Conference hostsJames Poterba
James Poterba is the Mitsui Professor of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the President and CEO of the National Bureau of Economic Research, a leading non-profit organization devoted to economic research. He is also the President of the National Tax Association, a Vice President of the American Economic Association, and has served as a Director of the American Finance Association. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Econometric Society. Dr. Poterba's research focuses on how taxation affects the economic decisions of households and firms.
His recent work has emphasized the effect of taxation on the financial behavior of households, particularly their saving and portfolio decisions. He has been especially interested in the analysis of tax-deferred retirement saving programs such as 401(k) plans and in the role of annuities in financing retirement consumption. Dr. Poterba served as a member of the President's Advisory Panel on Federal Tax Reform in 2005. He is a trustee of the College Retirement Equity Fund (CREF) and the TIAA-CREF Mutual Funds.
He is a past editor of the Journal of Public Economics, the leading international journal for research on taxation and government spending, and a member of the advisory board of the Journal of Wealth Management. Dr. Poterba studied Economics as an undergraduate at Harvard, and received the Doctor of Philosophy degree in Economics from Oxford University.
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