Fiscal Challenges: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Budget Policy

Fiscal Challenges: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Budget Policy brings together leading experts from a range of disciplines to explore the problems of budget policy. The authors, including top economists, political scientists, historians, psychologists, and legal scholars, together provide a unique, multidisciplinary introduction to the subject. In addition to in-depth analysis of congressional budget procedures and the economics of federal deficits and debt, Fiscal Challenges explores important recent developments in budget policy at the state level and in the European Union. The goal of the volume is to offer readers wide-ranging perspectives on the many different academic disciplines and perspectives that bear on the evaluation of budgetary procedures and their reform.

Elizabeth Garrett is the Sydney M. Irmas Professor of Public Interest Law, Legal Ethics, Political Science, and Policy, Planning and Development at the University of Southern California. She is also the Director of the USC-Caltech Center for the Study of Law and Politics. Her primary scholarly interests are legislative process, direct democracy, the federal budget process, study of democratic institutions, statutory interpretation, administrative law, and tax policy. She is the co-author of the leading casebook on legislation and statutory interpretation, Cases and Materials on Legislation: Statutes and the Creation of Public Policy (4th ed. forthcoming), and the second edition of Legislation and Statutory Interpretation. President George W. Bush appointed her to serve on the nine-member bipartisan Tax Reform Panel that released its final report in November 2005. Before entering academia, she clerked for Justice Thurgood Marshall on the US Supreme Court, and she served as legal counsel and legislative director for Senator David L. Boren (D-Okla.). Professor Garrett received her B.A. with special distinction from the University of Oklahoma and her J.D. from the University of Virginia.

Elizabeth Graddy is a Professor of Public Policy and Political Science at the University of Southern California and the Senior Associate Dean of Faculty and Academic Affairs in the University of Southern California's School of Policy, Planning, and Development. Her research focuses on the private sector role in public functions, how industry and organizational structure affect performance, and how information asymmetry and uncertainty affect institutional design and effectiveness. These interests have led to numerous publications addressing the performance of public and private institutional arrangements, including private provision of public services, state budgetary processes, tort liability laws, licensing boards and regulatory outcomes, and hospital industry structure and performance. Her current work focuses on public-private alliances providing public services, community foundations and local governance, and state healthcare regulation. Professor Graddy is a past public member and Vice President of the California State Board of Podiatric Medicine. She received her Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon University.

Howell Jackson is the James S. Reid, Jr, Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. His research interests include financial regulation, international finance, consumer protection, federal budget policy, and Social Security reform. Professor Jackson has served as a consultant to the United States Treasury Department, the United Nations Development Program, and the World Bank/International Monetary Fund. He is a member of the National Academy on Social Insurance, a trustee of the College Retirement Equities Fund (CREF) and its affiliated TIAA-CREF investment companies, a member of the panel of outside scholars for the NBER Retirement Research Center, and a senior editor for the Cambridge University Press Series on International Corporate Law and Financial Regulation. Professor Jackson frequently testifies before Congress and consults with government agencies on issues of financial regulation. He is co-author of Analytical Methods for Lawyers and Regulation of Financial Institutions, and author of numerous scholarly articles. Before joining the Harvard Law School faculty in 1989, Professor Jackson was a law clerk for Associate Justice Thurgood Marshall and practiced law in Washington, DC Professor Jackson received J.D. and M.B.A. degrees from Harvard University in 1982 and a B.A. from Brown University in 1976.