Robert Tannenwald is the adjunct lecturer in public policy and budgeting at the Heller School of Brandeis University. He spent 28 years as an economist with the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, from which he retired as vice president in 2010. He was the founding director of the bank’s New England Public Policy Center. He has also served as a senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and as an analyst in taxation at the Congressional Research Service. He writes the column Economist's Roost.