118th Annual Conference – Keynote Speakers

Keynote Address:
“The Role of Policy Analysts in Addressing Fiscal Issues”
Thursday, November 6th

Douglas Elmendorf is a professor of public policy at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. He was named dean of the Kennedy School in June 2015 and stepped down from that role in June 2024. He had served previously as director of the US Congressional Budget Office from January 2009 through March 2015.

Earlier, Doug Elmendorf had been a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, assistant director of the Division of Research and Statistics at the Federal Reserve Board, deputy assistant secretary for economic policy at the US Treasury Department, senior economist at the White House’s Council of Economic Advisers, and assistant professor at Harvard University. In those positions, he worked on budget policy, monetary policy, macroeconomic analysis and forecasting, health care, Social Security, income security programs, financial markets, and other topics. He earned his PhD and AM in economics from Harvard University and his AB summa cum laude from Princeton University.

 
 
Slemrod Lecture:
Saturday, November 8th
 

Stefanie Stantcheva is the Nathaniel Ropes Professor of Political Economy at Harvard and founder and director of the Social Economics Lab.

Stefanie studies the taxation of firms and individuals, as well as how people understand, perceive, and form their attitudes towards economic issues and policies. Her recent work explores people’s attitudes towards taxation, trade, immigration, climate change, and social mobility using large-scale Social Economics Surveys and Experiments. 

Stefanie has also studied the long-lasting effects of tax policy – on innovation, education, and wealth. Examples include how R&D policies can be improved to foster innovation, how income and corporate taxes have shaped innovation over the 20th century, and how student loans can be structured to improve access to education. 

Stefanie is the recipient of the 2025 John Bates Clark Medal, awarded each year to an American economist under the age of forty who is judged to have made the most significant contribution to economic thought and knowledge, the 2020 Elaine Bennett Research Prize, a Sloan Foundation fellow, a Guggenheim fellow, and an Andrew Carnegie Fellow.

Stefanie received my Ph.D. in Economics from MIT in 2014 and was a junior fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows 2014-2016 before joining the Harvard Department of Economics in July 2016. She is currently co-editor of the Quarterly Journal of Economics.