Art Fraas joined RFF as a Visiting Fellow in April 2009 after a distinguished career in senior positions within the federal government. In 2008, he retired after 21 years as chief of the Natural Resources, Energy, and Agriculture Branch, Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, Office of Management and Budget. Much of his work has examined the federal regulatory process, with a particular focus on the impact of environmental regulations.

At RFF, Fraas will work on a variety of issues related to energy and the environment, including projects looking at the tradeoffs between using biomass in transportation and in electricity applications, the treatment of uncertainty in regulatory analysis of major rules, and the potential regulation of greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act.

Before joining the OMB, Fraas was a senior economist at the Council on Wage and Price Stability, a staff member of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust and Monopoly, an assistant professor of economics at the U.S. Naval Academy, and a staff economist with the Federal Reserve System.

He graduated from Cornell University in 1965 with a bachelor’s degree in engineering physics, and earned his doctorate in economics from the University of California at Berkeley in 1972.