2005 EGAT Workshop Presenters


USAID Workshop for Practitioners on Tax and Pension Reform

PRESENTERS

Richard Thompson Ainsworth, LLM, JD, BBA is a Massachusetts and New Hampshire attorney with over 20 years academic, government, and private sector experience in all areas of taxation (state and local, U.S. federal and international). He is currently tax counsel with Taxware and teaches courses in VAT and Comparative Income Taxation at the Boston University School of Law. Richard has been the Deputy Director of the International Tax Program at Harvard Law School, an Adjunct Professor of Public Policy (Kennedy School of Government). Richard is a Visiting Professor of American Law at Ritsumeikan University, Kyoto, Japan and held a Fulbright Professor of Taxation (Kyoto and Kobe Universities, Japan). He was a Senior Litigation Attorney with the IRS, Office of Chief Counse,l and served as the Legal Advisor to the Commissioner, NH Department of Revenue.

Roy Bahl is Professor of Economics and Dean of the School of Policy Studies (Georgia State University). Dr. Bahl is internationally known in the field of public finance and fiscal policy and has served widely as a consultant to developing and transition economy countries for the IMF, World Bank, Asian Development Bank, and various other organizations and governments. In addition to several years as a senior staff economist for the IMF and World Bank, he directed the USAID-funded Jamaican and Guatemala Tax Reforms and has held numerous positions as chief-of-party for development projects in several regions of the world. He has published numerous books, including Urban Public Finance in Developing Countries (w/ J. Linn), 1992, Oxford University Press. In 1991, he was invited to be a special adviser on local government finance issues to the People's Republic of China Finance Ministry, a position that he still holds.

Alberto Barreix is currently a Senior Fiscal Economist at the Inter-American Bank (IDB). Currently, he is in charge of the technical advice on fiscal policy reform projects in Latin America and the Caribbean. Additionally, he is working on international tax policy and integration issues. He has been a lecturer on Public Finance in Open Economies at the John F. Kennedy School of Government and the Deputy Director of the Program on Revenue Forecasting at Harvard University. He was also Director of the Department of Fiscal Policy and Statistics at the Internal Revenue Service of Uruguay and coordinator of the MERCOSUR Fiscal Policy Committee. Mr. Barreix holds a Ph.D. from Harvard University, a Master in Public Administration from the John F. Kennedy School of Government, and earned a Certificate from the International Tax Program at Harvard Law School where he was later a Research Fellow.

Richard M. Bird, a member of the Advisory Panel of the Fiscal Reform in Support of Trade Liberalization Project, is Professor Emeritus of Economics; Adjunct Professor and Co-Director of the International Tax Program, Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto; Petro-Canada Scholar, C.D. Howe Institute; Distinguished Visiting Professor, Andrew Young School of Policy Studies, Georgia State University; Consultant, World Bank Institute; and Visiting Professor, Harvard Law School (2001-02). He holds a Ph.D. in economics and has taught at Harvard University and the University of Toronto and held visiting positions at Monash University, Australian National University, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Japan Council of Science, Indian Council of Social Science, Harvard Law School, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, University of York (UK), and Georgia State University. Other major positions held include Advisor on Tax and Monetary Policy, Government of Colombia; Chief of Tax Policy Division, International Monetary Fund; and Director of Institute for Policy Analysis, University of Toronto. Dr. Bird has published numerous books and articles on public finance and taxation issues. He is currently on the editorial boards of several journals. He has consulted and lectured in more than 40 countries for the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, OECD, Inter-American Development Bank, USAID, Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), Australian Development Advisory Bureau, national governments, and various private consulting firms.

Bruce Bolnick is Chief Economist for the International Group and Principal Associate in Economic Policy at Nathan Associates Inc. Dr. Bolnick has more than 30 years of professional experience in development economics, including more than 13 years of field assignments in Africa and Asia. Before joining Nathan, Dr. Bolnick was a Fellow at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, and a Senior Associate at the Harvard Institute for International Development (HIID). From 1999 through 2001, he headed a Harvard advisory team at the Ministry of Planning and Finance in Mozambique. He previously served as senior advisor on tax policy at the Ministry of Finance in Zambia (1991-1994) and in Malawi (1996-1999). His recent work includes a monograph for USAID/RCSA on The Effectiveness and Impact of Tax Incentives in the SADC Region (2004), and a study for USAID/Mozambique on Tax Reform and the Business Environment in Mozambique: A Review of Private-Sector Concerns (2004). Dr. Bolnick has taught economics at Harvard, Brandeis, Northeastern, Duke, and the University of Nairobi, including courses on Tax Policy for Developing Countries, Investment Policy for Developing Countries, Public Finance, and Development Economics. He holds a Ph.D. in economics from Yale University..

Paul Davis has served as an economist with USAID in Washington and in various emerging market economy countries for the past 18years. During that time he has analyzed and addressed economic policy and institutional development conditions and constraints in a variety of emerging market settings, including Colombia, Honduras, the Philippines, and a number of transitional economy countries. He has designed and managed comprehensive economic policy and institutional reform-related strategies and initiatives in the fiscal and monetary reform, pension reform, financial market regulation and development, accounting reform, privatization, and commercial law development areas. In the fiscal reform area, Mr. Davis has designed and executed a range of ambitious policy and institutional reform projects designed to promote improved expenditure planning, forecasting and administration systems; better targeted and more cost-effective and sustainable intergovernmental finance systems; and more efficient and equitable tax policy and administration regimes. He was the principle author and manager of the comprehensive tax policy and administrative reform support program executed by USAID in Kosovo over the 1999-2002 period; which represented one major component of a broader policy and institutional reform support program through which USAID worked under the auspices of the European Union to establish a functioning Ministry of Finance in Kosovo. He has also developed and executed multifaceted fiscal reform support programs in Montenegro, the Central Asian Republics, and most recently in Colombia. Mr. Davis currently serves as the Program Economist with the USAID Mission in Colombia. He received his PH.D in economics from Boston University in 1986.

Mark Gallagher, a Development Alternatives, Inc.(DAI) staff member and economist and former Chief of Party of the USAID-funded Fiscal Reform in Support of Trade Liberalization Project is an expert in public finance, including: macro-fiscal analysis, tax policy and its implementation, fiscal decentralization, trade policy and customs operations, and international trade and finance. He is a former USAID Foreign Service economist as well as having worked as a World Bank economist. Gallagher has advised numerous countries on tax policies and tax administration, drafted fiscal legislation, trained economists and tax administrators and others, and has been a team leader and chief of party on numerous occasions. He has been instrumental in the analysis, reform and the drafting of new tax legislation in transition economies and post-conflict environments. Gallagher has evaluated, designed, and managed fiscal reform projects in a variety of countries, including: Liberia, Egypt, El Salvador, Bosnia, Tanzania, and Guatemala. He is fluent in Spanish and German, and has published books, monographs, journal articles and consulting reports and models in public finance and economics. He holds a Ph.D. in economics and has taught several university-level courses in the United States and abroad.

Harvey Galper, an Executive Director of Bearingpoint, is a distinguished and internationally known public finance economist whose experience spans government, academia and the private sector. His specialized areas of work include taxation and tax policy, including household and firm behavior in response to the tax regime and changes in it; inter-governmental finance, including the response of sub-national governments in response to grant programs; the use of micro-simulation tools in the analysis of tax and transfer policy; and various applications of micro-economic and sectoral analysis with respect to real and financial markets. For the past decade, he has been advising developing and transitioning governments on the design and implementation of tax and fiscal reform programs. He has extensive experience as both a senior policy analyst and in overseeing and actively participating in economic reform projects worldwide. Dr. Galper works closely with senior government officials and with various international donor organizations, including USAID, the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund. He has led and participated in major economic reform programs in Bulgaria, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Moldova, Egypt, Russia, Guatemala, Indonesia, Jamaica, Jordan, the Philippines, New Zealand, Trinidad and Tobago, and Kenya, among others. These projects included broad policy reform agendas, with a particular focus on tax policy and administration, expenditure policies, intergovernmental fiscal relations, budgeting and financial management, and training.

Fran Greaney is a Vice President at BearingPoint where he is responsible for leading the firm’s tax and fiscal reform activities. He has been involved in the design and implementation of tax and fiscal reform programs in more than 22 countries around the world, through projects funded by USAID, the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, the EU and directly by host country governments. From 1993 to 2002 he served as Project Manager for USAID’s CEE and NIS Fiscal Reform Projects, through which USAID provided technical assistance in fiscal reform for 14 countries in the region. Mr. Greaney also led a review of fiscal reform activities in the 26 countries in the region for USAID, the results of which were published in a volume entitled Transition Economies and Fiscal Reform. Mr. Greaney received his Master's degree in Public Policy from Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government.

Richard Hinz is a Pension Policy Adviser in the Social Protection Team of the Human Development Network at the World Bank where his work is focused on the establishment, regulation, and supervision of funded pension arrangements in a broad range of settings throughout the world. Prior to joining the World Bank in January 2003, he was the Director of the Office of Policy and Research at what is now Employee Benefits Security Administration (EBSA) of the U.S. Department of Labor. In this capacity he was responsible for managing the research, economic and legislative analysis for the agency responsible for the regulation and supervision of private employer sponsored health insurance and pension programs. He has contributed to pension reforms in many countries around the world since 1991 through policy development and technical assistance programs of the U.S. Government, the World Bank, the OECD, and the International Organization of Pension Supervisors.

Estelle James is currently a consultant to the World Bank, USAID and other organizations. Previously she was Lead Economist in the Policy Research Department of the World Bank, Director of the Pension Flagship Course at the World Bank Institute and Professor of Economics at the State University of New York, Stony Brook. She is also a member of the Governing Board of the new pension fund in Kosovo and served as a member of the President’s Commission to Strengthen Social Security in the U.S. She is principal author of Averting the Old Age Crisis: Policies to Protect the Old and Promote Growth, a World Bank study that provided the first global analysis of economic problems associated with population aging. She has lectured extensively on this topic, advised governments in China, Costa Rica, India, Thailand, Indonesia, and other countries, and published numerous papers in professional journals. Her recent research has focused on social security reform, including the administrative costs of individual accounts, how to handle the annuity stage, and the gender impact of alternative systems.

Dr. Malcolm G. Lane, an Executive Director with BearingPoint, has 20 years of experience in international information and communications technology projects with state and federal governments around the world. He is a specialist in the application of computer technology to tax and fiscal administration and financial systems with experience working in more than 30 countries. As Managing Principal of the IBM Revenue and Fiscal Management Consulting Practice and Managing Director at KPMG Barents Group, he was responsible for the development of solutions for government revenue, accounting, and treasury systems in World Bank and USAID projects around the world and in U.S. state governments. These projects included the Russia Stock Trading, Kazakhstan Treasury, Indonesian Tax, Egyptian General Sales Tax, Republic of China Tax, Kenyan Income Tax, and Guatemalan Income Tax and the U.S. state of California non-filer systems. Dr. Lane served as Professor of Computer Science at West Virginia University and as AT&T Visiting Professor of Telecommunications at the University of Pittsburgh. He has been Professor and Head of the Department of Computer Science at James Madison University since 2000.

David Lindeman most recently served as a Principal Analyst (Pensions) at the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development at the headquarters in Paris, France. He was posted within the Division of Financial Affairs of the Directorate for Fiscal, Financial and Fiscal Affairs, the secretariat to the OECD Insurance Committee and the OECD Working Party on Private Pensions. Before joining the OECD secretariat, he was a Senior Advisor (Pensions) at the World Bank from October 1995 to March 2001, specializing in pension advice to developing countries. The principal countries with which he worked include Croatia, Lithuania, Poland, Bulgaria, the Russian Federation, and Uzbekistan. He also participated in workshops and conferences for Brazil, Estonia, China, Sri Lanka, the Kyrgyz Republic, Kazakhstan, and the Asian Development Bank.

He holds both undergraduate and law degrees from Columbia University and completed the tax law sequence at Georgetown University. He is a member of the District of Columbia Bar and is a founding member of the National Academy of Social Insurance located in Washington, D.C.

William McCarten is a Canadian national and a Senior Economist in the Public Sector Governance unit of the World Bank Institute. He holds a Ph.D. from Duke University. He previously worked in the Department of Finance, Government of Canada, on debt, fiscal, and tax policy issues. He has worked extensively in India, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, and Zambia, both for the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank, and has task managed lending to Indian states. He has published papers on the challenge of hard budget constraints and intergovernmental fiscal relations in India, third-tier democratic decentralization in India, capital gains taxation in Canada, transfer pricing, and the taxation of branches and subsidiaries. His most recent paper, “The Role of Organizational Design in the Revenue Strategies of Developing Countries,” is forthcoming in a conference volume, The Challenges of Tax Reform in a Global Economy, to be published by Springer. He is currently working on building state capacity in Africa and the Middle East and the reconstruction of Somalia.

Rafael Rofman is a graduate from the University of Buenos Aires in Economics, with a master degree in Social Demography from the University of Lujan in Argentina and a Ph.D. in Demography from the University of California at Berkeley. He has been a consultant for international organizations and national governments in Argentina, Brazil, Peru, Mexico, Uruguay, Venezuela, Hungary, Poland, Croacia, Slovenia, Lithuania, Ukrania, Tailandia, Sri Lanka, and Mauritius. In Argentina he has been head of research at the Supervision of Pension Funds, at NACION AFJP, advisor to the Minister of Economy and to the Secretary of Social Security and vice-president of NACION AFJP. He joined the World Bank as a senior economist for Social Protection in the Latin America and the Caribbean region in September 2002, and since then has worked on social protection and pensions in Argentina, Bolivia, Dominica, Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru, and Uruguay.

He is author of many studies on adult mortality and social security and pension reform presented in meetings and published. He has been university professor at the University of Buenos Aires, University Di Tella, New York University, and the National University of Honduras.

Michal Rutkowski is Director, Human Development Department, Middle East and North Africa Region, at the World Bank, and a former Director of the Office for Social Security Reform in the Government of Poland (1996-1997). From 1998-2003, back in the World Bank, as Sector Manager for Social Protection, he led a team of professionals working on pensions, labor market and social assistance reforms in 28 countries of Central and Eastern Europe and former Soviet Union, as well as in Turkey. In October 2004 he became Sector Director for Human Development (education, health, nutrition, population, pensions, labor market, social assistance, and social funds) in the Europe and Central Asia (ECA) region of the World Bank. On April 1, 2004, he moved to the Middle East and North Africa Region (MNA) to become Sector Director for Human Development there.

For the last 20 years plus Mr. Rutkowski, a labor economist by education, has worked extensively on pensions, social protection, and poverty issues in Europe, the Middle East, and China, as well as on fiscal and public sector management issues in Russia, Poland, and Africa. He managed education projects, and worked on health policy issues. He was among the co-authors of the first comprehensive summary of key welfare reform issues in transition economies, "Labor Markets and Social Policy in Central and Eastern Europe," (Oxford University Press, 1994). In 1994-1995 he was a member of the core team that wrote the World Development Report 1995: "Workers in an Integrating World." In 1996-1997, on leave from the World Bank, he was Director of the Office for Pension Reform of the Government of Poland where he led the team that prepared a comprehensive pension reform package "Security through Diversity," which was subsequently implemented. Mr. Rutkowski received his Ph.D. in Economics from the Warsaw School of Economics (1987), and then continued post-graduate studies at the London School of Economics. Before joining the World Bank in 1990, he was an Associate Professor teaching Economics and doing research work in Labor Economics, Comparative Economics, and Macroeconomics at the Institute for Economic Policy of the Warsaw School of Economics, and Centre for Labour Economics at the London School of Economics.

Carlos Alberto Silvani is currently the Assistant Director of the Fiscal Affairs Department at the International Monetary Fund. A graduate of the University of Buenos Aires, Dr. Silvani has 40 years of experience in fiscal policy and in particular in tax policy administration, including stints as an advisor to the tax department of the Organization of American States, as an advisor to the Fiscal Affairs Department of the IMF, and as head of the Federal Administration of Public Revenue in his native Argentina. He has also taught at the University of Panama, the Joint Vienna Institute, Austria (OECD/IMF), the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy in New Delhi, India, and at the Tax Program at Harvard Law School.

David Snelbecker is Vice President for Economic Policy at The Services Group (TSG), an international development consulting firm. He designed and oversaw implementation of a comprehensive three-pillar pension system in Kosovo, for the United Nations Interim Administration and Kosovo Government. This pension system established a new Pension Savings Trust, a non-governmental legal entity that uses professional asset managers and custodians, under a governing structure of seven Trustees, to manage the investments of contributors, as well as a new Basic Pension paid to all citizens from the state budget. Since its inception, the Trust has accumulated 100 million Euro in assets, for a population of two million. Dr. Snelbecker has also worked on pension reform in a number of other transition countries. Most recently, he co-authored and presented an analysis for USAID E&E Bureau Social Transition Team on “Pension System Status and Issues in the Eastern Europe and Eurasia Region.” Dr. Snelbecker received his Ph.D. from Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. His dissertation focused on economic and policy issues in pension reform, particularly in countries with large informal sectors. He also works on a broad range of economic policy projects, including macro-economic policy in transition countries, and a project to build trade capacity in Colombia, in the context of completing and taking advantage of a Free Trade Agreement with the United States.

Michael Tanner directs research on new, market-based approaches to health, welfare and other "entitlements." His approach is based on individual responsibility rather than government control. Under Tanner's direction, Cato launched the Project on Social Security Choice—widely considered the leading impetus for transforming the soon-to-be-bankrupt system into a private savings program. He challenges the conventional wisdom that welfare can be reformed, arguing instead for the end of a welfare system that has bred dependence and despair while creating a permanent American underclass. Tanner's writing has been published in the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Wall Street Journal, and USA Today. He has appeared on ABC, CBS, NBC, National Public Radio, PBS, Fox News Channel, MSNBC, CNBC and Voice of America. A prolific author and frequent guest lecturer, Tanner served as director of research of the Georgia Public Policy Foundation before joining Cato in 1993.

Eduardo Tugendhat is the president of CARANA Corporation. Mr. Tugendhat has been leading innovative and transformational economic reform programs in the transition economies of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union as well as Latin America. In the transition economies, his particular focus has been on pension reform, labor market reform, capital market reform, and enhancing competition and competitiveness in service sectors. With experience in approximately 60 countries, he has been at the forefront of private sector-led development initiatives since the mid-1980s when he was involved in pioneering programs to promote investment and export-led growth in Central and South America. Mr. Tugendhat provides intellectual and corporate oversight to many of CARANA’s USAID-funded projects. Moreover, he provides the intellectual framework for many of the firm’s practice areas. Mr. Tugendhat holds an M.A. degree in Ibero-American Studies from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and an A.B. degree in History from Harvard University. He is fluent in Spanish and proficient in Russian.

Ricardo Varsano has been working as technical assistance advisor in the Fiscal Affairs Department (Tax Policy Division) of the IMF since January 2004. A Ph.D. in Economics (Stanford University, 1977), he worked previously at the Institute of Applied Economic Research (IPEA) in Brazil, where he had been Sector Studies Coordinator, Tax Studies Coordinator Deputy Research Director and, twice, Research Director. In Brazil, he had also been an adviser to the Ministry of Finance (1979-83), to the Committee on Tax System, Budget and Finance of the National Constituent Assembly (1987) and to the Special Committee on Tax Reform of the House of Representatives (1999). He has authored or coauthored more than 60 published articles, most on taxation.

Jaime Vázquez-Caro has devoted his 35-year professional life to the institutional development of the public sector, particularly tax administration, fiscal control, and development of property rights concepts and institutions dealing with property registries. Currently, he is developing the project Ciudadano en Línea (Citizen-on-line) a private initiative to improve State services through the integration of private sector efforts to the development of e-Government. In this effort his team has worked with the Colombian National University in the promotion and understanding of e-Government and the problems of digital divide emerging from government IT and Internet developments. As independent consultant since April 2000, he has been addressing leading-edge issues related to government reform and tax systems development both at national and local levels in the context of the technological revolution and the global economy. Vázquez-Caro worked at the World Bank in 1988-2000 as tax administration specialist. In this role he was responsible for conceiving and preparing the first tax administration loan ever granted by the Bank (to the Argentine government in 1988) and participated in other World Bank-financed investment projects/structural adjustment operations in the tax and social security administrations in approximately 18 countries including Brazil, Mexico, Chile, Turkey, Ukraine, and Venezuela. Vázquez-Caro was staff member of the Fiscal Affairs Department of the International Monetary Fund (1986-1988), and as a private consultant in UNDP projects at the General Comptroller of Colombia and in the Colombian National Planning Department. He was part of the 1968-76 tax reform process in Colombia. As Deputy General Commissioner of Taxes (1974-76) he was involved in the formulation of and was responsible for the institutional implementation of a major tax reform which included all national taxes, procedural laws, and organizational reform. He organized the first benchmarking exercise among the Colombian tax offices which has remained as a management practice since its establishment. He was Regional Tax Administrator of Barranquilla in 1972. In 1972-73, he attended the International Tax Program at Harvard University and holds an MBA from the University of Illinois (1970) and a BBA in Economics from the University of Miami (1970).