Richard Alm
Economics Writer
Before joining the Dallas Fed in 2003, Alm worked for 24 years as a reporter, editor and columnist at the Dallas Morning News, U.S. News & World Report, Arizona Republic, and Kansas City Star and Times. Since 1992, he and W. Michael Cox, Dallas Fed senior vice president and chief economist, have written a series of 12 annual report essays that focus on how America’s free enterprise system generates economic progress. They also collaborated on a 1999 book, Myths of Rich & Poor: Why We’re Better Off Than We Think. Alm graduated from Florida State University and earned a master’s degree in journalism from the University of Kansas.

Stephen P. A. Brown
Director of Energy Economics and Microeconomic Policy Analysis
Brown joined the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas in 1981, after working as an energy economist for Brookhaven National Laboratory and teaching economics at several universities. He is currently an adjunct professor of economics at Southern Methodist University and Tulane University. Brown has authored numerous articles appearing in such publications as Economic Inquiry, Review of Regional Studies, Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance and The Energy Journal. Brown holds a B.S. in economics from California Polytechnic State University and an M.A. and a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Maryland.

Steve Cobb
Chairman, Department of Economics,
University of North Texas
Cobb currently serves as director of the Center for Economic Education and is completing his ninth year as the Economics Department chair at the University of North Texas. Cobb has been involved in the National Council on Economic Education’s Economics International Training of Trainers program for the past 10 years, helping more than 500 faculty members in the newly independent states of the former Soviet Union teach economics from a market perspective. He also served as president of the National Association of Economic Educators in 2000. Cobb received his Ph.D. in economics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Bryce Eakin
Student
Rice University
Eakin is a recent graduate of the High School for the Performing and Visual Arts in Houston. He is a two-year participant in the Fed Challenge economics competition, co-captaining a team that ranked in the top four in the nation. He has recently been accepted by Rice University, where he intends to study economics, political science and macroeconometric modeling.

Robert L. Formaini
Senior Economist and Public Policy Advisor
Formaini is a past conference director and vice president of public policy for the CATO Institute and founder of the Cato Journal. He is cofounder of the National Center for Policy Analysis in Dallas and was its first executive director. He was chair of the McCamish Business School at Reinhardt College and the first director of the Center for Entrepreneurship and Free Enterprise. He is currently an adjunct economics professor in the School of Management at the University of Texas at Dallas. Formaini has a B.F.A. in music from Ithaca College, an M.A. from Virginia Commonwealth University and a Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Dallas.

Evan F. Koenig
Vice President and Senior Economist
Koenig joined the Dallas Fed in 1988 after teaching at the University of Washington. He oversees macroeconomic research and analysis in the Dallas Fed's Research Department, briefs the president and Bank directors on national economic conditions, and writes articles for Bank publications and scholarly journals. In his research, Koenig seeks to predict and explain movements in prices, output and employment, particularly as these movements are affected by monetary policy. His articles have appeared in such publications as The Quarterly Journal of Economics, The Review of Economics and Statistics, The Journal of Public Economics and the Dallas Fed’s Economic and Financial Policy Review. He is an adjunct professor in the Economics Department at Southern Methodist University. Koenig holds bachelor's degrees in mathematics and economics from the University of Wisconsin and a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University.

Kenneth J. Robinson
Senior Economist and Policy Advisor,
Financial Industry Studies
Robinson has been with the Dallas Fed since 1986, specializing in macroeconomics as well as money and banking. His current research focuses on how financial structure, monetary policy and economic activity affect U.S. financial markets. He has published articles in several academic journals, including the Journal of International Money and Finance, Journal of Financial Services Research and Journal of Macroeconomics. Robinson holds a B.S. from the University of New Orleans, an M.S. from Louisiana State University and a Ph.D. from Ohio State University.

Harvey Rosenblum
Senior Vice President and Director of Research
Rosenblum is an economic policy advisor to the president of the Dallas Fed and an associate economist for the Federal Open Market Committee. His current research interests center on monetary policy, electronic money, Social Security reform, international trade and dollarization in Latin America. Rosenblum, who is immediate past president of the National Association for Business Economics, has written for such publications as the Journal of Finance, New York Times and The Handbook for Banking Strategy. He is a visiting professor of finance at Southern Methodist University. Rosenblum received a B.A. in economics from the University of Connecticut and a Ph.D. in economics from the University of California at Santa Barbara.

Thomas F. Siems
Senior Economist and Policy Advisor
Siems began his career with the Federal Reserve in 1984. He is also a senior lecturer with the Engineering Management, Information and Systems Department in the School of Engineering at Southern Methodist University and an advisory board member of the Cato Institute’s Project on Social Security Choice. Siems has published more than 45 articles in such journals as the Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, European Journal of Political Economy and Review of Financial Economics. Siems is a graduate of the Public Finance Institute at the University of Michigan and an alumnus of the Graduate School of Banking at Colorado. He earned a B.S.E. from the University of Michigan and an M.S. and a Ph.D. in operations research from Southern Methodist University.

Alan D. Viard
Research Officer and Senior Economist
Viard conducts research in public finance and macroeconomics at the Dallas Fed. He served as a senior economist at the Council of Economic Advisers during a leave of absence in 2003–04. Before joining the Dallas Fed in 1998, Viard was an assistant professor of economics at Ohio State University. He was also a staff economist at the Joint Committee on Taxation of the U.S. Congress in 1992–93 and a visiting foreign scholar at Osaka University in Japan in 1995. He has authored more than a dozen articles in professional journals and Federal Reserve publications. Viard received a B.A. in economics from Yale University and a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University.

Mark A. Wynne
Vice President and Senior Economist
Wynne’s primary research interests are in the fields of monetary economics and macroeconomics, and he has published in many leading professional journals. He has taught at the University of Rochester and Southern Methodist University and is an academic board member of the Open Republic Institute in Dublin. During 1997–98 Wynne worked on issues related to monetary policy strategy under economic and monetary union for the European Monetary Institute and, later, the European Central Bank. Wynne holds B.A. and M.A. degrees from the National University of Ireland (University College, Dublin) and an M.A. and a Ph.D. from the University of Rochester.

Mine K. Yücel
Vice President and Senior Economist
Yücel is head of the regional economics group at the Dallas Fed and an advisor to the Bank’s president on regional and energy issues. Her main research interests are analyzing the effects of energy price shocks, energy markets, regional growth and growth effects of fiscal policy. Yücel is president of the United States Association of Energy Economics (USAEE) and the Dallas chapter of the National Association for Business Economics. She has served on the executive boards of the USAEE and the Dallas chapter of Women in Technology International. Before joining the Bank, she was an assistant professor of economics at Louisiana State University. She has a B.S. and M.S. in mathematics from Bogazici University in Istanbul, Turkey, and a Ph.D. in economics from Rice University.