Dr. Hassett to Lead AFPI’s Board of Academic Advisors

Today, America First Policy Institute (AFPI) announced the formation of a Board of Academic Advisors for the organization. Led by Dr. Kevin Hassett, former Senior Adviser to President Donald J. Trump and former Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, the board brings a group of renowned experts together to ensure the integrity of AFPI’s research.

“We are thrilled to have this incredible group of individuals join AFPI’s Board of Academic Advisors,” stated Larry Kudlow, Vice Chair of AFPI. “They are all top-drawer scholars at the frontiers of their fields of expertise and share AFPI’s commitment to making America a more free, secure, and prosperous Nation. And there’s no better person than Kevin Hassett to lead this team of distinguished academics as they work together to ensure that AFPI’s transformative policy work continues to be cutting-edge quality,” concluded Kudlow.   

Kevin Hassett, Chair of the Board of Academic Advisors noted, “It’s an honor to work with such brilliant individuals from a wide-array of backgrounds and academic expertise. These scholars are tremendously accomplished in their respective fields, but also understand the importance of the integral policy work AFPI achieves. Now with a Board of Academic Advisors, AFPI will only increase its footprint and influence, not just in the halls of Congress or State Capitols, but on college campuses as well. And this is just the beginning – we will continue to grow this Board and its contributions with additional members.”

The bios of AFPI’s Board of Academic Advisors are below:

Dr. Kevin Hassett,
Chair, Board of Academic Advisors

Kevin Hassett is from Greenfield, Massachusetts, and serves as Chair of AFPI’s Board of Academic Advisors. He previously served as the 29th Chairman of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers from 2017 through 2019. He also served as Senior Advisor to President Trump to support data-driven decisions in response to the Coronavirus. While working in the Trump White House, Hassett was a key force driving internal and external debate on virtually every economic topic, from taxes and trade, to substance abuse and deregulation. While at the White House, Hassett was the top public spokesperson for the White House on economic policy and the state of economy, appearing regularly on Fox News, Fox Business, CNBC, MSNBC, Bloomberg, CNN, and more. He even was drawn upon at times to run the televised White House press briefings. He served as John McCain’s chief economic adviser in the 2000 presidential primaries and an economic adviser to the campaigns of George W. Bush in the 2004 presidential election and McCain in the presidential election of 2008 and Mitt Romney in 2012.  He is a visiting distinguished fellow at the Hoover Institution and senior advisor to National Review’s Capital Matters.

Dr. Ge Bai,
Member, Board of Academic Advisors

Ge Bai is from Luoyang, China, and serves as a Member on AFPI’s Board of Academic Advisors. Bai is currently a Professor of Accounting at Johns Hopkins Carey Business School and Professor of Health Policy & Management (joint) at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. An expert on health care pricing, policy, and management, Dr. Bai has testified before House Ways and Means Committee, written for the Wall Street Journal, and published her studies in leading academic journals such as the New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA, JAMA Internal Medicine, Annals of Internal Medicine, and Health Affairs. Her work has been widely featured in ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox News, Los Angeles Times, NBC, New York Times, NPR, PBS, USA Today, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and other media outlets and used in government regulations and congressional testimonies. Dr. Bai has received the Johns Hopkins Alumni Association’s Excellence in Teaching Award.

Dr. Richard Valentine Burkhauser,
Member, Board of Academic Advisors

Richard V. Burkhauser is from Austin, Texas, and serves as a Member on AFPI’s Board of Academic Advisors. In 2017, Burkhauser became Emeritus Sarah Gibson Blanding Professor of Public Policy in the Department of Policy Analysis and Management at Cornell University. Between September 2017 and May 2019, he served as a Member of President Trump's Council of Economic Advisers. His professional career has focused on how public policies affect the employment and well-being of vulnerable populations. He has published widely in journals of demography, economics, gerontology as well as public policy. He is currently a Visiting Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, IZA Research Fellow, and NBER Research Associate. Previously, Burkhauser held tenured Professor positions in the Department of Economics at Vanderbilt University and Syracuse University as well as in the Department of Policy Analysis and Management at Cornell University. In 2010 he was the President of the Association for Public Policy and Management. He received his Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Chicago in 1976. Burkhauser served two years in the Peace Corps in Jamacia before entering the Ph.D. program in Economics at the University of Chicago.

Dr. Jeffrey Campbell,
Member, Board of Academic Advisors

Jeffrey Campbell is from Trenton, Michigan, and serves as a Member on AFPI’s Board of Academic Advisors. Jeffery currently serves as the Frances D. Rasmus and Jerome A. Castellini Professor of Economics at the University of Notre Dame (USA) and as Professor of Macroeconometrics at Tilburg University (NL).  Campbell’s research covers macroeconomics, industrial organization, and econometrics. He also teaches a variety of courses at both universities, ranging from Adam Smith's social thought (for freshmen at Notre Dame) to Time Series Econometrics (for graduate students at Tilburg). Campbell received a Bachelor's degree from the University of Michigan and a Doctoral degree from Northwestern University, both in Economics.

Dr. Casey Mulligan,
Member, Board of Academic Advisors

Casey B. Mulligan is from Chicago, Illinois, and serves as a Member of the Board of Academic Advisors at AFPI. Casey is a Professor in Economics at the College at the University of Chicago; he received his Ph.D. in economics from the University of Chicago in 1993. Previously, he also served as Chief Economist of the White House Council of Economic Advisers and as a visiting professor teaching public economics at Harvard University, Clemson University, and the Irving B. Harris Graduate School of Public Policy Studies at the University of Chicago. He is affiliated with the National Bureau of Economic Research, the George J. Stigler Center for the Study of the Economy and the State, and the Population Research Center. Casey has received awards and fellowships from the Manhattan Institute, the National Science Foundation, Wolfram Research, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Smith-Richardson Foundation, and the John M. Olin Foundation. His research covers capital and labor taxation, the gender wage gap, health economics, Social Security, voting and the economics of aging. Mulligan has written widely on discrepancies between economic analysis and conventional wisdom. He wrote: Before You're Hired!, Chicago Price Theory, Side Effects and Complications, The Redistribution Recession, and Parental Priorities and Economic Inequality. He has also written numerous Op-Eds and blog entries for the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, the Chicago Tribune, blogsupplyanddemand.com, and other blogs and periodicals.

Dr. Lee Ohanian,
Member, Board of Academic Advisors

Lee E. Ohanian is from Santa Barbara, California, and serves as a Member on AFPI’s Board of Academic Advisors. He is a Distinguished Professor of Economics, and Director of the Ettinger Family Program in Macroeconomic Research at UCLA, where he has taught since 1999. He is also a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, and the Associate Director of the Center for the Advanced Study in Economic Efficiency at Arizona State University. Ohanian is an adviser to the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, and previously has advised other Federal Reserve Banks, Foreign Central Banks, and the National Science Foundation. He has been an economic adviser to state and national political campaigns and has testified to the U.S. Senate and the California State Legislative Assembly. His research, which recently has been discussed in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and other media sources, focuses on economic crises, and has been published widely in several peer-reviewed journals. He is a frequent columnist for the Wall Street Journal, San Francisco Chronicle, and other media. He received his Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Rochester.

Dr. Kiron K. Skinner,
Member, Board of Academic Advisors

Kiron K. Skinner is from Chicago, Illinois, and serves as a Member of the Board of Academic Advisors at AFPI. She is also the Taube Professor for International Relations and Politics at Carnegie Mellon University’s Institute for Politics and Strategy. Previously, she founded and directed these entities at Carnegie Mellon University: the Center for International Relations and Politics, the Carnegie Mellon University Washington Semester Program, the Institute for Politics and Strategy, and the Institute for Strategic Analysis. Skinner is the W. Glenn Campbell Research Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution and a Visiting Fellow at the Heritage Foundation.  Skinner was the Director of the Office of Policy Planning at the U.S. Department of State and Senior Advisor to the Secretary of State from September 2018 to August 2019. As Director, she reengaged the Department in red-team exercises on regional conflicts and fostered transatlantic partnerships through numerous strategic dialogues, including the first-ever Policy Planners Summit for NATO, held in April 2019. At various points in the past twenty years, Professor Skinner has served on the US Defense Department’s Defense Policy Board and Defense Business Board, the Chief of Naval Operations’ Executive Panel, the National Academies’ Committee on Behavioral and Social Science Research to Improve Intelligence Analysis for National Security, and the National Security Education Board. In U.S. presidential politics, Skinner served as a foreign policy surrogate for the Bush-Cheney 2004 reelection campaign, a senior foreign policy adviser to Speaker Newt Gingrich during his presidential campaign in 2011–12, a foreign policy adviser to Senator Rand Paul during his presidential bid in 2015-16, and a foreign policy surrogate for the Donald J. Trump presidential campaign in 2016. She was also a senior member of the Trump transition team in 2016. Professor Skinner has published extensively in American politics and international relations. Two of her co-edited books on President Ronald Reagan were New York Times best sellers, and one received the Hoover Institution’s Uncommon Book Award. Professor Skinner holds MA and PhD degrees in political science from Harvard University and undergraduate degrees from Spelman College and Sacramento City College. She has an honorary doctor of laws degree from Molloy College, Long Island.