Max is a senior research fellow at CEPR and is an economist and writer in Virginia. He received his BA in English literature from Rutgers University and his MA and PhD in economics at the University of Maryland, College Park. His principal areas of research and interest include the federal budget, state and local finance, fiscal federalism, the economics of taxation, and privatization.

Max has worked at the US Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations, the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), and the US Government Accountability Office. He has written about economics for EPI, CEPR, the Roosevelt Institute, and the Peoples Policy Institute. His three favorite papers for EPI are “Up From Deficit Reduction” (2004), “The Poverty of the New Paradigm” (1991), and with Robert Cherry, “Giving Tax Credit Where Credit Is Due: A ‘Unified Universal Child Credit’ that Expands the EITC and Cuts Taxes for Working Families” (2000).

Max is the coauthor (with Rima Shore and Craig Richards) of Risky Business: Private Management of Public Schools. He has edited the books The End of Welfare? Consequences of Federal Devolution for the Nation and Bridging the Tax Gap: Addressing the Crisis in Federal Tax Administration and wrote the report The Hidden Costs of Channel One with Alex Molnar. He has collaborated separately with Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) and Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-IL) on legislation to institute an expanded tax credit for families with children.

Max’s articles have appeared in The American Prospect, In These Times, Jacobin, The Boston Review, The Baffler, Newsweek, Democracy Journal, The Daily Beast, Democratic Left, Pro Publica, the People’s World, Mother Jones, The Progressive Populist, and The New Republic. He has consulted for the National Association of Social Workers; the National Women’s Law Center; the Service Employees International Union; the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees; and the Alliance for Aviation Across America. He has written numerous op-eds, including in the Boston Globe, the Houston Chronicle, the Miami Herald, the Austin Chronicle, the Arizona Republic, USA Today, and the Los Angeles Times. He was among the earliest bloggers on economics and politics at MaxSpeak, You Listen!