But Mitchell Moss, an urban-affairs specialist at New York University and an adviser to Mr. Bloomberg, saw some merit.

"Sales taxes have not kept pace with economic growth," said William Fox, professor of economics at the University of Tennessee and an adviser to the governor.

She is a teacher at the Graduate Institute for Gender Studies and an adviser to Taipei City Government.

A half-blind man of 61, Sheik Sadlaan is a professor at the kingdom's leading Islamic university and a religious adviser to a senior member of the royal family.

Guillermo Calvo, an economist at the University of Maryland and a former senior adviser to the I.M.F., was the most prominent of the pessimists.

John Michael Attenborough (1928 - 9 November 2012) was an executive at the Alfa Romeo Automobiles company and later a financial adviser.

He called Hitchens in the fall of 2002, at the prompting of Kevin Kellems, then his special adviser, and now an adviser at the World Bank.

"Jacob knows everybody," said Stanley Fischer, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a longtime adviser to the Israelis.

After retiring he has been adjunct docent at Bodø University College and an adviser at the University of Tromsø.

Those include a director of human resources at $100,000 a year, a part-time general counsel at $100,000 and an artistic adviser, the former star dancer Susan Jaffe, at $125,000.