Penn Wharton Budget Model

Dr. Smetters is the Boettner Professor in the Department of Business Economics and Public Policy at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, and is serving as the Faculty Director of The Penn Wharton Budget Model.

Professor Smetters brings a wealth of policy expertise to The Penn Wharton Budget Model, with a strong record of research in public economics as well as work experience in the public sector.  Starting in May 2001, he spent 17 months serving as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Economic Policy at the U.S. Department of the Treasury. He subsequently became a member of the bipartisan Blue Ribbon Advisory Panel on Dynamic Scoring, convened by the Joint Committee on Taxation of the U.S. Congress. His experience also includes a position as an economist in the Congressional Budget Office, and as a consultant for the World Bank and the Urban Institute.

Professor Smetters earned bachelor’s degrees in Economics and Computer Science from Ohio State University, and received his MA and PhD degrees in Economics from Harvard University.  His research interests include financial regulation, government debt and Social Security policy, and retirement and financial planning. In addition to his faculty position at Wharton, Professor Smetters is a Faculty Research Fellow in the Aging Program at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), as well as a Research Associate in NBER’s Public Economics Program.  He also is a member of the National Academy of Social Insurance, and a Research Associate of the Michigan Retirement Research Center and the Pension Research Council.

Professor Smetters’ research has appeared in leading journals, including American Economic Review, Journal of Political Economy, and The Quarterly Journal of Economics.  He often is cited in major news outlets such as the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and Marketplace, and also hosts the program “Your Money” on Wharton Business Radio (Sirius XM Channel 111).

Richard Prisinzano came to the Penn Wharton Budget Model after 13 years in the Office of Tax Analysis at the U.S. Department of Treasury. While at OTA, Richard worked on the taxation of pass-through entities and small businesses and coauthored Treasury Reports on the owners of pass-through businesses and helped develop Treasury’s methodology for identifying small businesses from tax return data. He has also published papers on gasoline taxes, tax migration of millionaires, and major league baseball managers and has also taught econometrics and sports economics at Georgetown University, Johns Hopkins University and George Washington University. He holds a B.S. in Economics and Political Science from James Madison University, an M.A. in Economics from Miami University, and a Ph.D. and M.S. in Economics from the University of Texas.

Efraim Berkovich leads development of the PWBM OLG general equilibrium model and technical infrastructure. Prior to coming to PWBM, he was a college professor of economics and finance. Efraim has also worked in information technology, having held the position of technical architect at AXA Financial and CTO at an internet start-up. Additionally, Efraim worked at Sanford C. Bernstein & Co.’s global equities group and on projects for NASD (now FINRA) and the U.S. Treasury.

Efraim’s published work includes a study of index options in the Journal of Derivatives and an analysis of welfare implications of payment cards in the Review of Network Economics for which he was interviewed on NPR. He also has a number of publications and patents in computer engineering. Efraim earned his Ph.D. in economics from the University of Pennsylvania, his M.S. in electrical engineering from the University of Maryland, College Park, and his B.S. magna cum laude in Mathematics from Georgetown University.