Zodrow, Mieszkowski honored by National Tax Association
BY FRANZ BROTZEN
Rice News staff
Two Rice economists have won the major prizes awarded to academics by the National Tax Association (NTA). George Zodrow, the Cline Professor of Economics, and Peter Mieszkowski, professor emeritus of economics, received their individual awards Nov. 13 at the NTA’s Annual Conference on Taxation in Denver.
From left, George Zodrow, the Cline Professor of Economics, and Peter Mieszkowski, professor emeritus of economics, were honored by the National Tax Association during the organization’s Annual Conference on Taxation in Denver. |
Both Zodrow and Mieszkowski are Rice Scholars for the Tax and Expenditure Policy Program of Rice’s Baker Institute for Public Policy.
Zodrow serves as the editor of the National Tax Journal, the flagship publication of the NTA, whose editorial offices were recently moved to Rice. He is also an International Research Fellow at the Centre for Business Taxation at the University of Oxford.
The NTA is the premier U.S. organization of specialists in government tax and expenditure policies and includes economists in academia, government and the private sector, as well as lawyers, accountants and other specialists in the field. Its two premier awards, the Steven D. Gold Award and the Daniel M. Holland Medal, went to Zodrow and Mieszkowski, respectively.
The Gold Award is named after the former director of the Center for the Study of the States at the Rockefeller Institute, State University of New York-Albany, and co-director of the Urban Institute’s New Federalism Project. It is awarded annually to professionals who have made “significant contributions to state and local fiscal policy and whose work reflects Steve Gold’s remarkable ability to span the interests of scholars, practitioners, policymakers and advocates with integrity and evenhandedness,” according to the NTA’s Web site.
Zodrow said he felt privileged to be “getting the Gold,” as it is known in NTA parlance, “especially since this award celebrates the life of Steven Gold, whose ability to build bridges between the ideas and interests of public finance scholars, practitioners and policymakers is legendary.”
“Being selected for this award by my longtime friends and colleagues at the National Tax Association is particularly satisfying, as the NTA has played a critical role in my professional development throughout my entire career,” said Zodrow, who is the first person to win both the NTA’s Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation Award (1980) and either the Gold Award or the Holland Medal. “I am simply delighted that the NTA has recognized my work in the theory and practice of state and local fiscal policy with such a prestigious award. And it is a special pleasure to receive the Gold Award at the same time that my colleague, frequent co-author and close friend, Peter Mieszkowski, has been selected to be the recipient of the NTA’s most prestigious award, the Holland Medal.”
The Holland Medal is awarded for outstanding contributions to the study and practice of public finance. The medal was first awarded in 1993. Holland, a former professor of economics at MIT, had “a lifelong interest in all aspects of public finance,” the NTA’s Web site explains. “He was a researcher and teacher with an interest in stimulating knowledge in the field. He was a practitioner who played a role in the implementation of fiscal reform. He made great efforts to further the work of the National Tax Association and was editor of the National Tax Journal from 1966 through 1991.”
Mieszkowski said the prize has personal significance for him since he knows “all of the previous winners and I have been especially close to one of the most distinguished of the group — Richard Musgrave, my thesis adviser at Johns Hopkins in 1963. Another winner was Arnold Harberger who wrote a seminal paper, which I extended in a number of directions — work that made up my dissertation and my first publication.”
Mieszkowski also mentioned Martin Feldstein of Harvard — “a very distinguished person who was the chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers during the Reagan administration when James A. Baker III was secretary of the treasury.” Charles McLure, another Holland winner, “taught at Rice during the 1970s,” Mieszkowski recalled, “and was the head of the Office of Tax Analysis at the Treasury Department during the formulation of the famous Tax Reform Act of 1986, whose passage was engineered by Secretary Baker.”
Mieszkowski added that receiving the Holland Medal this year “is especially meaningful to me as the National Tax Association is also honoring my colleague, frequent collaborator and friend George Zodrow for his numerous contributions to the analysis of state and local public finance.”
James Poterba of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, current president of the NTA, presented the Gold award to Zodrow. He said, ”George Zodrow is a leading international expert on state and local tax policy. He has done pathbreaking research on all of the major taxes used by states and localities, including sales taxes, property taxes, and personal and corporate income taxes. He has also played a critical and influential role in tax policy design in the state of Texas, at the national level in the United States and as an adviser to more than a dozen other nations.
“George’s combination of scholarly insight and hands-on policy influence makes him an ideal recipient of the Steven Gold Award.”
Poterba also had words of praise for Mieszkowski: “(His) research has transformed the economic analysis of taxation. For more than four decades, he has championed the ‘general equilibrium’ approach to studying how taxes affect households and firms and emphasized that a tax in one market can have important effects not just in that market but in other markets as well. His seminal contributions to the study of the corporate income tax and the local property tax have shaped the course and direction of research and had a central impact on tax policy design.
“He is a most deserving choice for this year’s Daniel Holland Award, the highest honor bestowed by the National Tax Association,” Poterba said.
For more on the NTA awards, go to http://www.ntanet.org/about-nta/awards.html.
Leave a Reply