Thursday, November 13, 2025

Today, five Hoover fellows join the prestigious American Academy of Sciences and Letters; Valerie Ramey examines whether government stimulus packages are effective; and Eugene Volokh explains a lesser-known procedure by which judicial cases and questions can make it to the Supreme Court for review.

Hoover Institution News

Five Hoover Institution Fellows Invested into American Academy of Sciences and Letters

Five Hoover Institution fellows were invested as members of the American Academy of Sciences and Letters on November 12, reflecting the breadth of Hoover scholarship across fields including history, economics, political economy, and the humanities. Hoover fellows Jennifer Burns, Steven J. Davis, Dan Edelstein, Stephen Haber, and Stephen Kotkin were each invested as members of the Academy at a ceremony in Washington, DC. The American Academy of Sciences and Letters promotes the dissemination of scholarship and honors outstanding achievement in the arts, sciences, and learned professions. Read more here.

Freedom Frequency

Do Stimulus Packages Work?

Two extensive federal packages—one responding to the 2008 financial crisis and the second to the COVID-19 pandemic—tested the Keynesian theory that government stimulus can lift an economy out of recession by boosting spending. In a new essay at Freedom Frequency, Senior Fellow Valerie Ramey examines the data for consumption, GDP, and employment and concludes that these spending programs accomplished little, at least in the short run. At the same time, she shows, these stimulus efforts piled up massive amounts of debt. Read more here.

Law & Policy

Federal Appellate Judges Can Petition the Supreme Court to Review a Question

“Litigants often file ‘petitions for certiorari’ asking the US Supreme Court to review a case, or particular questions within the case,” writes Senior Fellow Eugene Volokh in a new post at Reason. But there is another, much less common way cases can end up before the nation’s highest court. As Volokh explains, “federal appellate judges (as few as a two-judge majority on a court of appeals panel) can themselves ask the Supreme Court to review a question” in a procedure known as “certification.” Volokh says that the use of certification has fallen off in recent decades, with the Court “almost never” taking cases in this manner. However, with the changed composition of the Court and the federal judiciary in recent years, Volokh suggests it is possible certification will make a comeback. Read more here.

Determining America’s Role in the World

America, Russia, China, and the Struggle for Global Supremacy

On The Wall Street Journal’s Free Expression podcast, host Gerry Baker speaks with former US ambassador to Russia and current Senior Fellow Michael McFaul about how the US will handle Russia as well as China this century. McFaul expands on insights from his new book, Autocrats vs. Democrats: China, Russia, America, and the New Global Disorder. Baker asks McFaul how the US can effectively compete against autocratic rivals and about the Trump administration’s current foreign policy. They also discuss why in McFaul’s view Russia is a bigger threat than China to the United States and how China wants to wield its influence through the world economy, unlike Vladimir Putin’s campaign of disruption. Listen or read more here.

Confronting and Competing with China

Trump vs. Xi Jinping: Who Wields More Power?

Earlier this week, Senior Fellow Elizabeth Economy joined The Bunker podcast to examine the contentious and consequential relationship between President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping. Economy analyzes the constraints on each figure as well as what recent events reveal about the balance of power between the two nations they represent. Economy offers her expert perspective on China’s conduct of foreign policy via international institutions such as the UN, as well as the ongoing problem of Chinese government penetration of US infrastructure—including communications networks—and how the US and allied nations can respond. Listen here.