Conference Participant Biographies
David S. Blitzstein Since 1990, David S. Blitzstein has been director of the negotiated benefits department of the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) International Union. The department advises UFCW local unions in collective bargaining on pension and health insurance issues and consults with the Union’s 150 jointly trusteed health and welfare and pension plans nationwide. Blitzstein also serves as a trustee of the $4 billion UFCW industry pension fund and the UFCW national health and welfare fund. He represents UFCW as a member of the working committee of the National Coordinating Committee for Multiemployer Plans (NCCMP), a member of the Employer Benefit Research Institute, and a member of the National Academy of Social Insurance. He also serves on the board of the Pension Research Council of the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. Blitzstein is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and holds an M.S. in labor studies from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Zvi Bodie Zvi Bodie is Norman and Adele Barron professor of finance and economics at Boston University’s School of Management. He holds a Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and has served on the finance faculty of the Harvard Business School and MIT's Sloan School of Management. Bodie has published widely on pension finance and investment strategy in leading professional journals. His books include Foundations of Pension Finance, Pensions in the U.S. Economy, Issues in Pension Economics, and Financial Aspects of the U.S. Pension System. He is the author of Investments, a leading textbook used in certification programs of the Financial Planning Association and the Society of Actuaries, and is co-author with Nobel Prize winning economist Robert C. Merton of the textbook, Finance. His latest book is Worry Free Investing: A Safe Approach to Achieving Your Lifetime Financial Goals. Arij Lans Bovenberg Arij Lans Bovenberg is scientific director of Netspar, Tilburg University, the Netherlands. Founded in 2004, Netspar (Network for Studies on Pensions, Aging, and Retirement) is a research institute focused on the economics and finance of aging and pensions. Bovenberg has been affiliated with Tilburg University in various capacities since 1992, serving until 2004 as scientific director of CentER, a broad-based research center for economics and business administration. Bovenberg has also been affiliated with Erasmus University, Rotterdam, the Netherlands; has been an economist at the International Monetary Fund; and has taught at the University of California, Berkeley. He has published hundreds of articles (in English and Dutch) in the areas of taxation, life-cycle investment and consumer behavior, policy instruments for pollution abatement, fiscal and monetary policy for the European Union (including how such policies pertain to pension funding), and other topics in macroeconomics. He has been or currently is a member of the editorial boards of several macroeconomic journals. Bovenberg holds a Ph.D. in economics from the University of California, Berkeley.
Jeffrey R. Brown Jeffrey R. Brown is associate professor of finance and Julian Simon memorial faculty fellow at the College of Business, University of Illinois (UrbanaChampaign). He has served as senior economist for the White House Council of Economic Advisers (2001–2002) and has taught at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. Since 2001, he has been a co-editor of the Journal of Pension Economics and Finance. His primary research focus is on the interaction of public and private insurance markets, including annuities, life insurance, long-term care insurance, pensions, and Social Security. He has also investigated issues such as stock-market participation, dividend taxation, and the effect of inheritances on labor supply. Brown holds a B.A. from Miami University, an M.P.P. from Harvard University, and a Ph.D. in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Robert A. Brown Robert A. Brown is the tenth president of Boston University, a position he assumed in September 2005. Previously, Brown was affiliated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which he joined as an assistant professor in 1979. During his 25 years at MIT, Brown served as head of the department of chemical engineering (1989–95), dean of engineering (1996–98), and provost of MIT (1998–2005). Brown has published approximately 250 papers in areas related to mathematical modeling of phenomena associated with materials processing, fluid mechanics of viscoelastic fluids, interface morphology, and modeling of semiconductor processing. He has served as a consultant to numerous major international corporations and governments. In February 2006, President George W. Bush appointed Brown to the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. A native of Texas, Brown earned a B.S. and an M.S. in chemical engineering from the University of Texas at Austin and a Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota. George Chacko George Chacko is managing director of Integrated Finance Ltd. A professor of finance at Harvard Business School since 1997, he most recently worked, concurrently with his professorship, at State Street Bank, Boston, as a fixed-income managing director. Chacko consults with financial institutions ranging from commercial/investment banks and insurance companies to hedge funds. In his academic work, Chacko has published extensively on credit markets and complex financial instruments, including articles titled “A Theory of Optimal Timing and Selectivity” and “Dynamic Consumption and Portfolio Choice with Stochastic Volatility in Incomplete Markets.” Chacko holds a B.S. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, an M.B.A. from the University of Chicago, and a Ph.D. in business economics from Harvard University. Jerome Detemple Jerome Detemple is a professor in the finance and economics department at Boston University’s School of Management. In the past, he has taught at McGill University and at Columbia University’s business school. Detemple’s research interests include American-style derivative securities, consumption-portfolio choice, asset pricing and market frictions, managerial contracts, and numerical methods. He serves as co-editor of the journal, Mathematical Finance, as well as associate editor of Management Science, Finance, and Review of Derivatives Research. Detemple’s book, American-Style Derivatives: Valuation and Computation, provides an extensive treatment of American option pricing. After completing his undergraduate degree at Université Paris-Dauphine (France), Detemple proceeded to earn a Ph.D. in finance from the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania and a Doctorat d’État in economic sciences from Université Louis Pasteur (France).
Jeff Diermeier Jeff Diermeier has served on the board of governors of the CFA Institute since 2002, becoming its full-time president and chief executive officer in January 2005. For 18 years, Diermeier served the institute in various volunteer capacities, including six years on the CFA curriculum committee. Most recently, he chaired the board’s planning committee and, in that capacity, played a leadership role in the development of a five-year strategic vision for the organization. Until early 2004, Diermeier was global chief investment officer at UBS Global Asset Management. In that role, he oversaw the management of a staff of 435 investment professionals in 10 countries with responsibility for managing more than $400 billion in assets, covering asset allocation, equities, fixed-income, real estate, and currencies. Diermeier holds a bachelor's degree in business administration and an M.B.A., both from the University of Wisconsin at Madison. Philip Dybvig Philip Dybvig is Boatmen's Bancshares professor of banking and finance at Washington University, St. Louis. He previously served on the faculties of Princeton and Yale universities. His research interests are primarily in portfolio theory, the analysis of financial markets, and banking. A former Sloan and Batterymarch research fellow, he has published over 20 articles in leading journals as well as two textbooks. His published work includes “Warranties, Durability, and Maintenance: Two-Sided Moral Hazard in a Continuous-Time Model,” “Capital Structure and Dividend Irrelevance with Asymmetric Information,” and “Bank Runs, Deposit Insurance, and Liquidity.” Dybvig is an editor of the Journal of Financial Intermediation and an associate editor for numerous other financial journals. He holds a B.A. from Indiana University, as well as M.A., M.Phil., and Ph.D. degrees, all from Yale University. Jeffrey C. Fuhrer Jeffrey C. Fuhrer is executive vice president and director of research at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston. He joined the Bank as an economist in 1992 and headed the research department’s open economy macro/international section before being named director of research in 2002. Previously, Fuhrer was a senior economist at the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System in Washington, DC. His recent research has focused on the development of macroeconometric models of inflation, long-term interest rates, monetary policy, consumer spending, and the Phillips curve. His recently published work includes studies on the importance of habit formation in consumer spending decisions, the persistence of inflation, the interaction between monetary policy and long-term interest rates, and the failure of new rational-expectation models to explain business cycle fluctuations. Fuhrer holds an M.A. and a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University and a B.A. from Princeton University.
François Gadenne François Gadenne is founding chairman, president, and chief executive officer of Retirement Engineering, Inc. (REI), an R&D company that designs insurance and investment products geared to meeting the retirement income needs of babyboomers. He is also co-founder and chairman of the Retirement Income Industry Association (RIIA), which serves as a think tank to analyze retirement income issues. Additionally, Gadenne co-founded Rational Investors, an independent provider of investment education and advice products for the defined contribution market. Gadenne has worked with Standard and Poor’s retirement services group, Bank of Boston (now Bank of America), Braxton (the strategy arm of Deloitte), and Arthur D. Little. He is a graduate of the École Supérieure de Commerce de Paris (France) and he earned an M.B.A. from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. Gadenne is a chartered financial analyst, a member of the CFA Institute, and a lecturer at Boston University’s School of Management. Jerome S. Golden Jerome S. Golden is president of the income management strategies division of MassMutual, which recently acquired Golden Retirement Resources, Inc. (GRR), the company that he founded in 1999. At GRR, Golden and his team spent six years developing and implementing the patent-pending RetireMentor system and the Flexible Benefits Annuity. RetireMentor is an integrated income-planning and management system that addresses the unique financial issues of retirement, including the need to receive secure lifetime income benefits, maintain purchasing power over time, and adjust to life events. Golden was previously an executive vice president of Equitable Life Assurance Society of the United States, the principal insurance subsidiary of AXA Financial. He was also president of BT Variable, originally named the Golden Financial Group, which he founded in 1987. Golden holds a B.A. from the University of Michigan and is a fellow of the Society of Actuaries. Laurence J. Kotlikoff Laurence J. Kotlikoff is professor of economics at Boston University. He is also a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research and president of Economic Security Planning, Inc., a company that specializes in financial planning software. Kotlikoff has served on the economics faculties of UCLA and Yale University, and he was a senior economist for the President's Council of Economic Advisers. He has served as a consultant to a variety of domestic and international organizations and corporations, including the Swedish and Norwegian ministries of finance and the Banks of Italy, Japan, and England. He is the author or co-author of 11 books and hundreds of professional journal articles. He also writes extensively in newspapers and magazines on issues of deficits, generational accounting, tax structure, social security, Medicare, health reform, pensions, saving, insurance, and personal finance. Kotlikoff holds a B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania and a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University.
Nalin Kulatilaka Nalin Kulatilaka is Wing Tat Lee Family professor of management and professor of finance and economics at Boston University’s School of Management. His current research focuses on issues related to the valuation of real options and their use in forming an economic foundation for corporate strategy. A widely published author, he is the co-author with Martha Amram of Real Options: Managing Strategic Investment in an Uncertain World, published in 1999. In 1994, in recognition of outstanding feature articles in the Financial Analysts Journal, he received the Graham and Dodd award from the Association for Investment Management and Research. Kulatilaka has taught at the Stockholm School of Economics and Göteborg University and at Tamkang University, Taiwan. He has addressed a wide range of executive audiences. Kulatilaka holds a B.Sc. from Imperial College (England), an S.M.from Harvard University, and a Ph.D. in economics/finance from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. David Laibson David Laibson is a professor in the department of economics at Harvard University, where he has taught since 1994. Since 1995, he has also been a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, and, since 2001, he has served as an advisory editor for the Journal of Risk and Uncertainty. Laibson has published extensively in the areas of investment behavior and intertemporal choice, including numerous articles on hyperbolic discounting and retirement savings. Laibson received his undergraduate degree from Harvard University, an M.Sc. from the London School of Economics, and a Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Louis E. Lataif Louis E. Lataif is dean of the Boston University School of Management. In this role, he leads transformations in management education that fuse the art, science, and technology of business. Lataif joined the School of Management in 1991 after a distinguished 27- year career with Ford Motor Company. While at Ford, he served as vice president, North American Sales Operations, and also as president, Ford of Europe. Lataif has been awarded three honorary doctoral degrees and is a recipient of the Ellis Island medal of honor. Lataif earned his bachelor’s degree from Boston University and an M.B.A. from Harvard University’s Graduate School of Business Administration. Currently, he serves on the boards of directors of Group 1 Automotive, Inc., Magna Entertainment Corporation, Abiomed, Inc., Interaudi Bank, and The Iacocca Foundation. Deborah J. Lucas Deborah J. Lucas is Donald C. Clark/Household International professor of finance at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. She is also a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research and has been a visiting assistant professor at the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her primary research interests include dynamic asset pricing, corporate finance, and financial applications to public policy. She is currently working on questions relating to accounting for risk in federal credit programs, asset pricing with incomplete diversification, and social security privatization. Lucas is an associate editor of The Journal of Money, Credit, and Banking and is on the editorial board of the Journal of Financial Education. She is a director of the American Finance Association. Lucas earned B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. degrees in economics from the University of Chicago.
Cynthia L. Martin Cynthia L. Martin is senior financial services market specialist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, where she has worked for the past seven years in the department of supervision, regulation and credit. Martin provides technical support on insurance supervisory issues to all twelve Federal Reserve Banks and is a frequent participant in System working groups. She is a member of the panel advising a task force assigned to conduct a critical analysis of the American actuarial profession on behalf of the American Academy of Actuaries. Prior to joining the Federal Reserve System, Martin was assistant commissioner at the Massachusetts Division of Insurance. She also worked at Liberty Mutual Insurance Company, where she was involved in financial, policy, and program analyses, and at the World Bank, where she concentrated on financial and economic studies of rural development programs in Latin America, Africa, and Asia. Martin holds a B.A. from the University of Texas at Austin and an M.P.A. from the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, University of Texas at Austin. Robert C. Merton Robert C. Merton is the recipient of the 1997 Nobel Prize in economics, which he received for his development (with Myron S. Scholes) of a new formula for the valuation of stock options. Currently at the Harvard Business School, Merton previously held various positions at MIT’s Sloan School of Management. He has published hundreds of books and articles on financial topics, including optimal lifetime consumption, portfolio selection, equilibrium asset pricing, contingent-claim pricing, and a variety of issues common to macroeconomics and finance. He has directed numerous investment funds and currently serves or has served on the advisory or editorial boards of a number of top financial journals. Merton has received honorary degrees from Harvard University, the University of Chicago, and several other universities. A graduate of Columbia University, he holds an M.S. from the California Institute of Technology and a PhD. in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Cathy E. Minehan Cathy E. Minehan is president and chief executive officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston. As one of the nation’s central bankers, her primary responsibility is to contribute to policy decisions that promote the safety and soundness of the U.S. financial system and the health of the nation’s economy. An expert in payments systems, she currently chairs the Conference of Presidents of the Federal Reserve Banks and serves on the Payment System Policy Advisory Committee, which considers issues related to systemic risk in national and international payment systems. Since being named president of the Boston Fed in 1994, Minehan has also focused her energies on areas of structural economic development in New England, including community development, public education, and training. She serves on the boards of the Boston Private Industry Council, the United Way of Massachusetts Bay, Massachusetts General Hospital, Massachusetts Business Roundtable, Jobs for Massachusetts, New England Council, Boston Public Library Foundation, Boston Economic Club, University of Rochester, and the Carroll School of Management at Boston College. Minehan began her career with the Federal Reserve in New York following her graduation from the University of Rochester, She holds an M.B.A. from New York University. Recipient of the 2006 Pinnacle Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce, she has received numerous leadership awards and honorary degrees.
Alicia H. Munnell Alicia H. Munnell is the director of the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College and the Peter F. Drucker professor of management sciences at Boston College’s Carroll School of Management. Previously, Munnell was a member of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers and assistant secretary of the Treasury for economic policy. She spent most of her professional career at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, where she became senior vice president and director of research. Munnell was co-founder and first president of the National Academy of Social Insurance. She is currently a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Institute of Medicine, and the Pension Research Council at Wharton, and a member of the board of the Wheeling-Pittsburgh Steel Corporation, the Century Foundation, the National Bureau of Economic Research, and the Pension Rights Center. Munnell's research interests focus on retirement issues, including tax policy, social security, and public and private pensions, as well as productivity growth, infrastructure, and general monetary and fiscal policy. Munnell holds a B.A. from Wellesley College, M.A. from Boston University, and Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University. James Poterba James Poterba is Mitsui professor of economics and head of the department of economics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is also director of the public economics research program at the National Bureau of Economic Research, a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a fellow of the Econometric Society. He has served as a director of the American Finance Association and as a member of the executive committee of the American Economic Association. Poterba's research focuses on how taxation affects the economic decisions of households and firms. His recent work has emphasized the effects of taxation on the financial behavior of households, particularly regarding their saving and portfolio decisions. Poterba is a trustee of the College Retirement Equity Fund (CREF) and a former member of the MIT 401(k) Plan oversight committee. He is a member of the advisory board of the Journal of Wealth Management and co-author of “The Role of Annuity Markets in Financing Retirement” (2001). He is a former Sloan and Batterymarch research fellow. Poterba holds a B.A. from Harvard University and a Ph.D. in economics from Oxford University. Anna M. Rappaport Anna M. Rappaport is the founder of Anna Rappaport Consulting, a firm specializing in strategies for better retirement systems. Specifically, she has investigated the future of employee benefits, strategy for pension benefits, the implications of an aging workforce, phased retirement, post-retirement risk, retiree health, Social Security, and women’s special retirement challenges. Rappaport was a delegate to the 1998 and 2002 National Summits on Retirement Savings, and she chairs the consumer education committee of the Actuarial Foundation. She was a member of the 2003 technical panel of the Social Security Advisory Board. Rappaport is a frequent speaker and contributor to business and trade publications and is the co-author of three books on the topics of demographics, retiree medical benefits, and retirement. For many years, she wrote a column on post-employment benefits for the Employee Benefit Plan Review. Rappaport holds an M.B.A. from the University of Chicago.
Dallas L. Salisbury Dallas L. Salisbury is president and CEO of the Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI), which provides objective information regarding employee benefit systems and related financial security issues. Prior to joining EBRI, Salisbury held positions with the Washington State legislature, U.S. Department of Justice, Employee Benefits Security Administration of the U.S. Department of Labor, and the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation. He is a fellow of the National Academy of Human Resources and currently serves on the board of directors of the NASD Investor Education Foundation. He is a member of the GAO Advisory Group on Social Security and Retirement and a member of the advisory committee to the Comptroller General of the United States. Salisbury has written and lectured extensively on economic security topics. He holds a B.A. from the University of Washington and an M.A. in public administration from the Maxwell School at Syracuse University. Paul A. Samuelson Paul A. Samuelson, professor emeritus of economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is the recipient of the 1970 Nobel Prize in economics. His work in economic theory is extensive, including, but not limited to, work in modern welfare economics, linear programming, Keynesian economics, economic dynamics, international trade theory, logic choice, and maximization. He has authored or co-authored hundreds of books and articles covering these and other topics, and he is the author of the best-selling economics textbook of all time. Samuelson was awarded the David A. Wells Prize by Harvard University in 1941, and the American Economic Association awarded him the John Bates Clark Medal in 1947 as the living economist under forty "who has made the most distinguished contribution to the main body of economic thought and knowledge." Even while a graduate student at Harvard, Samuelson had won international renown and had made significant contributions to economic theory. He served as economic advisor to President John F. Kennedy and has been president of the International Economic Association, American Economic Association, and the Econometric Society. Samuelson received a B.A. from the University of Chicago and M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from Harvard University. William Samuelson William Samuelson is a professor in the finance and economics department at Boston University’s School of Management. His research interests include microeconomics, game theory, experimental economics, bargaining, and competitive bidding, and he has published numerous articles on these topics. He is the co-author with Stephen Marks of Managerial Economics and the co-author with Kalyan Chatterjee of Game Theory and Business Applications. Samuelson received his Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University. Katrina F. Sherrerd Katrina F. Sherrerd is managing director, planning and professional development, at the CFA Institute. She is also executive director and trustee of the research foundation of the CFA Institute and a member of the CFA Institute’s management committee. In addition, Sherrerd is a member of the investment advisory committee of the Virginia Retirement System, a member of the board of directors of the Institute for Quantitative Research in Finance, and a visiting professor at the Darden School at the University of Virginia. Previously, she was a consultant with Anistics, Inc., and a financial analyst at E.I. du Pont de Nemours. She has been a lecturer in finance at the McIntire School of Commerce at the University of Virginia and a member of the board of directors of the Eastern Finance Association. Sherrerd holds a B.S. from the McIntire School of Commerce, an M.S. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a Ph.D. in finance from the Darden School.
John B. Shoven John B. Shoven is Charles R. Schwab professor of economics at Stanford University and Wallace R. Hawley director of the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research. His research interests include corporate finance (dividend behavior, mergers and acquisitions, share repurchase), social security and private pensions, stock and bond returns, mutual funds, federal, personal and corporate income taxation, international cost-of-capital comparisons, and applied general equilibrium analysis. His current research focuses on interactions between government behavior and consumer investment, specifically in the areas of asset allocation and asset location theory, the effects of taxes on the relative performance of mutual funds, the long-run future of pension fund saving, and public policy towards pensions. A fellow of the Econometrics Society, Shoven received a B.A. in physics from the University of California, San Diego, and a Ph.D. in economics from Yale University. Paul Solman Paul Solman has been business and economics correspondent for PBS’s The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer since 1985. The founding editor of the alternative Boston weekly, The Real Paper, Solman began his career in business journalism as a Nieman fellow, studying at the Harvard Business School in 1976. He has been a business reporter for public broadcasting since 1977, and he was the co-originator and executive editor of PBS's business documentary series, Enterprise. His reporting has won numerous Emmys, as well as two Peabody awards, the most recent in 2004 for his reporting on the undercounting of unemployment. Solman has served on the faculty of the Harvard Business School, where he has taught courses in media, finance, and business history. He has written for numerous publications, including Forbes and Mother Jones magazines. A one-time cab driver, kindergarten teacher, and management consultant, Solman holds a B.A. from Brandeis University. Jonathan Treussard Jonathan Treussard is a Ph.D. candidate in economics at Boston University. He has written several working papers in the areas of investment behavior and risk assessment and has forthcoming published works in these areas. He is currently working as an associate with the quantitative research group at Integrated Finance Limited (IFL), where his research focuses on the development of SmartNest, IFL’s life-cycle saving and retirement planning suite of services for defined-contribution pension plans. Treussard has helped to teach classes at Boston University in both finance and economics. He is a recipient of the Boston University special research award (2006), Boston University presidential fellowship (2003–present), and Boston University summer research award (2004 and 2005). Treussard received his B.A. in economics and international studies from UCLA, and he was recently awarded an M.A. in political economy from Boston University.
John Turner John Turner is a senior policy advisor in the public policy institute at AARP. Previously, he was affiliated with the International Labour Organization of the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, where he co-edited the book, Social Security Pensions: Development and Reform. Turner has also worked in research offices at the U.S. Social Security Administration and the U.S. Labor Department, where he was deputy director of the pension research office for nine years. A member of the National Academy of Social Insurance, he has published more than 100 articles in professional journals concerning pension and Social Security policy. Turner serves on the board of directors of the European Network for Research on Supplementary Pensions, is a fellow of the Pensions Institute (United Kingdom), serves on the editorial board for Benefits Quarterly, and is the U.S. private pension correspondent to the International Social Security Association. The author or editor of 12 books, Turner holds a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Chicago. Christina Wang Christina Wang is an economist in the macroeconomic/financial markets section of the research department of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston. Wang’s research is related to banking, productivity analysis, and finance. Currently, her specific efforts are to develop a consistent measure of bank output, to analyze bank productivities, and to understand the impact of bank mergers on cost and competition. Wang earned her B.A. from Tsinghua University, China. She holds an M.A. in economics from the University of Western Ontario, Canada, and a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Michigan. Mark J. Warshawsky Mark J. Warshawsky is director of retirement research at Watson Wyatt Worldwide, a global human capital consulting firm. In this position, he conducts and oversees research on employer-sponsored retirement programs and policies. From 2004 to 2006, Warshawsky served as assistant secretary of the Treasury for economic policy. As the Treasury’s top economist, he led the department’s efforts to develop and advance economic policies and was responsible for the review and analysis of domestic and international economic matters as well as developments in financial markets. Previously, as deputy assistant secretary for microeconomic analysis, Warshawsky oversaw research focused on terror risk insurance, financial reporting, pensions, health spending, retirement income security, and long-term care. Before joining the Treasury, Warshawsky was director of research at the TIAA-CREF Institute, was senior economist in the employee plans division of the IRS, and was senior economist at the Federal Reserve Board. He has authored three books and over 50 professional articles. His research has been influential in recent and proposed reforms of minimum distribution requirements for retirement plans. Warshawsky received a B.A. from Northwestern University and a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University. Paul Willen Paul Willen is a senior economist in the research department at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, where he has conducted research on financial markets, investment behavior, and other public policy issues. Willen is a faculty research fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research and has previously taught in the Graduate School of Business at the University of Chicago and in the department of economics at Princeton University. He has written several working papers in the area of life-cycle investing, including “Collateralized Borrowing and Life-Cycle Portfolio Choice” and “Borrowing Costs and the Demand for Equity over the Life Cycle.” Willen holds a B.A. from Williams College and an M.A., M.Phil., and Ph.D. in economics from Yale University.