Speaker biographies

Kevin A. Hassett is the director of economic policy studies and a resident scholar at AEI. He is also a weekly columnist for Bloomberg.com. Before joining AEI, Mr. Hassett was a senior economist at the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System and an associate professor of economics and finance at the Graduate School of Business of Columbia University. He has also served as a policy consultant to the U.S. Department of the Treasury during both the former Bush and Clinton administrations. Mr. Hassett is a member of the Joint Committee on Taxation’s Blue Ribbon Dynamic Scoring Advisory Panel and its Estimating Review Panel. He is the author, coauthor, or editor of six books on economics and economic policy, including the recent AEI book on tax reform Toward Fundamental Tax Reform. His popular writings have been published in the Wall Street Journal, Atlantic Monthly, USA Today, the Washington Post, and numerous other outlets. His economic commentaries are regularly aired on radio and television, including recent appearances on the Today show, the CBS Morning Show, The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, Hardball, Moneyline, and Power Lunch.

Stephen Moore is president of the Free Enterprise Fund, an organization that promotes free-market policies, including lower taxes, Social Security reform, tort reform, smaller government, reduced regulation, and free trade. From 1999–2004 Mr. Moore founded and served as president of the Club for Growth. In his tenure as president, the Club for Growth became one of the most influential and respected political organizations in the nation. Mr. Moore has also served as a senior fellow in economics at the Cato Institute, where he published dozens of studies on federal budget and tax policy. Moore is an economic commentator for Fox TV and a frequent guest on CNN and CNBC, commenting on economic and fiscal policy issues. Mr. Moore has served as a senior economist at the Joint Economic Committee under former chairman Dick Armey. There, he advised Mr. Armey on budget, tax, and competitiveness issues. Mr. Moore is a contributing editor to National Review and Human Events magazines, and he is a regular contributor to the Wall Street Journal. He is also a member of the Investors Business Daily "Brain Trust." Mr. Moore is the author of four books, including It’s Getting Better All the Time: The 100 Greatest Trends of the Last Century and Bullish on Bush: How the Ownership Society Will Make America Stronger.

Henry Olsen is vice president and director of the National Research Initiative (NRI). He disseminates and publicizes the Institute’s work to the academic community, works with AEI’s visiting, adjunct, and NRI research fellows, commissions and supervises NRI projects, and oversees the production of NRI publications. Mr. Olsen previously served as vice president for programs at the Manhattan Institute and as a judicial clerk to the chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit Danny J. Boggs.

Carl J. Schramm is president and chief executive officer of the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, America’s largest foundation dedicated to advancing entrepreneurial success. Trained as an economist and lawyer, Mr. Schramm began his career on the faculty of Johns Hopkins University. While there, he founded the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Care Finance and Management, the first such research center in the nation. He went on to head the Health Insurance Association of America and later became executive vice president of Fortis (now Assurant) and president of its health insurance operations. Mr. Schramm has co-founded companies in the health-care finance and information technology arenas. He is a Batten Fellow at the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and the 2005 recipient of the University of Rochester’s George Eastman Medal. In 2006, he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. His work has appeared in Foreign Affairs, the Wall Street Journal, INC., and the New England Journal of Medicine. He is the author of The Entrepreneurial Imperative (HarperCollins, October 2006), and his next book, Good Capitalism, Bad Capitalism (Yale), coauthored with William Baumol and Robert Litan, will be published in early 2007.

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