Adam Looney

Adam Looney is a visiting fellow at Brookings, where he was previously the Joseph A. Pechman senior fellow in Economic Studies. He is also affiliated with the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center. Mr. Looney is an expert on U.S. tax policy. Mr. Looney is now the Executive Director of the Marriner S. Eccles Institute at the University of Utah.

Mr. Looney returned to Brookings in March 2017 after three years of service in the U.S. Treasury Department as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Tax Analysis. At Treasury, Mr. Looney advised the Secretary on economic issues related to tax policy, analyzed current and proposed legislation, and provided the official receipts forecasts and revenue estimates for the Administration’s budgets. He also studied, among several issues, the causes and consequences of student loan distress and the economic returns to postsecondary education, and played an instrumental role in the advancement of several data-intensive projects including the production of the Department of Education’s College Scorecard.

Prior to joining the Treasury, Mr. Looney was policy director of The Hamilton Project, and was a senior fellow in Economic Studies at Brookings from 2010-2013. Previously, he served as the senior economist for public finance and tax policy with President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers and was an economist at the Federal Reserve Board. He received a PhD in economics from Harvard University and a BA in economics from Dartmouth College.