Carl is Deputy Director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies and programme director of their work on direct taxes and welfare. He is an editor of the annual IFS Green Budget. His recent research includes analysis of the impact of the financial crisis and association recession, and the Government's response, on the UK's public finances. He has examined the effect of UK pension reforms on the public finances, retirement behaviour, labour market mobility, incentives to save and inequality, and has evaluated the large scale pilots of the Education Maintenance Allowance, the Pathways-to-Work reforms to incapacity benefits and the Saving Gateway matched savings vehicle. He has previously served as a specialist advisor to the House of Commons Work and Pensions Select Committee.
Chengwei Liu is an Associate Professor of Strategy and Behavioural Science at Warwick Business School, UK. He is a Cambridge trained PhD who held a fellowship position at Jesus College Oxford. Chengwei's research programme addresses a fundamental question in strategy, innovation and entrepreneurship: should successes be attributed to skill or luck? His research (luckily) won several awards and are published in management and interdisciplinary journals such as Organization Science and PNAS, gaining media coverage worldwide in the New York Times, Financial Times, and BBC. Chengwei has also won multiple research grants and teaching awards.
Charles R. Hankla is associate professor of political science at Georgia State University in Atlanta. He received his PhD in 2005 from Emory University, and he also holds degrees from Georgetown University and the London School of Economics. Charles' research is in the fields of comparative and international political economy, and he has a particular interest in political institutions as they relate to fiscal decentralization, budgeting, and trade and industrial policy. His research has included cross-national, quantitative studies and also field-work based analyses of India and France. Charles' previous work has appeared in such journals as the American Political Science Review, International Studies Quarterly, and Comparative Political Studies. Charles is also an active consultant, particularly on topics related to fiscal decentralization and public budgeting. Most recently, he has worked on projects related to Vietnam and Egypt that were supported by USAID and the UNDP. Finally, Charles is a member of the Scholar Strategy Network, an organization which seeks to bring academic research to the attention of policy-makers.
Dr. Cynthia Eakin is an Associate Professor of Accounting. She currently serves as the Associate Dean for Academic Programs at the Eberhardt School of Business. She also is the school's Learning Assessment Coordinator. Dr. Eakin earned a Ph.D. in accounting as well as a Master of Accounting degree with special emphasis in taxation from The Florida State University in 1993. She has over 20 years of teaching experience in all areas of accounting and taxation at both the graduate and undergraduate level. She was an assistant professor at the University of Hawaii's Manoa campus for four years before coming to the Eberhardt School. She has published research in the areas of earnings management, disclosure ethics, and insider trading.
