Alan Auerbach

Alan Auerbach is a prominent economist in the field of Business & Economics, known for his expertise in public finance, tax policy, and fiscal policy. He received his B.A. in Economics and Mathematics summa cum laude from Yale University in 1974 and his Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard University in 1978. Auerbach began his academic career as Assistant Professor at Harvard (1978-1982) and Associate Professor (1982-1983). He then joined the University of Pennsylvania as Associate Professor of Economics (1983-1985), advancing to Professor of Economics and Law (1985-1995) and serving as Chair of the Economics Department (1988-1990). Subsequently, he moved to the University of California, Berkeley, as Robert D. Burch Professor of Economics and Law (1994-2025), Director of the Burch Center for Tax Policy and Public Finance, and Chair of the Economics Department on multiple occasions (1998, 2001-2002, 2018-2019). Currently, he is Professor of the Graduate School and Robert D. Burch Professor Emeritus at Berkeley. Auerbach is a long-time Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research (since 1978) and serves on the External Advisory Board of the Penn Wharton Budget Model at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School. In public service, he was Deputy Chief of Staff of the U.S. Joint Committee on Taxation (1992) and has consulted for various government agencies.

Auerbach's research interests encompass domestic and international tax policy, fiscal policy and demographic change, and inequality and tax policy. He has produced seminal works including books such as The Taxation of Capital Income (Harvard University Press, 1983), Dynamic Fiscal Policy with Laurence Kotlikoff (Cambridge University Press, 1987), the Handbook of Public Economics (multi-volume, 1985-2013), and Taxing Profit in a Global Economy (Oxford University Press, 2021). Notable papers include 'Generational Accounts: A Meaningful Alternative to Deficit Accounting' (1991) with Jagadeesh Gokhale and Laurence Kotlikoff, and 'Measuring the Output Responses to Fiscal Policy' (2012) with Yuriy Gorodnichenko. His scholarship has profoundly influenced tax reform debates, generational accounting, and fiscal multiplier analysis. Auerbach has earned the Daniel M. Holland Medal (National Tax Association, 2011), Distinguished Fellow of the American Economic Association (2021), Fellowships in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1999) and Econometric Society (1986), and the Order of the Rising Sun (Japan, 2021). He has led major organizations as President of the National Tax Association (2014-2015) and Western Economic Association International (2020-2021), and served as Editor of the Journal of Economic Perspectives and American Economic Journal: Economic Policy.