Louise Sheiner and Robert Litan to Join Economic Studies at Brookings

Washington, D.C. – Louise Sheiner will join the Economic Studies program at Brookings as a senior fellow and policy director, and Robert Litan will rejoin the program as a nonresident senior fellow, Vice President and Director of Economic Studies Ted Gayer announced today. Litan starts on May 1, 2014, and Sheiner on May 5.

As policy director, Sheiner will help shape the research agenda of the Hutchins Center on Fiscal and Monetary Policy, and pursue her own research on health spending and other fiscal issues. She recently wrote a paper for the Engelberg Center for Health Care Reform on the topic. She has served as an economist with the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System since 1993, most recently as the senior economist in the Fiscal Analysis Section for the Research and Statistics Division. In her time at the Fed, she was also appointed Deputy Assistant Secretary for Economic Policy at the U.S. Department of the Treasury (1996), and served as Senior Staff Economist for the Council of Economic Advisers (1995-96). Before joining the Fed, Sheiner was an economist at the Joint Committee on Taxation. She received her Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University, as well as an undergraduate degree in biology at Harvard.

Litan will re-join the Economic Studies program as a nonresident senior fellow, coming from Bloomberg Government, where he has been Director of Research since 2012. He had served as Vice President and Director of Economic Studies at Brookings from 1996 until 2003. While serving as Vice President and Director of Research at the Kauffman Foundation from 2003-2012, Litan also continued at Brookings as a nonresident senior fellow. An economist and attorney, Litan specializes in the fields of government policies and their impacts on business. He was Associate Director of the Office of Management and Budget and Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice. He has testified on Capitol Hill dozens of times, written or edited hundreds of articles and reports, and authored dozens of books, including the forthcoming The Trillion Dollar Economists. He holds a J.D., M. Phil. and Ph.D. from Yale University, and earned his undergraduate degree from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.

“Louise brings years of policy experience and economics expertise to Economic Studies, where she will be a vital contributor to furthering the Hutchins Center’s goal of providing public understanding and promoting the effectiveness of fiscal and monetary policy,” said Gayer. “I am also very happy to welcome Bob back to Economic Studies, where we look forward to his contributions on a broad array of key economic topics, including regulation, telecommunications, and entrepreneurship. Economic Studies is gaining two valuable, highly-regarded scholars, and we are pleased to have them aboard.”