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→Who We Are
The Office of Tax Policy Research, established at the University of Michigan Business School in 1987, has two missions. The first is to encourage and facilitate joint research on the tax system by economists and scholars of other disciplines. The second is to serve as a liaison on tax issues among the academic, business, and policymaking tax communities. The Office draws on the substantial data resources and expertise already existing at the University of Michigan in these fields, and also involves scholars from outside the University.
Joel Slemrod
Director
Joel Slemrod is the Paul W. McCracken Collegiate Professor of
Business Economics and Public Policy at the Stephen M. Ross School of Business
at the University of Michigan, and Professor Policy Research, an
interdisciplinary research center housed at the Ross School of Business.
Professor Slemrod received the B.A. degree from Princeton University in 1973 and
the Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University in 1980. Professor Slemrod has
been a consultant to the U.S. Department of the Treasury, the Canadian
Department of Finance, the New Zealand Department of Treasury, the South Africa
Ministry of Finance, the World Bank, and the OECD. From 1992 to 1998 Professor Slemrod was editor of the National
Tax Journal.
He is the co-author with Leonard E. Burman of
Taxes in America: What Everyone Needs to Know,
published in 2012, and co-author with Jon Bakija of Taxing
Ourselves: A Citizen’s Guide to the Debate over Taxes,
whose 5th edition will be published in 2013. In
2012 he received from the National Tax Association its most prestigious
award, the Daniel M. Holland Medal for distinguished lifetime
contributions to the study and practice of public finance.
James Hines
Research Director
James Hines teaches at the University of Michigan, where he is the
L. Hart Wright Collegiate Professor of Law
in the law school and the Richard A.
Musgrave Collegiate Professor of Economics in the department of economics. He also serves as Research Director of the
business school’s Office of Tax Policy Research. His research concerns various
aspects of taxation. He holds a B.A. and M.A. from Yale University and a Ph.D.
from Harvard, all in economics. He taught at Princeton and Harvard prior to
moving to Michigan in 1997, and has held visiting appointments at Columbia, the
London School of Economics, and Harvard Law School.
He is a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, research
director of the International Tax Policy Forum, co-editor of the American
Economic Association’s Journal of Economic Perspectives, and once, long ago, was
an economist in the United States Department of Commerce.
David Albouy
Research Associate
David Albouy researches differences in federal taxation
and spending across regions, how these impact local economies, and are
influenced by political representation. He has developed a model to
estimate inter-urban differences in wage levels and costs-of-living to
determine the quality of life and productivity of American and Canadian
cities. These estimates are used to value public infrastructure and
investigate how quality of life is affected by climate amenities, so as
to predict how climate change may affect future welfare. Albouy is also
known for work on the economics of language and the impact of
institutions on development. He is currently looking at whether cities
are under-sized, and how land-use restrictions may lower land values and
raise housing costs.
Albouy is on the editorial board of the Journal of Economic Geography
and is a Faculty Research Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic
Research.
Mary Ceccanese
Center Administrator
Mary Ceccanese received her B.A. in Human Resource Administration (summa
cum laude) from Concordia College in 1992. She is in her 25th year of
working in the Office of Tax Policy Research at the Stephen M. Ross
School of Business at the University of Michigan. She is responsible for
coordinating all of the ongoing activities of OTPR including project
management, financial and grant administration, publication and
editorial coordination.
From 1992 to 1998, Ms. Ceccanese was the editorial assistant for the
National Tax Journal.
Musgrave Fellowship
University of Michigan doctoral
students contribute importantly to the performance of OTPR's
mission. Consequently, OTPR offers annually a special fellowship
designed to attract to Michigan and support outstanding graduate
students interested in pursuing public finance as a field. This
fellowship is the Richard A. Musgrave Fellowship, named in honor of
one of the leading figures of twentieth century public finance, who
wrote his most influential book while a professor at Michigan.
The fellowship supplements other support offered by the University
and the economics department with a guaranteed research
assistantship in the first and second summers of the Musgrave's
Fellow's residence at Michigan. The goal is to enhance graduate
training with early participation in research projects.
Richard A. Musgrave was born in 1910 in Königstein, Germany. He
received a Diplom Volkswirt from Heidelberg University in 1933, an
M.A. from Harvard University in 1936 and a Ph.D. from Harvard in
1937. He was an instructor and tutor at Harvard from 1936-1941. A
naturalized U.S. citizen, he served as an Economist in the Research
Division at the Federal Reserve Board from 1939-1948. In 1948-49 he
was a lecturer at Swarthmore College, and in 1949 he moved to the
University of Michigan, where he was Professor of Economics.
Professor Musgrave taught at Michigan for nine years. During his
Michigan years he wrote his revolutionary The Theory of Public
Finance, 1959, which changed the way future generations of public
finance students conceptualize the key questions in this field. As
the work proceeded, subsequent chapters were discussed in his
seminar, encouraging his students to undertake future work in public
finance. During his years at Michigan, Professor Musgrave also
published scores of articles and Congressional testimonies. A study
on tax incidence, published jointly with members of his seminar, was
honored recently as the most widely cited article ever published in
the National Tax Journal.
To be considered for the Musgrave
Fellowship, the applicant must submit to OTPR, at the time of
application to the economics Ph.D. program (deadline of January 15),
the following materials:
• A copy of the Ph.D. program application
• A statement of research interests and request to be considered for
the Musgrave Fellowship
• One recommendation letter