Keynote Speaker
During his career, Dr. Litan has authored or co-authored over 25 books, edited another 14, and authored or co-authored over 200 articles in journals, magazines and newspapers on a broad range of public policy issues. His latest books are Good Capitalism, Bad Capitalism, Economic Growth and Prosperity (with William Baumol and Carl Schramm, Yale University Press, 2007) and Competitive Equity: Developing a Lower Cost Alternative for Mutual Funds (with Peter J. Wallison, AEI Press, 2007). Other recently published books include Worldwide Financial Reporting (Oxford University Press, 2006, with three co-authors); Financial Statecraft (Yale University Press, 2006, with Benn Steil); and Follow The Money: The Enron Failure and the State of Corporate Disclosure (AEI-Brookings Joint Center for Regulatory Studies, 2003, with 3 co-authors). In 2008 and 2009, Dr. Litan has written a number of monographs on the financial crisis, all available on the Brookings website, www.brookings.edu.
Dr. Litan has been a lecturer in banking law at the Yale Law School, consulted for numerous organizations, (public and private), and testified as an expert witness in a variety of legal and regulatory proceedings involving domestic (banking, antitrust) and international (primarily trade) issues. He also consulted for private sector firms and the Department of Justice on antitrust matters. Among his various assignments, he has written a number of influential federal reports. He co-authored two Congressionally-mandated studies for the Treasury Department on the role of the Community Reinvestment Act after the Financial Modernization Act of 1999. During 1996-97 he has served as a consultant to the Treasury Department and was the lead author of its report to Congress on the future of the financial services industry (American Finance in the 21rst Century), and in 1998-99 he was the main author of the Report of President’s Commission to Study Capital Budgeting. In 1998, he also chaired the National Academy of Sciences Committee on Assessing the Costs of Natural Disasters, which produced a report The Impacts of Natural Disasters: A Framework for Loss Estimation.
Dr. Litan also has served in several capacities in the federal government. During 1995 and 1996, he was Associate Director of the Office of Management and Budget (where he was responsible for overseeing budgetary and other policies of six cabinet agencies). From 1993 to 1995, he was Deputy Assistant Attorney General, in charge of civil antitrust litigation and regulatory issues, at the Department of Justice (where among other matters, he supervised the first Microsoft investigation, which resulted in a consent decree; and the investigation against NASDAQ). From 1977 to 1979, he was the regulatory and legal staff specialist at the President’s Council of Economic Advisers. In the early 1990s, Dr. Litan was a Member of the Commission on the Causes of the Savings and Loan Crisis.
Dr. Litan received his B.S. in Economics (summa cum laude) from the Wharton School of Finance at the University of Pennsylvania; his J.D. from Yale Law School; and both his M. Phil. and Ph.D. in Economics from Yale University.