2026 NTA Fiscal Sustainability Travel Fellowship Recipients

The NTA, with support from the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, is proud to introduce the NTA Fiscal Sustainability Travel Fellowship, a new opportunity supporting emerging scholars focused on the long-term fiscal challenges facing the United States.

This fellowship provides travel funding, complimentary conference registration and one-year NTA membership for graduate students and early-career professionals (MAs, PhDs, or JDs) whose academic or professional work explores fiscal sustainability, federal debt, taxation, or budget policy. Fellowship recipients will attend the 119th NTA Annual Conference, held November 12-14, 2026, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Adam Tucker is a fifth-year PhD student in Economics at the University of Maryland. His research lies at the intersection of public economics and economic history, with a focus on taxation, charitable giving, and the long-run effects of fiscal institutions. His current work examines how estate and gift taxation shapes charitable giving, the timing and structure of large gifts, and the use of private foundations and donor-advised funds. His other research studies the persistence of wealth across generations and how historical fiscal institutions shape economic development, with a particular focus on Maryland.

Ana Vasilj is a PhD candidate in Economics and JD candidate at the University of Chicago. She studies sources of heterogeneity in household preferences and firm behavior, both theoretically and empirically, to inform tax design. She draws on her legal training to incorporate institutional details of the tax code and business law that standard models often overlook.

Jackson Mejia is an Assistant Professor of Economics in the School of Civic Leadership at the University of Texas at Austin. He previously served as an Economist in the White House Council of Economic Advisers in 2025-26 and received a PhD in economics from MIT in 2026. His primary interests are the design and evaluation of fiscal policy.

Letian Yin is a PhD candidate in the Department of Economics at the University of California San Diego, whose research focuses on public economics, health economics, and household finance. He combines large-scale administrative datasets with quasi-experimental research designs to study how households respond to major life transitions, such as childbirth and retirement, and how tax and transfer programs affect their economic well-being during these transitions. His work pays particular attention to the design of transfer programs and to the economic security of families with limited financial resources.

Lucas Chaves Gurgel is an economist and electrical engineer from Fortaleza, Brazil. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering and a Master’s degree in Economics from the Federal University of Ceará, and earned his PhD in Economics from the University of Tennessee in 2026, specializing in Public and Labor Economics. His research spans topics including oil prices, ADHD, education, and e-commerce taxation. Following his PhD, Lucas returned to the Federal University of Ceará as a Maintenance Engineer while continuing his work as an independent researcher.

Ryan C. Polk, PhD, CPA, is an Assistant Professor of Accountancy at Clemson University. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Alabama in 2023 after working in international tax at EY in Washington, D.C. His research examines tax enforcement and policy design, particularly how efficiency-driven administrative choices can burden taxpayers, discourage cooperation, and weaken revenue collection and fiscal sustainability. He applies this perspective to IRS strategy in corporate audits and related settlement negotiations, with publications in The Journal of the American Taxation Association, the ATA Journal of Legal Tax Research, and Tax Notes Federal.

Previous Fellows
2025 NTA Fiscal Sustainability Travel Fellowship