In memory of Harry Grubert

I am sad to pass on the news that Harry Grubert, longtime Senior Research Economist in the Office of Tax Analysis at the U.S. Department of  the Treasury, and also a friend I greatly admired, has died quietly from a long-term illness.

Harry had more knowledge about U.S. international taxation than any other living individual. I'm not referring to legal knowledge, of course, as he was an economist - albeit, an exceptionally well-informed one about the law. But his long years of research and study regarding U.S. multinational firms, based on tax data that he understood better than anyone else, made him an extraordinary resource, almost like a public utility in light of his kind generosity and willingness to share what he knew.

He was also a leading scholar who developed a number of interesting and important international tax reform ideas (often in coauthored work with Rosanne Altshuler), and one whose research yielded innumerable consequential empirical findings - for example, regarding the costs associated with U.S. multinationals keeping their funds tied up abroad.

I would generally see him a couple of times a year at research conferences, most recently in Oxford this past May. And he was a presenter at the NYU Tax Policy Colloquium, I believe three times. We wouldn't have kept asking him back if he hadn't combined excellent and important papers with being a great presenter and fount of knowledge as well as wisdom.

As a matter of style, Harry was a fox, not a hedgehog - he knew many things (and I do mean many), rather than being inclined to focus on one big thing. If you'd ask him, say, about Rule or Proposal X's effects, he'd say: Here are the 17 margins at which it has an impact. He could even snap at the hedgehogs a bit, when the mood took him (suitably to the metaphor, I suppose). But his kindness and generosity always prevailed, with all who engaged with him.