Answering Challenges to Advanced Economies

Michael J. Boskin

Rose and Milton Friedman Senior Fellow on Public Policy

Michael J. Boskin is the Rose and Milton Friedman Senior Fellow on Public Policy at the Hoover Institution and the Tully M. Friedman Professor of Economics at Stanford. He is also a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research. In addition, he advises governments and businesses globally.

Boskin served as chairman of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) from 1989 to 1993, when he helped resolve the Third World Debt and Saving and Loan financial crises, and place the first effective controls on government spending while protecting the defense budget. His CEA was rated by the Council for Excellence in Government as one of the five most respected agencies in the federal government. He earlier served on presidential candidate Ronald Reagan’s Tax Policy Task Force, helping develop the policies that, during Reagan’s presidency,  substantially lowered marginal tax rates, indexed tax brackets for inflation, accelerated depreciation, and created IRAs and 401Ks, the economic rationale for which was predicated on his research on the effects of taxes on saving. He later chaired the highly influential blue-ribbon Advisory Commission to Study the Consumer Price Index, whose report has transformed the way government statistical agencies around the world measure inflation, GDP, and productivity. 

Boskin serves on several corporate and philanthropic boards of directors, including those of the Oracle Corporation, the Koret Foundation and Bloom Energy.

In addition to Stanford and the University of California, Boskin has taught at Harvard and Yale. The author of more than one hundred fifty books and articles, he is internationally recognized for his research on world economic growth, tax and budget theory and policy, US saving and consumption patterns, and the implications of changing technology and demography on capital, labor, and product markets. His op-eds appear regularly in the Wall Street Journal and other leading newspapers. He also writes a bimonthly column on global economics and politics syndicated in 145 countries.

Boskin has received numerous professional awards and citations, including Stanford’s Distinguished Teaching Award in 1988; the National Association of Business Economists’ Abramson Award for outstanding research and its Distinguished Fellow Award; the Medal of the President of the Italian Republic in 1991 for his contributions to global economic understanding; and the 1998 Adam Smith Prize for outstanding contributions to economics.

Boskin received his BA with highest honors and the Chancellor’s Award as outstanding undergraduate from the University of California–Berkeley, where he also received his MA and PhD.

His research papers and op-eds are available at the Hoover Institution Archives and on his personal website. His current research focuses on the defense budget, federalism, the political economy of redistribution, and more generally, public economics and macroeconomics.

John H. Cochrane

Rose-Marie and Jack Anderson Senior Fellow

John H. Cochrane is the Rose-Marie and Jack Anderson Senior Fellow of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.

His monetary economics publications include the book The Fiscal Theory of the Price Level and articles on monetary policy and inflation. His finance publications include the book Asset Pricing and articles on dynamics in stock and bond markets, the volatility of exchange rates, the term structure of interest rates, the returns to venture capital, liquidity premiums in stock prices, the relation between stock prices and business cycles, and option pricing. He has also written articles on macroeconomics, health insurance, time-series econometrics, financial regulation, and other topics. He was a coauthor of The Squam Lake Report. He writes occasional Op-eds, mostly in the Wall Street Journal, and blogs as “the Grumpy Economist” at grumpy-economist.com. He recently created the Coursera online course “Asset Pricing.”

Cochrane is also a Senior Fellow of the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR), Professor of Finance and Economics (by Courtesy) at Stanford GSB, a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, and an Adjunct Scholar of the CATO Institute. He is a past President and Fellow of the American Finance Association, and a Fellow of the Econometric Society. He has been an Editor of the Journal of Political Economy, and associate editor of several journals including the Journal of Monetary Economics, Journal of Business, and Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control. He was a director of the NBER asset pricing program. Awards include the Bradley Prize, the APEE Adam Smith award, the TIAA-CREF Institute Paul A. Samuelson Award for Asset Pricing, the Chookaszian Endowed Risk Management Prize, the Faculty Excellence Award for MBA teaching and the McKinsey Award for Outstanding Teaching.

Before coming to Hoover, Cochrane was the AQR Capital Management Distinguished Service Professor of Finance at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, where he taught the MBA class “Advanced Investments” and a variety of PhD classes in Asset Pricing and Monetary Economics. Cochrane earned a Bachelor’s degree in Physics at MIT, and earned his Ph.D. in Economics at the University of California at Berkeley. He was at the Economics Department of the University of Chicago before joining the Booth School in 1994, and visited UCLA Anderson School of Management in 2000-2001.

Outside of academic pursuits Cochrane is a competition sailplane pilot, and enjoys cycling, windsurfing, skiing, and other outdoor activities.

John F. Cogan

Leonard and Shirley Ely Senior Fellow

John F. Cogan is the Leonard and Shirley Ely Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. His research is focused on US budget and fiscal policy and federal entitlement programs. He has published widely in professional journals in both economics and political science. His latest book, The High Cost of Good Intentions (2017) is the recipient of the 2018 Hayek Prize. The book traces the history of US federal entitlement programs from the Revolutionary War to modern times. His previous books include Healthy, Wealthy, and Wise: Five Steps to a Better Health Care System (2005), coauthored with Glenn Hubbard and Daniel P. Kessler, and The Budget Puzzle (1994), with Timothy J. Muris and Allen Schick.

At Stanford, he taught classes in the Economics Department, the Graduate School of Business, and the Public Policy Program, where he was a faculty member from 1994 to 2019. He also served on faculty advisory boards for the Stanford in Washington Program and the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research. He is a recipient of the Stanford-in-Government's Distinguished Service Award and the Stanford Review’s Best Undergraduate Teaching Award.

Cogan has devoted a considerable part of his career to public service. He served under President Ronald Reagan as assistant secretary for policy in the US Department of Labor from 1981 to 1983, and in the US Office of Management and Budget, as associate director from 1983 to 1985 and as deputy director from 1988 to 1989.

He was appointed to numerous congressional, presidential, and California state advisory commissions. He was a member of President George W. Bush’s Commission to Strengthen Social Security, the US Bipartisan Commission on Health Care (the Pepper Commission), the Social Security Notch Commission, and the National Academy of Sciences’ Panel on Poverty and Family Assistance. He was also a member of the California State Commission on the 21st-Century Economy and the California Public Employee Post-Employment Benefits Commission.

Cogan served on the board of directors of Monaco Coach Corporation from 2006 to 2009; the board of directors of Gilead Sciences from 2006 to 2020 (lead independent director, 2013–2020); and on the board of trustees of the Charles Schwab Family of Funds from 2009 to 2021 (chairman, Governance Committee 2014–2020).

Cogan received his AB in 1969 and his PhD in 1976 from the University of California–Los Angeles, both in economics. He received his MA in economics from California State University–Long Beach in 1970. He was an associate economist at the RAND Corporation from 1975 to 1980. In 1979, Cogan was appointed a national fellow at the Hoover Institution; in 1980 he was appointed a senior research fellow; and in 1984 he became a senior fellow.

William Damon

Senior Fellow (courtesy)

William Damon is a senior fellow (courtesy) at the Hoover Institution, the director of the Stanford Center on Adolescence, and a professor of education at Stanford University.

Damon's research explores how people develop integrity and purpose in their work, family, and civic life. Damon's current work focuses on vocational, civic and entrepreneurial purpose among the young and on purpose in families and schools. He examines how young Americans can be educated to become devoted citizens and successful entrepreneurs. Damon's work has been used in professional training programs in fields such as journalism, law, and business and in character and civic education programs in grades K–12.

One of Damon’s recent books is Failing Liberty 101 (Hoover Press, 2011). Other recent books include The Path to Purpose: How Young People Find Their Calling in Life (2008) and Taking Philanthropy Seriously (2006); Damon’s earlier books include Bringing in a New Era in Character Education (Hoover Press, 2002); Greater Expectations: Overcoming the Culture of Indulgence in Our Homes and Schools (1995); and The Moral Child (1992).

Damon is editor in chief of The Handbook of Child Psychology, fifth and sixth editions (1998 and 2006). He is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Education and a fellow of the American Educational Research Association.

Damon has received awards and grants from the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Andrew Mellon Foundation, the John Templeton Foundation, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Spencer Foundation, the Thrive Foundation for Youth, and the Pew Charitable Trusts.

Before coming to Stanford in 1997, Damon was University Professor and director of the Center on the Study of Human Development at Brown University. From 1973 to 1989, Damon served in several academic and administrative positions at Clark University. In 1988, he was Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of Puerto Rico, and in 1994–95 he was a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences.

Damon received his bachelor's degree from Harvard College and his PhD in developmental psychology from the University of California, Berkeley. He is married and has three children.

Steven J. Davis

Thomas W. and Susan B. Ford Senior Fellow | Director of Research

Steven Davis is the Thomas W. and Susan B. Ford Senior Fellow and Director of Research at the Hoover Institution, and Senior Fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR). He was on the faculty at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business for more than 35 years, including service as deputy dean of the faculty. 

He is also a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, visiting scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, senior adviser to the Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, advisor to the Monetary Authority of Singapore, elected fellow of the Society of Labor Economists, IZA Research Fellow, and senior academic fellow of the Asian Bureau of Finance and Economic Research. He hosts Economics, Applied – a video podcast series sponsored by the Hoover Institution.

Davis is a co-creator of the Economic Policy Uncertainty Indices, the Survey of Business Uncertainty, the U.S. Survey of Working Arrangements and Attitudes, the Global Survey of Working Arrangements, the Work-from-Home Map project, and the Stock Market Jumps project. He cofounded and co-organizes the Asian Monetary Policy Forum, held annually in Singapore.

Awards and Honors:

Addington Prize in Measurement (2012)
Society of Labor Economics, Elected Fellow (2015)

Darrell Duffie

Senior Fellow (courtesy)

Darrell Duffie is the Dean Witter Distinguished Professor of Finance at Stanford University's Graduate School of Business, professor (by courtesy) at the Department of Economics, and Senior Fellow (by courtesy) at the Hoover Institution.

Duffie is a fellow of the Econometric Society, a research fellow of the National Bureau of Economic Research, and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He was the 2009 president of the American Finance Association. From October 2008 to April 2018 Duffie was a member of the board of directors of Moody’s Corporation. From 2013 to 2017 he chaired the Financial Stability Board’s Market Participants Group on Reference Rate Reform.

Duffie’s recent work focuses on the design and regulation of capital markets. His research is published in Econometrica, Journal of Political Economy, and Journal of Finance, among other journals. His most recent books are How Big Banks Fail: And What to Do about It (Princeton University Press, 2010), Measuring Corporate Default Risk (Oxford University Press, 2011), and Dark Markets: Asset Pricing and Information Trasmission in Over-the-Counter Markets (Princeton University Press, 2012).

Chester E. Finn Jr.

Volker Senior Fellow (adjunct)

Chester E. Finn Jr. is the Volker Senior Fellow (adjunct) at the Hoover Institution. Finn has devoted his career to improving education in the United States. Finn is the former chairman of Hoover's Task Force on K–12 Education, member of the Maryland State Board of Education and of Maryland's Commission on Innovation and Excellence in Education, and Distinguished Senior Fellow & President Emeritus of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, his primary focus is reforming primary and secondary schooling.

Finn led Fordham from 1997-2014, after many earlier roles in education, academe, and government, including professor of education and public policy at Vanderbilt University, US assistant secretary of education, and legislative director for Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan.

A native of Ohio, he holds an undergraduate degree in US history, a master's degree in social studies teaching, and a doctorate in education policy, all from Harvard University.

Finn has served on numerous boards, currently including the National Council on Teacher Quality and the Core Knowledge Foundation. From 1988 to 1996, he served on the National Assessment Governing Board, including two years as its chair.

Author of over twenty books, Finn is author of Assessing the Nation's Report Card: Challenges and Choices for NAEP, published May 2022; co-author (with Andrew Scanlan) of Learning in the Fast Lane: The Past, Present & Future of Advanced Placement, published September 2019; and co-editor (with Michael J. Petrilli) of How to Educate an American: The Conservative Vision for Tomorrow’s Schools, published February 2020. Other works include Charter Schools at the Crossroads: Predicaments, Paradoxes, Possibilities (co-authored with Bruno V. Manno and Brandon L. Wright), and Failing Our Brightest Kids: The Global Challenge of Educating High-Ability Students(co-authored with Brandon L. Wright).

Earlier books include Exam Schools: Inside America’s Most Selective Public High Schools (with Jessica Hockett); Ohio's Education Reform Challenges: Lessons from the Frontlines (with Terry Ryan and Michael Lafferty); Troublemaker: A Personal History of School Reform Since Sputnik; Reroute the Preschool Juggernaut; Leaving No Child Behind: Options for Kids in Failing Schools (co-edited with Frederick M. Hess); Charter Schools in Action: Renewing Public Education (with Bruno V. Manno and Gregg Vanourek); and The Educated Child: A Parent's Guide from Pre-School Through Eighth Grade (with William J. Bennett and John Cribb).

He and his wife, Renu Virmani, a physician, have two grown children and three granddaughters. They live in Chevy Chase, Maryland.

His research papers are available at the Hoover Institution Archives.

Stephen Haber

Park L. Loughlin Senior Fellow

Stephen Haber is the Park L. Loughlin Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, the A.A. and Jeanne Welch Milligan Professor in the School of Humanities and Sciences at Stanford University, and senior fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research. In addition, he is a professor of political science, professor of history, and professor of economics (by courtesy).

Haber has spent his career investigating why the world distribution of income so uneven. His papers have been published in economics, history, political science, and law journals. He is the author of five books and the editor of six more. Haber’s most recent books include Fragile by Design with Charles Calomiris (Princeton University Press), which examines how governments and industry incumbents often craft banking regulatory policies in ways that stifle competition and increase systemic risk. The Battle Over Patents (Oxford University Press), a volume edited with Naomi Lamoreaux, documents the development of US-style patent systems and the political fights that have shaped them.

His latest project focuses on a long-standing puzzle in the social sciences: why are prosperous democracies not randomly distributed across the planet, but rather, are geographically clustered? Haber and his coauthors answer this question by using geospatial tools to simulate the ecological conditions that shaped pre-industrial food production and trade. They then employ machine learning methods to elucidate the relationship between ecological conditions and the levels of economic development that emerged across the globe over the past three centuries.

Haber holds a Ph.D. in history from UCLA and has been on the Stanford faculty since 1987. From 1995 to 1998, he served as associate dean for the social sciences and director of Graduate Studies of Stanford’s School of Humanities and Sciences. He is among Stanford’s most distinguished teachers, having been awarded every teaching prize Stanford has to offer.

Robert E. Hall

Robert and Carole McNeil Senior Fellow

Robert E. Hall holds a joint position endowed by Robert and Carole McNeil as a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and a professor in the economics department, Stanford University. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Econometric Society and the Society of Labor Economists.

Hall is an applied economist with interests in technology, competition, employment issues, and economic policy. He is a frequent contributor to discussions of national economic policy, including monetary policy, fiscal policy, and competition policy. Hall's research focuses on levels of activity and stock market valuations in market economies and on the economics of high technology, particularly the Internet. His most recent book, Digital Dealing: How e-Markets Are Transforming the Economy, was published by W. W. Norton in 2001.

Along with Hoover colleague Alvin Rabushka, Hall is an active proponent of the flat tax. Their article in the Wall Street Journal in December 1981 was the starting point of an upsurge of interest in the flat tax. This led to their book, The Flat Tax (Hoover Institution Press, 1985 and 1995). The pair was recognized in Money magazine's Money Hall of Fame for their contributions to financial innovation over the past twenty years.

Hall is coauthor, with Marc Lieberman, of Economics: Principles and Applications, 3rd edition (South-Western, 2004).

Hall also serves as director of the research program on economic fluctuations and growth of the National Bureau of Economic Research, an interuniversity research organization. He is chairman of the bureau's Committee on Business Cycle Dating, which maintains the semiofficial chronology of the U.S. business cycle.

Hall has advised a number of government agencies on national economic policy, including the Justice Department, the Treasury Department, and the Federal Reserve Board. He served on President-elect Ronald Reagan's Task Force on Inflation Policy and was a member of the National Presidential Advisory Committee on Productivity. He has testified on numerous occasions before congressional committees concerning national economic policy. He presented the Ely Lecture to the American Economic Association in 2001.

Before coming to Stanford, Hall was a professor of economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an assistant professor at the University of California at Berkeley.

Born in Palo Alto, California, he attended school in Palo Alto and Los Angeles, received his B.A. from the University of California at Berkeley and his Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Hall is married to economist Susan Woodward and lives in Menlo Park, California.

Eric Hanushek

Paul and Jean Hanna Senior Fellow in Education

Eric Hanushek is the Paul and Jean Hanna Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University. He is internationally recognized for his economic analysis of educational issues, and his research has had broad influence on education policy in both developed and developing countries. He received the Yidan Prize for Education Research in 2021.

His research linking teacher effectiveness to students’ learning gains forms the conceptual basis for using value-added measures to evaluate teachers and schools, now a widely adopted practice in many countries. His recent book, The Knowledge Capital of Nations: Education and the Economics of Growth summarizes his research establishing the close links between countries’ long-term rates of economic growth and the skill levels of their populations.   Earlier books include Schoolhouses, Courthouses, and Statehouses, Courting Failure, Handbook on the Economics of Education, The Economics of Schooling and School Quality, Improving America’s Schools, Making Schools Work, Educational Performance of the Poor, and Education and Race, along with over 300 widely cited articles in professional journals.

He is a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, the area coordinator for Economics of Education of the CESifo Research Network, and a research fellow of the IZA Institute of Labor Economics. He has been chair of the Board of Directors of the National Board for Education Sciences, and from 1983-85 he was Deputy Director of the Congressional Budget Office. He currently is a member of the National Assessment Governing Board (NAGB) that sets policy for the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP).

He previously held academic appointments at the University of Rochester, Yale University, and the U.S. Air Force Academy. He is a member of the National Academy of Education and the International Academy of Education along with being a fellow of the Society of Labor Economists and the American Education Research Association.

He is a Distinguished Graduate of the United States Air Force Academy and completed his Ph.D. in economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Caroline M. Hoxby

Senior Fellow

Caroline M. Hoxby is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and a member of the Koret Task Force on K–12 Education. She is the Scott & Donya Bommer Professor of Economics at Stanford University and the director of the Economics of Education Program for the National Bureau of Economic Research. She also serves as a member of the Board of Directors of the National Board for Education Sciences.

Hoxby's research has received numerous awards, including a Carnegie Fellowship, a John M. Olin Fellowship, a National Tax Association Award, and a major grant from the National Institute of Child Health and Development. She is the recipient of the 2006 Thomas J. Fordham Prize for Distinguished Scholarship.

She has written extensively on educational choice and related issues. She is the editor of How the Financial Crisis and Great Recession Affected Higher Education (University of Chicago Press, 2015), The Economic Analysis of School Choice (University of Chicago Press, 2002), and College Choices (University of Chicago Press, 2004). Some of her published articles include "Does Competition among Public Schools Benefit Students and Taxpayers?" (American Economic Review, 2000), "Not All School Finance Equalizations Are Created Equal" (Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2001), and "How Teachers' Unions Affect Education Production" (Quarterly Journal of Economics, 1996).

Other articles written by Hoxby include "The Effects of School Choice on Curriculum and Atmosphere" (in Earning and Learning: How Schools Matter), "The Effects of Class Size on Student Achievement" (Quarterly Journal of Economics, 1999), and "Evidence on Private School Vouchers: Effects on Schools and Students" (in Performance Based Approaches to School Reform).

Hoxby, who was the subject of a feature article in The New Yorker, has an undergraduate degree, a master's degree, and a doctorate in economics. She earned her master's degree in 1990 from the University of Oxford, which she attended on a Rhodes Scholarship, and her doctorate in 1994 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Kenneth L. Judd

Senior Fellow

Kenneth L. Judd, Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, is an expert in the economics of taxation, imperfect competition, and mathematical economics.

His current research focuses on developing computational methods for economic modeling and applying them to tax policy, antitrust issues, macroeconomics, and policies related to climate change. He currently is a co–principal investigator at the Center for Robust Decision Making on Climate and Energy Policy, the director of the Initiative for Computational Economics at the University of Chicago, and a member of the National Academies Board on Mathematical Sciences and Applications.

He was coeditor of the RAND Journal of Economics (1988–95) and the Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control (2002–6). He was an associate editor of the Journal of Public Economics (1988–97).

His work has also been published in the Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Journal of Public Economics, Journal of Political Economy, RAND Journal, Journal of Finance, Journal of Economic Theory, Brookings Papers of Economic Activity, American Economic Review, and Econometrica.

His book Numerical Methods in Economics was published by MIT Press in 1998.

Judd has also contributed to collected volumes including the chapter "The Impact of Tax Reform in Modern Dynamic Economies" in Transition Costs of Fundamental Tax Reform (Washington, DC: AEI Press, 2001).

He is a fellow of the Econometric Society and served as a member of the Economics Panel of the National Science Foundation (1986–88).

Before joining the Hoover Institution as a senior fellow in 1988, Judd was a visiting professor of business economics at the University of Chicago. From 1986 to 1987 he was a national fellow at the Hoover Institution.

Judd was a postdoctoral teaching fellow at the University of Chicago, Department of Economics, 1980–81. From 1981 to 1983, he was an assistant professor of managerial economics at the Kellogg Graduate School of Management, Northwestern University, and from 1984 to 1986 he was an associate professor at Kellogg.

He graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Wisconsin (1975) with undergraduate degrees in mathematics and computer sciences. Judd received an MA in mathematics in 1977, an MA in economics in 1980, and a PhD in economics in 1981, all from the University of Wisconsin.

Daniel P. Kessler

Keith and Jan Hurlbut Senior Fellow

Daniel Kessler is the Keith and Jan Hurlbut Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and a professor at the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University, where he teaches courses on economics, public policy, and the health care industry. He is also a professor at the Stanford Law School.

Among his publications are, with Mark McClellan, “The Effect of Hospital Ownership on Medical Productivity,” in the RAND Journal of Economics (2002), and “Designing Hospital Antitrust Policy to Promote Social Welfare,” which appeared in Frontiers in Health Policy Research. His books include a forthcoming second edition of Healthy, Wealthy, and Wise: Five Steps to a Better Health Care System (Hoover Institution Press, 2011), coauthored with Leonard and Shirley Ely Senior Fellow John Cogan and R. Glenn Hubbard, and Regulation versus Litigation: Perspectives from Economics and Law (University of Chicago Press, 2010).

He is the holder of a PhD in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a JD from Stanford Law School.

David L. Leal

Senior Fellow (adjunct)

David L. Leal is a senior fellow (adjunct) at the Hoover Institution and a professor of government at the University of Texas at Austin. 

His primary academic interest is Latino politics, and his work explores the political and policy implications of demographic change in the United States. He teaches classes on Latino politics, immigration policy, politics and religion, the military and American politics, and British politics and government. He has written one book, edited eight volumes, and published over fifty articles in political science and other social science journals. He has been an American Political Science Association Congressional Fellow in the office of a US senator, a Fulbright Distinguished Lecturer in Japan, and an Associate Member at Nuffield College at Oxford University. At UT-Austin, he is a Senior Fellow in the Civitas Institute and an inaugural faculty affiliate of the School of Civic Leadership.

He is a member of the editorial boards of Social Science Quarterly, Education Next, Nations & Nationalism, and Journal of School Choice, and he was elected to a three-year term (2019-2022) on the Council of the American Political Science Association.

Thomas E. MaCurdy

Senior Fellow

Thomas MaCurdy holds a joint appointment as a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and a Professor of Economics at Stanford University, where he has taught since 1978. He is also a Senior Fellow at the Stanford Institute of Economic Policy Research and a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research. 

MaCurdy’s expertise covers domestic policy related to government income-support and entitlement programs, with his research disclosing consequential empirical findings relevant to the design and impacts of public assistance policies. MaCurdy has published numerous articles and reports in professional journals and general-interest public policy venues, with studies analyzing policies in the areas of welfare, food stamps, earned income tax credit, minimum wages, unemployment compensation, child support, foster care, low-skilled training, federal and state taxes, social security, Medicare, Medicaid, and other government aid for health care. These studies address a broad range issues, including determinants of participation rates, characteristics of beneficiaries, sources and distributions of program costs, and influences on work disincentives and incomes.

In the healthcare area, MaCurdy has conducted a wide variety of projects supporting the activities and operations of the Center of Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC), Medicaid and CHIP Payment and Access Commission (MACPAC) and Congressional Budget Office (CBO). He works extensively on the design of payment policies. He directs major projects with CMS on the setting of Medicare payment rates in the fee-for-service (FFS), Medicare Advantage (managed care) and Part D (drugs) programs. He also currently supervises several projects supporting CMS regulatory policy responsible for the establishment and maintenance of Healthcare Exchanges under the Affordable Care Act. He has further conducted a series of studies that explore options for implementing Value Base Purchasing (VBP) in Medicare (which introduces pay-for-performance features in reimbursements) and that examine the cost drivers underlying the growth in healthcare spending. MaCurdy has performed similar work in Medicaid for a variety of government agencies, studying both the impact of payment policy and the circumstances explaining cost growth.

Among his public service activities, MaCurdy has served as a member of standing committees advising the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Census, Congressional Budget Office, Institute for Research on Poverty, West Coast Poverty Center, California Health Benefits Review Program and many other state and local governmental agencies in California. He has further served in an editorial capacity for several professional journals (Econometrica, Labor Economics, Journal of Econometrics, Review of Economics and Statistics and California Policy Review).  MaCurdy received his BA in 1973 from the University of Washington and his PhD in 1978 from the University of Chicago, both in economics.

Terry M. Moe

Senior Fellow

Terry M. Moe was a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and the William Bennett Munro Professor of political science at Stanford University.

He has written extensively on the presidency and public bureaucracy as well as political institutions more generally, publishing many scholarly articles on these topics.  His most recent books are Relic: How Our Constitution Undermines Effective Government--And Why We Need a More Powerful Presidency (with William Howell, 2016), and Presidents, Populism, and the Crisis of Democracy (with William Howell, 2020).

He has also written extensively on the politics of American education.  His most recent books are The Politics of Institutional Reform: Katrina, Education, and the Second Face of Power (2019), The Comparative Politics of Education: Teachers Unions and Education Systems Around the World (edited with Susanne Wiborg, 2017), and Special Interest: Teachers Unions and America’s Public Schools (2011). His prior work on education includes Politics, Markets, and America's Schools (1990) and Liberating Learning: Technology, Politics, and the Future of American Education (2009), both with John E. Chubb, and Schools, Vouchers, and the American Public (2001).

Lee Ohanian

Senior Fellow (adjunct)

Lee E. Ohanian is a senior fellow (adjunct) at the Hoover Institution and a professor of economics and director of the Ettinger Family Program in Macroeconomic Research at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).

He is associate director of the Center for the Advanced Study in Economic Efficiency at Arizona State University and a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, where he codirects the research initiative Macroeconomics across Time and Space. He is also a fellow in the Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory.

His research focuses on economic crises, economic growth, and the impact of public policy on the economy. Ohanian is coeditor of Government Policies and Delayed Economic Recovery (Hoover Institution Press, 2012). He is an adviser to the Federal Reserve Banks of Minneapolis and St. Louis, has previously advised other Federal Reserve banks, foreign central banks, and the National Science Foundation, and has testified to national and state legislative committees on economic policy. He is on the editorial boards of Econometrica and Macroeconomic Dynamics. He is a frequent media commentator and writes for the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and Investor’s Business Daily. He has won numerous teaching awards at UCLA and the University of Rochester.

He previously served on the faculties of the Universities of Minnesota and Pennsylvania and as vice president at Security Pacific Bank. He received his undergraduate degree in economics from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and his PhD in economics from the University of Rochester.

Paul E. Peterson

Senior Fellow

Paul E. Peterson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. He is a member of the Hoover Education Success Initiative, which focuses on the improvement of education policy and provides public education solutions for state education and policy leaders. He is also Henry Lee Shattuck Professor of Government at Harvard University, where he directs the Program on Education Policy and Governance and is senior editor of Education Next: A Journal of Opinion and Research. 

In addition to education policy, Peterson’s research interests include federalism, social capital, and charter schools. He has evaluated the effectiveness of school vouchers and other education reform initiatives, and he has identified both the closure of social and ethnic gaps over the past fifty years and growth in student performance, particularly among charter schools.

Peterson is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Education. He is a recipient of a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship;  the Woodrow Wilson Award from the American Political Science Association for the best book published in government or international relations; and the Walton Family Foundation Prize for Best Academic Paper on School Choice and Reform, awarded by the Economics and Finance Policy Association.  The Editorial Projects in Education Research Center reported that Peterson’s studies on school choice and vouchers were among the country’s most influential studies of education policy.

Peterson’s recent books include Saving Schools: From Horace Mann to Virtual Learning and, with Eric Hanushek and Ludger Woessmann,  Endangering Prosperity: A Global View of the American School.

Valerie Ramey

Thomas Sowell Senior Fellow

Valerie Ramey is the Thomas Sowell Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER). She is also a professor emeritus at the University of California–San Diego, where she taught for thirty-six years. Ramey is also a research fellow of the Center for Economic Policy and Research, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a fellow of the Econometric Society. She has served as coeditor of the American Economic Review and as a member of several National Science Foundation advisory panels and the Federal Economic Statistics Advisory Committee. She currently serves on the Panel of Economic Advisers for the Congressional Budget Office and is chair of the NBER Business Cycle Dating Committee. She is an associate editor of the Quarterly Journal of Economics and a coeditor of the NBER Macro Annual.

Ramey earned a PhD in economics from Stanford University. She has published numerous scholarly and policy-relevant articles on macroeconomic topics such as the sources of business cycles, the effects of monetary and fiscal policy, and the impact of volatility on growth. She has also written numerous articles on trends in wage inequality and in time use, such as the increase in time investments in children by educated parents. Her recent work has studied the size of government spending multipliers and has estimated the projected effects of climate change on economic growth. Her work has been featured in major media, such as the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times.

Joshua D. Rauh

Senior Fellow

Joshua Rauh is the Ormond Family Professor of Finance at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. He leads the Hoover Institution's Fiscal Policy Initiative and the Hoover Institution State and Local Governance Initiative. He formerly served at the White House where he was principal chief economist on the President’s Council of Economic Advisers (2019-20), and taught at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business (2004–9) and the Kellogg School of Management (2009–12). At the Hoover Institution he has served as Director of Research (2018-19). He has testified before House, Joint, and Joint Select Committees of the United States Congress, and he is a member of the Panel of Economic Advisers of the Congressional Budget Office.

His research focuses on government liabilities, corporate and individual taxation, and institutional investing. His work has received media coverage in outlets such as the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Financial Times, and The Economist. He has received various awards recognizing his scholarship including the Brattle Prize and the Smith Breeden Prize of the American Finance Association. His scholarly papers have appeared in journals such as the Journal of Political Economy, the Quarterly Journal of Economics, the Journal of Finance, the Journal of Financial Economics, the Review of Financial Studies, and the Journal of Public Economics. He is a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research.

He has published numerous op-eds in outlets including the Wall Street Journal, The Hill, and The National Review online. His PragerU videos on public pensions, the role of government, and taxation and inequality have together been viewed over 10 million times. He is the founder of the Liberty Lens Economics Substack.

Prior to his academic career, Dr. Rauh was an associate economist at Goldman Sachs in London. He received a BA from Yale University and a PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, both in economics.

Margaret (Macke) Raymond

Distinguished Research Fellow

Margaret “Macke” Raymond has served as founder and director of the Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO) at Stanford University since its inception in 1999. 

The CREDO team conducts rigorous and independent analysis and evaluation of promising programs that aim to improve outcomes for students in US K-12 public schools.  Their mantra is “We let the data speak.”  The team conducts large-scale analyses under a collaboration with 30 state education agencies. 

Macke has steered the group to be a well-regarded source of impartial insight into the performance and workings of charter schools, city reform strategies and national reform programs.  CREDO’s studies and reports are relied upon by the US Department of Education, governors, state chief school officers, state legislators, the courts, other policy makers and the media.  Supporters and opponents alike point to CREDO findings, moving the debate past evidence disputes to more substantive arguments.   

She is a regular source for local and national media, including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times and the Denver Post.  Macke’s deep belief in building capacity for improved analysis of programs and policy has found its place through service on advisory boards, technical resource groups and peer review panels.  She was selected as a Pahara-Aspen Education Fellow in recognition of her leadership in US education policy.

In addition, Macke created a visiting “CREDO-ship” to invite promising policy analysts to visit with the team and collaborate on projects of mutual interest.  Macke and her husband Eric Hanushek live in Stanford, CA with their yellow Labrador Retriever, Sugar.

Thomas J. Sargent

Senior Fellow (adjunct)

Thomas J. Sargent is a senior fellow (adjunct) at the Hoover Institution and a leader in the field of macroeconomics. He is the William R. Berkley Professor of Economics and Business at New York University and the Donald L. Lucas Professor in Economics, Emeritus, at Stanford University. He received the Nobel Prize in economic sciences in 2011.

A professor of economics at the University of Minnesota from 1975 to 1987, when he joined the Hoover staff, he was also the David Rockefeller Professor at the University of Chicago from 1992 to 1998. Sargent is past president of the Econometric Society, the American Economic Association, and the Society for Economic Dynamics.

Sargent was a university medalist as Most Distinguished Scholar in the Class of 1964 and won the Nemmers Prize in Economics in 1997. Sargent was elected a fellow of the National Academy of Sciences and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, both in 1983.

Among his books are Rational Expectations and Econometric Practice, with Robert E. Lucas Jr., University of Minnesota Press, 1981; The Big Problem of Small Change, with Francois Velde, Princeton University Press, 2002; Recursive Macroeconomic Theory, with Lars Ljungqvist, MIT Press, 2004; and Robustness, with Lars Peter Hansen, Princeton University Press, 2007.

Sargent earned his PhD from Harvard University in 1968 and was a first lieutenant and captain in the US Army.

Amit Seru

Senior Fellow

Amit Seru is a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, the Steven and Roberta Denning Professor of Finance at the Stanford Graduate School of Business (Stanford GSB), a senior fellow at Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR), and a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER). He was formerly a faculty member at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business. He is currently co-directing Hoover initiatives on corporate governance, long-run prosperity, and regulation and the rule of law.

Professor Seru’s research focuses on corporate finance with an emphasis on financial intermediation and regulation, technological innovation and incentive provision and financing in firms. His research in these areas has been published in American Economic Review, Journal of Political Economy, Quarterly Journal of Economics, Review of Economic Studies, Journal of Finance, Journal of Financial Economics, Review of Financial Studies, and other peer-reviewed journals. He is a co-editor of the Journal of Finance and was previously an editor of Review of Corporate Finance Studies, department editor (Finance) of Management Science and an associate editor of the Journal of Political Economy.

He has presented his research to U.S. and international regulatory agencies, including the Bank for International Settlement (BIS), Consumer Finance Protection Bureau (CFPB), European Central Bank (ECB), Federal Reserve, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Most recently, he gave the Biennial Andrew Crockett lecture on regulation of banks in the era of fintechs to central bank governors around the world at the BIS. He has received various National Science Foundation grants, the Alexandre Lamfalussy research fellowship from BIS and was named as one of the top 25 Economists under 45 by the International Monetary Fund in 2014. His research has been featured in major media, including the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, the Financial Times and the Economist. His opinion essays have appeared in several outlets including the Wall Street Journal and The New York Times.

Seru earned a B.E. in electronics and communication and an MBA from the University of Delhi. Subsequently, he received a PhD in finance from the University of Michigan. He was a senior consultant at Accenture before pursuing his Ph.D. Seru was the recipient of a Rackham Pre-Doctoral Fellowship at University of Michigan and received a Lt. Governor’s gold medal for overall academic excellence at the University of Delhi.

Michael Spence

Senior Fellow (adjunct)

Michael Spence is a senior fellow (adjunct) at the Hoover Institution, a professor of economics at the Stern School at New York University, and the Philip H. Knight Professor Emeritus of Management in the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University.

Spence’s latest publication is The Next Convergence: The Future of Economic Growth in a Multispeed World (2011).

He served as the chairman of the independent Commission on Growth and Development (2006–10).

He was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 2001 and the John Bates Clark Medal from the American Economic Association in 1981. He was awarded the David A. Wells Prize for the outstanding doctoral dissertation at Harvard University and the John Kenneth Galbraith Prize for excellence in teaching.

He served as the Philip H. Knight Professor and dean of the Stanford Business School (1990–99). As dean, he oversaw the finances, organization, and educational policies of the school. He taught at Stanford as an associate professor of economics from 1973 to 1975.

He served as a professor of economics and business administration at Harvard University (1975–90). In 1983, he was named chairman of the Economics Department and the George Gund Professor of Economics and Business Administration. Spence also served as the dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard (1984–90), overseeing Harvard College, the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, and the Division of Continuing Education.

From 1977 to 1979, he was a member of the Economics Advisory Panel of the National Science Foundation and in 1979 served as a member of the Sloan Foundation Economics Advisory Committee. He has served as a member of the editorial boards of the American Economics Review, Bell Journal of Economics, and Journal of Economic Theory.

Spence is a member of the boards of directors for General Mills and a number of private companies. He was chairman of the National Research Council Board on Science, Technology and Economic Policy (1991–97).

He is a member of the American Economic Association and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Econometric Society.

Thomas Sowell

Rose and Milton Friedman Senior Fellow on Public Policy

Thomas Sowell is the Rose and Milton Friedman Senior Fellow on Public Policy at the Hoover Institution.

He writes on economics, history, social policy, ethnicity, and the history of ideas. His most recent book, Discrimination and Disparities (2018), gathers a wide array of empirical evidence to challenge the idea that different economic outcomes can be explained by any one factor, be it discrimination, exploitation or genetics. His books on economics include Housing Boom and Bust (2009), Intellectuals and Society (2009), Applied Economics (2009), Economic Facts and Fallacies (2008), Basic Economics (2007), and Affirmative Action Around the World (2004). Other books on economics he has written include Classical Economics Reconsidered (1974), Say’s Law (1972), and Economics: Analysis and Issues (1971). On social policy, he has written Knowledge and Decisions (1980), Preferential Policies (1989), Inside American Education (1993), The Vision of the Anointed (1995), Barbarians Inside the Gates (1999), and The Quest for Cosmic Justice (1999). On the history of ideas he has written Marxism (1985) and Conflict of Vision (1987). Sowell also wrote Late-Talking Children (1997). He has also written a monograph on law titled Judicial Activism Reconsidered, published by the Hoover Institution Press in 1989. His writings have also appeared in scholarly journals in economics, law, and other fields.

Sowell’s current research focuses on cultural history in a world perspective, a subject on which he began to write a trilogy in 1982. The trilogy includes Race and Culture (1994), Migrations and Cultures (1996), and Conquests and Cultures (1998).

Sowell's journalistic writings include a nationally syndicated column that appears in more than 150 newspapers from Boston to Honolulu. Some of these essays have been collected in book form, most recently in Ever Wonder Why? and Other Controversial Essays published by the Hoover Institution Press in 2006.

Over the past three decades, Sowell has taught economics at various colleges and universities, including Cornell, Amherst, and the University of California at Los Angeles, as well as the history of ideas at Brandeis University. He has also been associated with three other research centers, in addition to the Hoover Institution. He was project director at the Urban Institute, 1972-1974, a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University, 1976–77, and was an adjunct scholar of the American Enterprise Institute, 1975-76.

Sowell was awarded the National Humanities Medal in 2002. In 2003, Sowell received the Bradley Prize for intellectual achievement. Sowell received his bachelor’s degree in economics (magna cum laude) from Harvard in 1958, his master’s degree in economics from Columbia University in 1959, and his PhD in economics from the University of Chicago in 1968.

John B. Taylor

George P. Shultz Senior Fellow in Economics

John B. Taylor is the George P. Shultz Senior Fellow in Economics at the Hoover Institution and the Mary and Robert Raymond Professor of Economics at Stanford University. He chairs the Hoover Working Group on Economic Policy, co-chairs the Hoover Technology, Economics and Governance Working Group, and is director of Stanford’s Introductory Economics Center.

Taylor's fields of expertise are monetary policy, fiscal policy, and international economics. His book Getting Off Track was one of the first on the financial crisis; his latest book, First Principles, for which he received the 2012 Hayek Prize, develops an economic plan to restore America’s prosperity. His most recent book is Choose Economic Freedom: Enduring Policy Lessons from the 1970s and 1980s with George P. Shultz.

Taylor served as senior economist on President Ford's and President Carter’s Council of Economic Advisers, as a member of President George H. W. Bush's Council of Economic Advisers, and as a senior economic adviser to Bob Dole’s presidential campaign, to George W. Bush’s presidential campaign in 2000, and to John McCain’s presidential campaign. He was a member of the Congressional Budget Office's Panel of Economic Advisers from 1995 to 2001. From 2001 to 2005, Taylor served as undersecretary of the Treasury for international affairs where he was responsible for currency markets, international development, for oversight of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, and for coordinating policy with the G-7 and G-20.

Taylor received the Bradley Prize from the Bradley Foundation and the Adam Smith Award as well as the Adolph G. Abramson Award from the National Association for Business Economics. He was awarded the Alexander Hamilton Award for his overall leadership at the US Treasury, the Treasury Distinguished Service Award for designing and implementing the currency reforms in Iraq, and the Medal of the Republic of Uruguay for his work in resolving the 2002 financial crisis. At Stanford he was awarded the George P. Shultz Distinguished Public Service Award, as well as the Hoagland Prize and the Rhodes Prize for excellence in undergraduate teaching. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Econometric Society; he formerly served as vice president of the American Economic Association.

Taylor received the 2016 Adam Smith Award from the Association of Private Enterprise Education and the 2015 Truman Medal for Economic Policy for extraordinary contribution to the formation and conduct of economic policy.

Taylor formerly held positions as professor of economics at Princeton University and Columbia University. Taylor received a BA in economics summa cum laude from Princeton University in 1968 and a PhD in economics from Stanford University in 1973.