinski, he founded the semi-annual Global Assessment in 1976 and edited it until 1988.

Dr. Overholt was a Governor of the American Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong and Executive Committee member of the Business and Professionals Federation of Hong Kong, both for six years. He serves on advisory boards for Harvard University’s Asia Center; the Hang Lung Center for Organizational Research at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology; and Chinavest Ltd.

He has been a consultant on strategic planning and foreign affairs to the Conference Board, the U.S. Army Strategic Studies Institute, the Foreign Service Institute, Dean Witter Reynolds, A.G. Becker, and numerous corporations. He has served as political advisor to several of Asia's major political figures and has done consulting projects for the Korea Development Institute, Korea's National Defense College, the Philippine Ministry of Agrarian Reform, and Thailand's Ministry of Universities.

Dr. Overholt received his B.A. (magna, 1968) from Harvard and his Master of Philosophy (1970) and Ph.D. (1972) from Yale.



Randy Pond
Senior Vice President of Operations, Processes, and Systems
Cisco Systems Incorporated

Randy Pond is the Senior Vice President of Operations, Processes, and Systems at Cisco Systems Incorporated. In this role, Pond oversees the organizations of Worldwide Manufacturing, Information Technology, Customer Service, Legal Affairs, Government Solutions, and Corporate Security Programs. Pond also serves as chair of Cisco’s Business Process Operations Council and Business Oversight Board; two strategic executive councils within Cisco.

Pond joined Cisco in September 1993 through the acquisition of Crescendo Communications. In his ten years with the company he has held numerous roles within Manufacturing, including his initial role as Director of Operations. In 1994 Pond assumed leadership of Cisco’s Supply / Demand group, and later in 1994 was appointed Director of Cisco’s worldwide manufacturing operations, responsible for planning, production operations, and distribution and logistics.

He was promoted to Vice President of Manufacturing in 1995, responsible for all aspects of manufacturing operations, including new product introduction, planning, procurement, productions operations, and distribution and logistics. In January 2000, Pond was promoted to SVP of West Coast and Asia operations. From 2001 to August 2003, Pond became responsible for all of World Wide Manufacturing Operations, including product fulfillment and logistics.

Some of Pond’s key accomplishments include overseeing Cisco’s West Coast Operations by leading the implementation of Enterprise Resource Planning in manufacturing, establishing the consistency of process and metrics across manufacturing operations, and making customer fulfillment a strategic initiative.

Prior to joining Cisco, Pond held the positions of Vice President Finance, Chief Financial Officer and Vice President of Operations at Crescendo Communications, and VP of Manufacturing and VP of Finance at Versatec, Inc, a wholly owned subsidiary of Xerox Corporation. He has also served in various finance and operations positions at David Systems, Xerox Corporation, Schlumberger and Arthur Andersen.

Pond is on the Board of Directors for The Children’s Discovery Museum of San Jose and Northwester University. He has a bachelor’s degree in accounting and economics from Ball State University in Indiana.



John C. Robertson
Assistant Vice President and Senior Economist
Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta

John C. Robertson is an assistant vice president and senior economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. He is the team leader of the regional and Latin American research groups at the Atlanta Fed. His research interests include macroeconomic modeling and monetary policy analysis.

Dr. Robertson joined the Atlanta Fed's research department in January of 1998 from The Australian National University in Canberra, Australia. His research has been published in many distinguished journals including Econometric Reviews, the Journal of Policy Modeling, the Review of Economics and Statistics and the Carnegie-Rochester Series in Public Policy. Dr. Robertson is a member of the Econometric Society and the American Economics Association.

A native of Dunedin, New Zealand, Dr. Robertson holds a bachelor's and a master's degree with first-class honors from the University of Canterbury in New Zealand. He earned his Ph.D. in economics from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in 1992.





 

 

Prof. Dr. Joachim Scheide
Head, Business Cycle Department
The Kiel Institute for World Economics

Joachim Scheide has been the head of the Business Cycle Department of the Kiel Institute for World Economics since February 1999. He represents the Kiel Institute at the joint economic forecast of the six leading research institutes in Germany which is presented to the public twice a year. His main research areas are the analysis and the forecast of the world economy, in particular the US, Euroland and Germany, the role of monetary policy for output and inflation, and issues of national and international macroeconomic policy in general. Furthermore, he has been teaching at the University of Kiel and was a Visiting Professor at the University of Western Ontario in Canada for one year.




Thomas Kevin Smith
Senior Director – Economics & Statistics
American Chemistry Council

A native of Buffalo, New York, Mr. Swift is a graduate of Ashland College (Ashland, Ohio) with a BA degree and a graduate of Case Western Reserve University (Cleveland, Ohio) with a MA degree in Economics. He has also completed the Tax Analysis and Revenue Forecasting Program and other studies at Harvard University, as well as doctoral level studies in business administration at Anglia Polytechnic University.

Mr. Swift is employed by the American Chemistry Council in Arlington, Virginia where he is responsible for economic and other analyses dealing with various business, trade, tax, energy, and related issues. He is also responsible for monitoring business conditions and industry structure, as well as identifying emerging trends. Mr. Swift is also involved in collection and dissemination of industry data, information and analysis to member companies, the media, and the public in general.

Prior to joining the American Chemistry Council, Mr. Swift held several executive and senior level positions at several business information/database companies, directing
business research, forecasting, and consulting efforts as well as domestic and international business forecasting services and related on-line databases. He also conducted industrial market research and related projects. Mr. Swift started his career at Dow Chemical USA where he was involved in cost engineering and planning.

Mr. Swift is a member of the National Association for Business Economics (NABE) and is a member of NABE's panel of 40 professional forecasters. He is also a member of the Commercial Development and Marketing Association, the Société de Chimie Industrielle, and the Association of Christian Economists. Mr. Swift is also on the editorial advisory board of Chemical Management Review and has authored articles in such diverse journals as Business Economics, Chemistry Business, Chimica Oggi, Cost Engineering, and Hydrocarbon Processing, among others. He has also appeared on Bloomberg TV.

 


Jonathan Sokobin
Senior Economist,
U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission

Jonathan Sokobin joined OEA in August 1998 from Southern Methodist University. Dr. Sokobin received his doctorate in finance from the University of Chicago. He currently serves as the senior financial economist in the areas of corporate finance and accounting policy. Dr. Sokobin provides economic advice, conducts empirical studies of current and proposed SEC policies and provides support for cost-benefit analysis. His areas of interest include selective disclosure and the role of analysts, corporate governance, and securities issuance. His recent research includes working papers on “Volume, opinion divergence and returns: A study of post-earnings announcement drift,” “It’s not what you know but when you know it: The role of timing of analyst conference calls” and "Why issue Rule 144A debt?" In addition, Dr. Sokobin participates in major finance conferences and roundtables, presenting his own research, critically discussing the research of others, or providing commentary as a staff economist of the SEC.

 

Jack Triplett
Visiting Fellow
Brookings Institution

Jack Triplett is a Visiting Fellow at the Brookings Institution, in Washington, D.C. His current research at Brookings concerns productivity in services industries, with a focus on developing improved measures of output for these notably difficult to measure sectors of the economy, and analysis of the “new economy,” particularly the contributions of high technology to economic growth and productivity. He has served as a consultant on productivity analysis and on issues of economic measurement and economic statistics to research institutions, companies and international organizations, and to the statistical agencies of a number of countries, including the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Sweden and Eurostat (the statistical office of the European Community).

From 1985 to 1997, he was Chief Economist, U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (on leave in 1996-97 to the National Bureau of Economic Research). From 1971 to 1985, Mr. Triplett held positions at the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, including Associate Commissioner for Research and Evaluation, and Chief of the Price Research Division. In 1979, he was Assistant Director for Price Monitoring at the Council on Wage and Price Stability. Before his government positions, he was on the economics faculty at Washington University (St.Louis) and the University of Oregon, where he was also Assistant Director of the Institute of Labor and Industrial Relations.

Mr. Triplett has written extensively on problems of economic measurement, including price indexes, national accounts, capital stock and labor input, and productivity and technical change. He is the editor of Fifty Years of Economic Measurement (with Ernst R. Berndt) and The Measurement of Labor Cost, both for the National Bureau of Economic Research (University of Chicago Press), and of Measuring the Prices of Medical Treatments, for the Brookings Institution press. His recent publications include: “Baumol’s Disease Has Been Cured: IT and Multifactor Productivity in U.S. Services Industries” (with Barry P. Bosworth), forthcoming in a conference volume published by the University of Chicago Press; “Should the Cost-of-Living Index Provide the Conceptual Framework for a Consumer Price Index” (Economic Journal, June, 2001), “What’s New About the New Economy? IT, Economic Growth and Productivity” (International Productivity Monitor, Spring, 2001—with Barry P. Bosworth), “The Solow Productivity Paradox: What Do Computers Do To Productivity?” (Canadian Journal of Economics, April, 1999), “Economic Statistics, the New Economy, and the Productivity Slowdown,” Business Economics, April, 1999, and “What’s Different About Health? Human Repair and Car Repair in National Accounts,” in David M. Cutler and Ernst R. Berndt, eds, Medical Care Output and Productivity, University of Chicago Press (2001). He is an elected fellow of the American Statistical Association, and is the 1997 winner of the Julius Shiskin Award for Economic Statistics, which is awarded jointly by the National Association of Business Economists and the Washington Statistical Society.

Mr. Triplett was born in Portland, Oregon, and attended Lewis and Clark College. He holds A.B., M.A., and Ph.D. degrees from the University of California, Berkeley. His wife, B.K. Atrostic, is also an economist, and his daughter, Pimone Triplett, is a poet who teaches creative writing at the University of Oregon.



Kathleen P. Utgoff
Commissioner
Bureau of Labor Statistics


Dr. Kathleen P. Utgoff was appointed Commissioner of the Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) in July 2002.

Prior to coming to the Department of Labor, Utgoff was vice president of the Center for Naval Analyses, a research and development center in Virginia, where she was responsible for research on workforce issues, the environment, health care and infrastructure.

Utgoff also served as chief economist and partner at Groom and Nordberg, the largest employee benefits law firm in the country. Her other practice areas included the taxation of life insurance companies and corporate reorganizations.

Utgoff was widely recognized for her work as executive director of the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, an agency within the Department of Labor. During her tenure, two major pension reforms that addressed many of the structural flaws in the insurance program were passed.

Utgoff also served as a senior economist for the Council of Economic Advisers in the Executive Office of the President. In her role as the senior economist for labor market issues, she was responsible for the formation and operation of the inter-agency working group that developed policy and legislative strategy for the Cabinet Council on Pensions and Health.

Utgoff holds a bachelor of arts in economics from the California State University at Northridge and a Ph.D. in economics from the University of California at Los Angeles. She is also a member of the board of directors of the National Bureau of Economic Research.



Chris Varvares
President
Macroeconomic Advisers

Chris Varvares is President of Macroeconomic Advisers, a company he co-founded with Joel Prakken and Laurence Meyer as Laurence H. Meyer & Associates in 1982. The firm became Macroeconomic Advisers in June of 1996 when Dr. Meyer joined the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System.

Mr. Varvares has over 20 years of experience in macroeconomic forecasting and policy analysis, both as a principal of Macroeconomic Advisers (1982 to present) and as a member of the staff of the President's Council of Economic Advisers (1981-1982). While at the Council, he served as a member of the U.S. delegation to the OECD in April 1982. Mr. Varvares is a member and former President of the St. Louis Chapter of the National Association of Business Economists and is a member of the American Economic Association. He serves as a member of Time Magazine's Board of Economists, and has been a panelist for the World Economic Forum.

Mr. Varvares holds a B.A. in Economics from the George Washington University and received his graduate training in economics from Washington University in St. Louis.

 

Seth Verry
Director
Corporate Executive Board

Seth Verry is a Director with the Corporate Executive Board (CEB), a firm providing best practices research and executive education to a membership of the world’s leading corporations. The CEB’s research is focused on identifying management initiatives, processes, tools and frameworks to help its clients address their most pressing concerns in the areas of strategy, management and operations.

In 1996, Mr. Verry helped launch the Corporate Strategy Board, a CEB research program for heads of strategy and business development. Mr. Verry spent four years researching and authoring the Strategy Board’s strategic research studies, including: Stall Points, a study on the barriers to sustained growth at large corporations; the Strategy Board’s multi-volume examination of the New Economy; and Continuous Strategy, a study on fast-cycle strategic decision making. In his current role as Director, Mr. Verry continues to oversee Strategy Board research studies, but devotes most of his time to onsite research presentations with member organizations.

Mr. Verry graduated from the University of Virginia with a BS in Commerce.

 


Mark Vitner
Senior Economist
Wachovia Corporation

Mark Vitner is Senior Economist at Wachovia Corporation.

Mark Vitner joined First Union in 1993 and is responsible for tracking U.S. and regional economic trends. He also writes the monthly economic newsletter, Regional Economic Review and the Weekly Commentary on Money, Credit and Exchange Rates. Prior to joining First Union, Mark was an economist for Barnett Banks in Jacksonville, Florida for approximately nine years.

Mark's work has been featured in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, BusinessWeek, and many other publications.

He is a native of Atlanta and holds a BBA in Economics from the University of Georgia, an MBA from the University of North Florida, and has completed further graduate work in economics at the University of Florida. Mark also completed the NABE Advanced Training in Economics Program at Carnegie Mellon University.

He is a member of the National Association for Business Economics, the Association for Corporate Growth, and serves on the Governor's Advisory Board of Economists for the Commonwealth of Virginia.

 


Kenneth D. West
Ragnar Frisch Professor of Economics
University of Wisconsin

Kenneth D. West is the Ragnar Frisch Professor of Economics at the University of Wisconsin, where he has also served as Department Chair and Director of the Social Systems Research Institute. He received his Ph.D. in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1983 and a B.A. in economics and mathematics from Wesleyan University in 1973. Professor West is widely published in monetary economics and econometrics. He is co-editor of the Journal of Money, Credit and Banking and an advisor to several other professional journals. Previously he has served co-editor of the American Economic Review. Honors include Fellow
of the Econometric Society, Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow and John M. Stauffer National Fellow in Public Policy at the Hoover Institution.

Before joining the faculty of the University of Wisconsin in 1988, Professor West was on the faculty of Princeton University. Previous and ongoing appointments include Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research; Academic Advisory Council of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago; Visiting Scholar at the Bank of Brazil, the European Central Bank and various branches of the Federal Reserve in the United States; Houblon-Norman Senior Fellow at the Bank of England; and Professorial Fellow in Monetary Economics at the Reserve Bank of New Zealand /Victoria, University of Wellington.


 


Dr. William Witherell
Director for Financial, Fiscal and Enterprise Affairs
Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)

Dr. Witherell joined the Secretariat of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in 1977 and since 1989 has been Director for Financial, Fiscal and Enterprise Affairs. In that position he manages the Secretariat teams responsible for servicing the following OECD committees: the Corporate Governance Steering Group, the Committee on Financial Markets, the Committee on International Investment and Multinational Enterprises, the Committee on Capital Movements and Invisible Transactions, the Competition Committee, the Fiscal Affairs Committee, the Insurance Committee, and the Working Group on Bribery. The Secretariat for the Financial Action Task Force (on money laundering) -- a separate institution -- is also part of his Directorate. He also manages the OECD cooperative programs with the transition economies and the emerging market economies in the policy areas covered by these committees as well as privatization, accounting and disclosure, insolvency and legal reform. He represents the OECD in the Financial Stability Forum.

Dr. Witherell, a U.S. citizen, is a 1963 Graduate of Colby College and holds an M.A. (1965) and a Ph.D. (1967) in Economics from Princeton University. Dr. Witherell began his career as a business economist with Exxon and Esso Eastern (1967-73), where he held positions in the economics, treasury and corporate planning functions. He moved to the international economic and financial relations field in 1973 with positions first in the U.S. Department of State (under the President's Executive Interchange Program) and then in the Department of the Treasury (1974-77) as Director of the Office of Financial Resources and Energy Finance.



Perry Wong
Senior Research Economist
Milken Institute

Perry Wong is a Senior Research Economist at the Milken Institute where he is an expert on regional data availability and econometric forecasting. He is a specialist in analyzing the structure, industry mix, development and public policies of a regional economy. Wong is actively involved in projects aimed at increasing access to technology and regional economic development in California, the MidWest and the Far East.

Prior to joining the Institute, Wong was a senior economist and director of regional forecasting at Global Insight, Inc. (formerly Wharton Econometric Forecasting) where he managed regional quarterly state and metropolitan area forecasts and provided consultation. There he designed regional modeling system evaluations and contributed to regional economic impact studies on topics including budget reduction and health care reform. He also co-authored the DC Economic Recovery Act Impact Study presented to the U.S. Congress and worked on an API-sponsored study on the effects of carbon and particulate emission containment on the regional economy.

Wong has conducted many research studies regarding regional economic development and policy impacts on both public and private fronts. He appeared on public television and presented the results of his studies in the U.S. Congress, and to state and local governments. These include the impact of U.S. budget and trade policy changes on key U.S. industries and regions; healthcare reform and its implications on the balance of U.S. budget; the Kyoto Agreement and its impact on the well being of U.S. regional economies; the pharmaceutical industry and its contribution to the state economy in Pennsylvania, and more.

Wong earned his master's degree in economics at Temple University in 1990 and completed all course requirements for his Ph.D.


 


Madeline Zavodny
Senior Economist
Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta

Madeline Zavodny is a senior economist with the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. Prior to joining the Atlanta Fed, she was an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. She was also an associate professor of economics at Occidental College in Los Angeles.

Her research has examined the employment impact of the minimum wage, the effect of marriage on men's wages, and the determinants of immigrants' wages. She is currently researching the effect of watching television on educational attainment and on wages.

Dr. Zavodny received her doctorate in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1996.




 

 

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