William G Gale

William Gale is vice president and director of the Economic Studies Program at Brookings and the Arjay and Frances Miller Chair in Federal Economic Policy. He conducts research on a variety of economic issues, focusing particularly on tax policy, fiscal policy, pensions and saving behavior. He is co-director of the Tax Policy Center, a joint venture of the Brookings Institution and the Urban Institute. He is also director of the Retirement Security Project, an initiative supported by the Pew Charitable Trusts, in partnership with Georgetown University’s Public Policy Institute and Brookings. Gale attended Duke University and the London School of Economics and received his Ph.D. from Stanford University in 1987. Prior to joining Brookings in 1992, he was an assistant professor in the Department of Economics at the University of California, Los Angeles, and a senior staff economist for the Council of Economic Advisers under President George H.W. Bush. He is the co-author or co-editor of several books, including Taxing the Future: Fiscal Policy in the Bush Administration (Brookings, forthcoming 2007); Aging Gracefully: Ideas to Improve Retirement Security in America (Century Foundation, 2006); The Evolving Pension System: Trends, Effects, and Proposals for Reform (Brookings, 2005); Private Pensions and Public Policy (Brookings, 2004); Rethinking Estate and Gift Taxation (Brookings, 2001), and Economic Effects of Fundamental Tax Reform (Brookings, 1996). He has also written numerous scholarly research articles, including publications in the American Economic Review, Journal of Political Economy, and Quarterly Journal of Economics, and has served as editor and editorial board member of several academic journals. He has also written extensively in policy-related publications and newspapers. Gale has served on advisory boards for the Government Accountability Office, the Internal Revenue Service, the Joint Committee on Taxation and the Board of the Center on Federal Financial Institutions. He lives in Fairfax, Virginia, with his wife Julie, who is a psychologist, their children Danny, 17, and Becca, 14, and two golden retrievers.