John W. Diamond is the Edward A. and Hermena Hancock Kelly Fellow in Tax Policy at the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy of Rice University and CEO of Tax Policy Advisers, LLC. He received his PhD in economics from Rice in 2000. His research interests are federal tax and expenditure policy, state and local public finance, and the construction and simulation of computable general equilibrium models. His research has appeared in the National Tax Journal, International Tax and Public Finance, and The Encyclopedia of Taxation and Tax Policy. His two most recent publications (1) examine the effects of implementing a consumption tax on business equity values and housing prices, and (2) provide a summary of the simulations of the economic effects of the tax reform options recommended by the President’s Advisory Panel on Federal Tax Reform. This summary is part of an ongoing sponsored research project with the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Tax Analysis. Diamond, along with Baker Institute Rice scholar George Zodrow, recently organized a conference on tax reform held April 27-28, 2006, at the Baker Institute. The focus of the conference, which included numerous internationally acclaimed tax experts and featured a keynote speech by the Honorable James A. Baker, III, was on the economic and political implications of various tax reform proposals currently under discussion in the United States. Diamond served at the Joint Committee on Taxation, United States Congress, in 2000-2004, and played an integral role in developing and implementing the framework used in the first official estimates of the dynamic macroeconomic effects of changes in U.S. tax policy by the committee. Along with Zodrow, he constructed a dynamic overlapping generations computable general equilibrium model for use by the committee. Diamond has also served as a consultant on the efficacy of structural adjustment programs to the World Bank.