Senior Leadership
Peter Bluestone
Associate Director, Center for State and Local Finance
Bluestone serves as the primary contact for the Center for State and Local Finance research.
He is a senior research associate with the Fiscal Research Center and Center for State and Local Finance. His research includes urban economics, static and dynamic economic impact modeling, and state and local fiscal policy. His work includes modeling state and local impacts of policy changes and economic development using various economic models, including IMPLAN and Regional Economics Models Incorporated (REMI). Bluestone has served on the technical advisory committee for the Atlanta Regional Commission. He received his doctorate in economics from Georgia State University.
Paul Benson
Associate Director, Public Finance Research Cluster (FRC, CSLF, ICePP)
Paul focuses on research and training for three collaborative centers: the International Center for Public Policy (ICePP), the Center for State and Local Finance and the Fiscal Research Center.
His experience includes over 20 years in various roles at ICePP. He is an operations and management professional with experience in overseeing a wide spectrum of multimillion-dollar economic technical assistance and training projects in developing countries spanning six regions (Asia, Africa, Eastern Europe, Latin America, the Caribbean Islands, and the Commonwealth of Independent States). Clients include the Asian Development Bank, International Monetary Fund, World Bank, and various foreign governments.
Robert D. Buschman
Associate Director, Fiscal Research Center
In addition to serving as the associate director of the Fiscal Research Center (FRC), Buschman is as a senior research associate at the Center for State and Local Finance.
He is FRC’s key contact for fiscal note analyses of proposed Georgia revenue legislation. His research interests include corporate and personal taxation, growth and equity effects of tax reform, state and local fiscal policy, and other topics. Prior to joining the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies, Buschman worked for several years in corporate banking and corporate financial management. He holds a bachelor’s degree in economics from Duke University, an MBA in finance from the Goizueta Business School at Emory University, and a master’s degree and doctorate in economics from the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies at Georgia State University.
