Name: Laurence Kotlikoff
Age: 61
Marital Status: Permanently Separated
Position/Employer: Professor of Economics, Boston University and President, Economic Security Planning, Inc.

http://www.kotlikoff2012.org

Professor Kotlikoff received his B.A. in Economics from the University of Pennsylvania in 1973 and his Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard University in 1977. From 1977 through 1983 he served on the faculties of economics of the University of California, Los Angeles and Yale University. In 1981-82 Professor Kotlikoff was a Senior Economist with the President’s Council of Economic Advisers. This was during President Reagan’s first term. The fact that Professor Kotlikoff worked at the CEA during a Republican Administration does not mean he is a Republican. Professor Kotlikoff is, and has always been, an Independent. He would have been equally glad to have worked at the CEA had President Carter been re-elected.

In 1984 Professor Kotlikoff joined the Department of Economics at Boston University. At that time, the Department was ranked, based on publications in leading journals, at 86th in the country. In 1985 Professor Kotlikoff was appointed Chair of the Department and engineered, with the help of his colleagues, the most significant transformation of any economics department in the country, before or since. By the mid 1990s, the Department was ranked 7th. It remains today one of the top departments in the country.  Professor Kotlikoff started Economic Security Planning, Inc. in the mid 1990s.  Its ESPlanner software (www.esplanner.com) has been ranked #1 by Money Magazine, The Washington Post, and Forbes.

Professor Kotlikoff is author or co-author of 15 books, hundreds of professional journal articles, and opinion columns. His most recent books are The Clash of Generations (with Scott Burns, MIT Press), Jimmy Stewart Is Dead (John Wiley & Sons), Spend ‘Til the End (with Scott Burns, Simon & Schuster), The Healthcare Fix (MIT Press), and The Coming Generational Storm (with Scott Burns, MIT Press).

Professor Kotlikoff publishes extensively in newspapers and magazines on issues of financial reform, personal finance, taxes, Social Security, healthcare, deficits, generational accounting, pensions, saving, and insurance. Professor Kotlikoff has served as a consultant to the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the Harvard Institute for International Development, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the Swedish Ministry of Finance, the Norwegian Ministry of Finance, the Bank of Italy, the Bank of Japan, the Bank of England, Her Majesty’s Treasury, the Government of Russia, the Government of Ukraine, the Government of Bolivia, the Government of Bulgaria, the Treasury of New Zealand, the Office of Management and Budget, the U.S. Department of Education, the U.S. Department of Labor, the Joint Committee on Taxation, The Commonwealth of Massachusetts, The American Council of Life Insurance, Merrill Lynch, Fidelity Investments, AT&T, AON Corp., Teva Pharmaceuticals, USA, and other major U.S. corporations.  He has provided expert testimony on numerous occasions to committees of Congress including the Senate Finance Committee, the House Ways and Means Committee, and the Joint Economic Committee.

Our country’s problems are severe and getting worse. No candidate has all the answers. But the problems we face are primarily economic ones and may be better addressed by someone who has spent his life focused on our economic problems and their solutions.

No economist has, to my knowledge, ever run for President. In recent years, we’ve had a nuclear engineer, an actor, two businessmen, and two lawyers. In their hands, the economy has done very poorly on a number of critical dimensions. In particular, none has come to grips with the country’s long-term fiscal insolvency.

We’ve also been very badly served by the major two parties’ primary concern — obtaining and maintaining power. This may work for them, but it’s certainly not working for us.

It’s time to elect someone with fresh, bold ideas that will appeal to all segments of society — someone with the courage to both articulate and implement what’s really needed to fix America.

Professor Kotlikoff’s campaign site, www.kotlikoff2012.org, lays out why he is running for President and the specific “purple” policies he proposes to turn the country around.