In July, tax policy expert Erin Towery, the KPMG-Atlanta Partners’ and Employees’ Professor in Terry’s J.M. Tull School of Accounting, completed a one-year post as a Senior Economist with the White House Council of Economic Advisers (CEA). She recently shared insights with a group of colleagues about her time in the nation’s capital and how the experience has shaped her views on research and policymaking.
Can you describe the CEA and your role?
The Council of Economic Advisers is part of the Executive Office of the President. Its mission is to provide the president with objective economic advice grounded in research and empirical evidence. For that reason, the CEA is often staffed with academics, who typically serve as senior economists. There are also opportunities for grad students and recent undergraduates to serve as junior economists and research assistants. I served as a senior economist from August 2024 through July 2025.
What was your experience starting out on the Council?
One of the CEA’s biggest responsibilities every fall is to prepare the Economic Report of the President, a monthslong effort that engages nearly everyone on staff. Since many economists serve one-year terms, new staff typically arrive in the summer, right before the writing of the report begins. Because the staff is relatively small, everyone is expected to contribute across a wide range of issues. In addition to my work on tax policy, I also worked on projects related to small businesses and market competition. Balancing the demands of the report with assignments outside my subject matter expertise felt a bit like being thrown into the deep end, but navigating those challenges with my colleagues who were in the same boat made the transition much smoother.
What did you contribute to the Economic Report of the President?
The process begins with CEA council members and the chief of staff selecting chapter topics. That year, they wanted a chapter explaining the motivation for the global tax deal, and I was assigned to write it with two junior economists. Drafting the chapter was only about 20% of the work — the other 80% involved incorporating feedback from other government agencies with a stake in the issue. For example, I worked closely with Treasury, which was actively engaged in international negotiations on the global tax deal. Once the report was finalized and released, we celebrated with a group photo alongside the president holding his copy.
What was your experience working on the Council during a presidential transition?
A unique aspect of my tenure was serving under two administrations with different policy priorities. I worked during the Biden administration from August 2024 through late January 2025, and then during the Trump administration from January to July of this year. I focused mainly on domestic policy issues and the Economic Report in the first administration, versus a lot more international focus in the second administration. An interesting aspect of working at the start of a new administration is that it takes months for their team to be fully in place, so I had a lot of opportunities to work on projects related to national security, trade and supply chains that were prominent on the policy agenda in early 2025. I spent considerable time in both administrations analyzing tax cut extension options, and it was fascinating to be a tax researcher in Washington during the lead-up to the One Big Beautiful Bill and its eventual passage.
What were your main takeaways?
Before I began, someone told me that CEA “rearranges your mental furniture.” That proved true for me. The experience gave me a deeper understanding of how policymaking works, even when it pushed me outside my comfort zone. As a researcher, I’m trained to seek out the economic answer to a question. But policymaking requires weighing other factors just as carefully, including political feasibility, national security, etc. Witnessing how these factors intersect with economic analysis has reshaped my understanding of how we as academics can contribute more effectively to policy.