The UnArchived: Lessons from the Past video series explains why a given policy or strategy did or did not work. These short videos pair historical research with modern policy analysis to address the choices and challenges facing society today. Based on the work of Hoover fellows and the collections of the Library & Archives.
Victor Davis Hanson is the Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution; his focus is classics and military history.
Hanson was a National Endowment for the Humanities fellow at the Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford, California (1992–93), a visiting professor of classics at Stanford University (1991–92), the annual Wayne and Marcia Buske Distinguished Visiting Fellow in History at Hillsdale College (2004–), the Visiting Shifron Professor of Military History at the US Naval Academy (2002–3), and the William Simon Visiting Professor of Public Policy at Pepperdine University (2010).
In 1991 he was awarded an American Philological Association Excellence in Teaching Award. He received the Eric Breindel Award for Excellence in Opinion Journalism (2002), presented the Manhattan's Institute's Wriston Lecture (2004), and was awarded the National Humanities Medal (2007) and the Bradley Prize (2008).
Hanson is the author of hundreds of articles, book reviews, and newspaper editorials on Greek, agrarian, and military history and essays on contemporary culture. He has written or edited twenty-four books, the latest of which is The Case for Trump (Basic Books, 2019). His other books include The Second World Wars (Basic Books, 2017); The Savior Generals: How Five Great Commanders Saved Wars That Were Lost - from Ancient Greece to Iraq (Bloomsbury 2013); The End of Sparta (Bloomsbury, 2011); The Father of Us All: War and History, Ancient and Modern (Bloomsbury, 2010); Makers of Ancient Strategy: From the Persian Wars to the Fall of Rome (ed.) (Princeton, 2010); The Other Greeks (California, 1998); The Soul of Battle (Free Press, 1999); Carnage and Culture (Doubleday, 2001); Ripples of Battle (Doubleday, 2003); A War Like No Other (Random House, 2005); The Western Way of War (Alfred Knopf, 1989; 2nd paperback ed., University of California Press, 2000); The Wars of the Ancient Greeks (Cassell, 1999; paperback ed., 2001); and Mexifornia: A State of Becoming (Encounter, 2003), as well as two books on family farming, Fields without Dreams (Free Press, 1995) and The Land Was Everything (Free Press, 1998). Currently, he is a syndicated columnist for Tribune Media Services and a weekly columnist for the National Review Online.
Hanson received a BA in classics at the University of California, Santa Cruz (1975), was a fellow at the American School of Classical Studies, Athens (1977–78), and received his PhD in classics from Stanford University (1980).
John Yoo was a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution.
Yoo is the Emanuel S. Heller Professor of Law at the University of California–Berkeley School of Law and a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. His most recent book is Defender in Chief: Donald Trump’s Fight for Presidential Power (St. Martin’s 2020).
Yoo has served in all three branches of government. He was an official in the US Department of Justice, where he worked on national security and terrorism issues after the September 11 attacks. He served as general counsel of the US Senate Judiciary Committee under its chairman, Orrin Hatch of Utah. He has been a law clerk for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and US Court of Appeals Judge Laurence Silberman.
He held the Fulbright Distinguished Chair in Law at the University of Trento in Italy, and he has also been a visiting professor at Keio Law School in Japan, Seoul National University in Korea, Chapman Law School, the University of Chicago, and the Free University of Amsterdam. Professor Yoo also has received the Paul M. Bator Award for excellence in legal scholarship and teaching from the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy.
Yoo is the author of a number of books: Striking Power: How Cyber, Robots, and Space Weapons Change the Rules for War(2017); Point of Attack (2014); Taming Globalization (2012); Crisis and Command (2010); War by Other Means (2016); and The Powers of War and Peace (2005). He has co-edited three other books, most recently Liberty’s Nemesis: The Unchecked Expansion of the State (2016) (with Dean Reuter).
Professor Yoo received his B.A., summa cum laude, in American history from Harvard University. Between college and law school, he worked as a newspaper reporter in Washington, D.C. He received his J.D. from Yale Law School, where he was an articles editor of the Yale Law Journal.
John Yoo co-hosts the Pacific Century podcast with Michael Auslin, broadly addressing developments in China and Asia. They discuss the latest politics, economics, law, and cultural news, with a focus on US policy in the region. He also co-hosts LawTalk with Richard Epstein and Troy Senik, discussing the latest developments in law and politics.
Kiron K. Skinner is the W. Glenn Campbell Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution. Her areas of expertise are international relations, international security, US foreign policy, and political strategy. Skinner participates in numerous Hoover Institution projects, including the Global Policy and Strategy Initiative on international security, the Middle East and the Islamic World Working Group, and the Military History in Contemporary Conflict Working Group. Skinner currently serves as the Taube Professor of International Relations and Politics at Pepperdine University's School of Public Policy; visiting fellow and senior advisor to the president at the Heritage Foundation; president and CEO of Foundation for America and the World; and a Fox News contributor.
Skinner previously served as the Taube Professor of International Relations and Politics at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), as well as the founding director of the Carnegie Mellon University Washington Semester Program; the Center for International Relations and Politics; and the Institute for Strategic Analysis. At CMU, Skinner was a distinguished fellow at CyLab, a cyber-oriented research center associated with the College of Engineering, and held courtesy faculty positions at Heinz College and the Institute for Software Research, an academic department in the School of Computer Science. She has also taught political science courses at Hamilton College, Harvard University, and the University of California–Los Angeles.
Skinner is an award-winning and best-selling author. Her coauthored books Reagan, In His Own Hand (2001) and Reagan, A Life in Letters (2003) were New York Times best sellers. The former was excerpted in the New York Times Magazine (December 31, 2000), was noted as one of the five best books on vital American presidential elections in the Wall Street Journal (March 5, 2021), and won the Hoover Institution’s Uncommon Book Award in 2002. The latter was selected as one of the best books of 2003 by the Los Angeles Times, was featured as a Time magazine cover story (September 29, 2003), and was the subject of an editorial written by the New York Times editorial board (September 29, 2003). Skinner also coauthored, with Serhiy Kudelia, Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, and Condoleezza Rice, The Strategy of Campaigning: Lessons from Ronald Reagan and Boris Yeltsin (2007), which was excerpted on the New York Times opinion page (September 15, 2007). A frequent contributor of opinion essays, Skinner has written for CNN, Forbes, Foreign Policy, the National Interest, National Review Online, the New York Times, RealClear Defense, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal. Skinner is the editor of a Palgrave Macmillan series on American political ideology.
From September 2018 to August 2019, Skinner served as director of the Office of Policy Planning and as senior policy adviser to the US secretary of state. In those roles, she reengaged the Department of State in red-team exercises on regional conflicts, spearheaded ties between the State and Defense Departments in critical areas, began a nationally discussed and debated discussion on the need for an Article X on China, and fostered transatlantic partnerships through numerous strategic dialogues, including the first Policy Planners Summit for NATO. She played a central role in creating the Commission on Unalienable Rights and rechartering the Foreign Affairs Policy Board, and she served as the secretariat for both entities. Following her time at the State Department, the White House appointed her to the US Defense Department’s Defense Business Board. At various times in the presidential administrations of George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Donald J. Trump, Skinner served on the Chief of Naval Operations Executive Panel, the Defense Policy Board, the National Security Education Board (US Senate confirmed), and the board of the Naval Postgraduate School. In 2016, she was awarded the Superior Public Service award by the chief of naval operations.
Dr. Amy Zegart is the Morris Arnold and Nona Jean Cox Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, where she leads the Technology Policy Accelerator and the Oster National Security Affairs Fellows Program. Specializing in US intelligence, emerging technologies, and national security, she is also an associate director and senior fellow at the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI and a senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute.
Morris Arnold and Nona Jean Cox Senior Fellow (joint)
Edward P. Lazear passed away on November 23, 2020.
Lazear was the Morris Arnold and Nona Jean Cox Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and the Davies Family Professor of Economics at Stanford University's Graduate School of Business. Lazear served at the White House from 2006 to 2009, where he was chairman of the President's Council of Economic Advisers. Before coming to Stanford, he taught at the University of Chicago.
Lazear received numerous honors and prizes: among them, the 1998 Leo Melamed Biennial Prize for the best research by a business school professor, the 2004 Prize for Outstanding Contributions to Labor Economics from the Institute for the Study of Labor, and the 2006 Jacob Mincer Prize for lifetime achievement in the field of labor economics. He held four honorary degrees, the most recent from the Copenhagen Business School (2013).
Founding editor of the Journal of Labor Economics and founder of the Society of Labor Economists, he was also an elected fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Econometric Society, and the Society of Labor Economists. He was a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research and was a member of the National Academy of Sciences Board on Testing and Assessment. Lazear was the first vice-president and then president of the Society of Labor Economists.
Lazear wrote or edited a dozen books including Personnel Economics (MIT Press, 1995), which expanded on his 1993 Wicksell Lectures. He published more than one hundred papers in leading professional journals.
He received the Distinguished Teaching Award from Stanford University's Graduate School of Business in 1994 and the Distinguished Service Award from Stanford University in 2002.
Lazear held AB and AM degrees from the University of California, Los Angeles, and a PhD from Harvard University.
George P. Shultz Senior Fellow in Economics, Emeritus
John B. Taylor is the George P. Shultz Senior Fellow in Economics, Emeritus, 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.
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 books The Fiscal Theory of the Price Level, Crisis Cycle: Challenges Evolution and Future of the Euro (with Luis Garicano and Klaus Masuch) and articles on monetary policy and inflation. His finance publications include the book Asset Pricing and articles on dynamics in stock, bond, and foreign exchange markets and their links to economic fluctuations. 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 authors the “Grumpy Economist” Substack. 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.
Allan Meltzer passed away on May 8, 2017.
Allan Meltzer was a distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution and the Allan H. Meltzer University Professor of Political Economy at the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon University. He was a visiting professor at Harvard, the University of Chicago, the University of Rochester, the Yugoslav Institute for Economic Research, the Austrian Institute for Advanced Study, the Getulio Vargas Foundation in Rio de Janeiro, and the City University, London. He served as a consultant for several congressional committees, the President's Council of Economic Advisers, the US Treasury Department, the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, the World Bank, foreign governments, and central banks. He was a member of the President's Economic Policy Advisory Board. In 1988–89, he was an acting member of the President's Council of Economic Advisers. From 1986 to 2002, he was an honorary adviser to the Institute for Monetary and Economic Studies of the Bank of Japan.
In 1999–2000, he served as chairman of the International Financial Institution Advisory Commission, known as the Meltzer Commission, which proposed major reforms of the International Monetary Fund and the development banks.
Professor Meltzer's writings appeared in numerous journals; his most recent publication was Why Capitalism? (Oxford University Press, 2012). He authored several other books, including A History of the Federal Reserve (University of Chicago Press, 2 volumes, 2003 and 2009) and numerous papers on economic theory and policy. His career included experience as a self-employed businessman, management adviser, and consultant to banks and financial institutions.
In 1983, Professor Meltzer received a medal for distinguished professional achievement from the University of California, Los Angeles. He was named the distinguished fellow for 2011 by the American Council for Capital Formation and is a distinguished fellow of the American Economic Association. In 2003 he received the Irving Kristol Award from the American Enterprise Institute and the Adam Smith Award from the National Association for Business Economics. In 2009, he received the Distinguished Teacher Award from the International Mensa Foundation. In 2011 Professor Meltzer received the Bradley Award, the Harry Truman Medal for Public Policy, and the Truman Medal for Economic Policy.
Richard A. Epstein
Peter and Kirsten Bedford Senior Fellow (adjunct)
Richard A. Epstein, the Peter and Kirsten Bedford Senior Fellow (adjunct) at the Hoover Institution, is the Laurence A. Tisch Professor of Law, New York University Law School, and a senior lecturer at the University of Chicago.
In 2011, Epstein was a recipient of the Bradley Prize for outstanding achievement. In 2005, the College of William & Mary School of Law awarded him the Brigham-Kanner Property Rights Prize.
Epstein researches and writes in a broad range of constitutional, economic, historical, and philosophical subjects. He has taught administrative law, antitrust law, communications law, constitutional law, corporation criminal law, employment discrimination law, environmental law, food and drug law, health law, labor law, Roman law, real estate development and finance, and individual and corporate taxation.
He edited the Journal of Legal Studies (1981–91) and the Journal of Law and Economics (1991–2001).
Epstein’s most recent publication is The Classical Liberal Constitution: The Uncertain Quest for Limited Government (2014). Other books include Design for Liberty: Private Property, Public Administration, and the Rule of Law (2011); The Case against the Employee Free Choice Act (Hoover Institution Press, 2009); Supreme Neglect: How to Revive the Constitutional Protection for Private Property (2008); How the Progressives Rewrote the Constitution (2006); Overdose (2006); and Free Markets under Siege: Cartels, Politics, and Social Welfare (Hoover Institution Press, 2005).
He received a BA degree in philosophy summa cum laude from Columbia in 1964; a BA degree in law with first-class honors from Oxford University in 1966; and an LLB degree cum laude, from the Yale Law School in 1968. Upon graduation he joined the faculty at the University of Southern California, where he taught until 1972. In 1972, he visited the University of Chicago and became a regular member of the faculty the following year.
He has been a senior fellow at the MacLean Center for Clinical Medical Ethics since 1984 and was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1985. He has been a Hoover fellow since 2000.
Scott W. Atlas, MD is the Robert Wesson Senior Fellow in Scientific Philosophy & Public Policy at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University.
Dr. Atlas investigates the role of government and the private sector in health care quality and access, global trends in health care innovation, and the key economic and civil liberty issues related to health policy. He is a frequent policy advisor to policymakers and government officials in the United States and in other countries. He has served as senior advisor for health policy to several candidates for President, as well as having counselled members of the US Congress on health care, testified before Congress, and briefed directors of key federal agencies. From July to December, 2020, he served as a Special Advisor to the President and a member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force.
Before his appointment at Hoover Institution, he was Professor and Chief of Neuroradiology at Stanford University Medical Center for 14 years. His publications and interviews have appeared worldwide. Dr. Atlas is the author of numerous books, including A Plague Upon Our House: My Fight at the Trump White House to Stop COVID from Destroying America (Post Hill Press), In Excellent Health: Setting the Record Straight on America’s Health Care System (Hoover Press), and Restoring Quality Health Care: A Six‐Point Plan for Comprehensive Reform at Lower Cost (Hoover Press). He is also the editor of "Magnetic Resonance Imaging of the Brain and Spine" – the leading textbook in the field, translated into several languages, and now in its 5th edition.
Dr. Atlas has received many awards and accolades from leading institutions and societies all over the world in recognition of his leadership in policy and medicine. He was awarded the 2022 Encounter Prize for Advancing American Ideals, explained as follows: “Standing up to injustice and facing down the madding crowd of conformity requires enormous patience, equilibrium, insight, and courage—the most important virtue, Aristotle observed, because without it none of the other virtues can flourish. The Encounter Prize for Advancing American Ideals pays tribute to individuals who effectively embody this rare combination of virtues in their lives and work.” He also received the 2021 Freedom Leadership Award, Hillsdale College’s highest honor, “in recognition of his dedication to individual freedom and the free society,” the 2021 Conservative Partnership Institute Freedom Fighter of the Year Award, CPI’s highest honor, "bestowed upon an individual for their courage and dedication to truth and liberty" and the 2011 Alumni Achievement Award, the highest career achievement honor for a distinguished alumnus from the University of Illinois in Urbana‐Champaign. In the private sector, Atlas is a frequent advisor to start-up entrepreneurs and companies in life sciences and medical technology. He received his MD degree from the University of Chicago School of Medicine.
Adam J. White was a research fellow at the Hoover Institution. White is the director of the Center for the Study of the Administrative State at George Mason University's Antonin Scalia Law School, where he also teaches Administrative Law. He writes widely on the administrative state, the Supreme Court, the Constitution, and regulatory policy, with special focus on energy policy and financial regulation.
He was appointed to the Administrative Conference of the United States, a federal advisory board focused on improving federal agencies' practices. He also serves on the leadership council of the American Bar Association's Administrative Law Section; on the executive committee of the Federalist Society's Administrative Law Practice Group; and on the board of directors of LandCAN, a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting conservation on working lands.
His articles appear in The Wall Street Journal, The Weekly Standard, Commentary, and other publications, and he is a contributing editor for National Affairs, City Journal, and The New Atlantis. He previously practiced law at Boyden Gray & Associates PLLC and Baker Botts LLP, litigating regulatory and constitutional issues. After graduating from the University of Iowa and Harvard Law School, he clerked for Judge David B. Sentelle on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.
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.
Mike Petrilli was a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution.
Petrilli is an award-winning writer and president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, one of the country’s most influential education policy think tanks. He is the author of The Diverse Schools’ Dilemma: A Parent's Guide to Socioeconomically Mixed Public Schools and coeditor of Knowledge at the Core: Don Hirsch, Core Knowledge, and the Future of the Common Core. Petrilli is also executive editor of Education Next. Petrilli has published opinion pieces in the New York Times, Washington Post Bloomberg View, Slate, and Wall Street Journal and has been a guest on NBC Nightly News,, ABC World News Tonight, CNN, and Fox, as well as several National Public Radio programs, including All Things Considered, On Point, and the Diane Rehm Show. Petrilli helped create the US Department of Education’s Office of Innovation and Improvement, the Policy Innovators in Education Network, and Young Education Professionals. He lives with his family in Bethesda, Maryland.
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.
David R. Henderson is a research fellow with the Hoover Institution. He is also a professor of economics at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California.
Henderson's writing focuses on public policy. His specialty is in making economic issues and analyses clear and interesting to general audiences. Two themes emerge from his writing: (1) that the unintended consequences of government regulation and spending are usually worse than the problems they are supposed to solve and (2) that freedom and free markets work to solve people's problems.
David Henderson is the editor of The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics (Warner Books, 2007), a book that communicates to a general audience what and how economists think. The Wall Street Journal commented, "His brainchild is a tribute to the power of the short, declarative sentence." The encyclopedia went through three printings and was translated into Spanish and Portuguese. It is now online at the Library of Economics and Liberty. He coauthored Making Great Decisions in Business and Life (2006). Henderson's book, The Joy of Freedom: An Economist's Odyssey (Financial Times Prentice Hall, 2001), has been translated into Russian. Henderson also writes frequently for the Wall Street Journal and Fortune and, from 1997 to 2000, was a monthly columnist with Red Herring, an information technology magazine. He currently serves as an adviser to LifeSharers, a nonprofit network of organ and tissue donors.
Henderson has been on the faculty of the Naval Postgraduate School since 1984 and a research fellow with Hoover since 1990. He was the John M. Olin Visiting Professor with the Center for the Study of American Business at Washington University in St. Louis in 1994; a senior economist for energy and health policy with the President's Council of Economic Advisers from 1982 to 1984; a visiting professor at the University of Santa Clara from 1980 to 1981; a senior policy analyst with the Cato Institute from 1979 to 1980; and an assistant professor at the University of Rochester's Graduate School of Management from 1975 to 1979.
In 1997, he received the Rear Admiral John Jay Schieffelin Award for excellence in teaching from the Naval Postgraduate School. In 1984, he won the Mencken Award for best investigative journalism article for his Fortune article "The Myth of MITI."
Henderson has written for the New York Times, Barron's, Fortune, the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, Public Interest, the Christian Science Monitor, National Review, the New York Daily News, the Dallas Morning News, and Reason. He has also written scholarly articles for the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, the Journal of Monetary Economics, Cato Journal, Regulation, Contemporary Policy Issues, and Energy Journal.
Henderson has spoken before a wide variety of audiences, including the American Farm Bureau Federation, the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations, the St. Louis Discussion Club, the Commonwealth Club of California (National Defense and Business Economics Section), the Cato Institute, and the Heritage Foundation. He has also spoken to economists and general audiences at many universities around the country, including Carnegie-Mellon, Brown, the University of California, Berkeley, the University of California, Davis, the University of Rochester, the University of Chicago, Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School, and the Hoover Institution. He has given papers at annual conferences held by the American Economics Association, the Western Economics Association, and the Association of Public Policy and Management. He has testified before the House Ways and Means Committee, the Senate Armed Services Committee, and the Senate Committee on Labor and Human Resources. He has also appeared on the O'Reilly Factor (Fox News), C-SPAN, CNN, the Newshour with Jim Lehrer, CNBC Squawk Box, MSNBC, BBC, CBC, the Fox News Channel, RT, and regional talk shows.
Born and raised in Canada, Henderson earned his bachelor of science degree in mathematics from the University of Winnipeg in 1970 and his Ph.D. in economics from the University of California, Los Angeles, in 1976.
George P. Shultz Senior Fellow in Economics, Emeritus
John B. Taylor is the George P. Shultz Senior Fellow in Economics, Emeritus, 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.
Barry R. Weingast is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and the Ward C. Krebs Family Professor in the Department of Political Science at Stanford University. He received a BS from the University of California, Santa Cruz (mathematics, 1974), and completed his PhD in economics at Caltech (1977). Weingast served as chair of Stanford’s Department of Political Science from 1996 through 2001.
Weingast is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has won numerous awards, including the James L. Barr Memorial Prize in Public Economics, the Duncan Black Prize for the best paper of the year on public choice (with Kenneth Shepsle), the Heinz Eulau Prize for best paper in the American Political Science Review (with Kenneth Shepsle), the Mary Parker Follett Prize for the best paper in politics and history (twice, once with Charles Stewart); the Distinguished Scholar Award in Public Policy from the Martin School of Public Policy at the University of Kentucky, the Franklin L. Burdette Pi Sigma Alpha Award (with Kenneth Schultz), and the William H. Riker Prize in recognition of scholarly achievement in political science.
Weingast has written extensively on the political economy of development, federalism, legal institutions and the rule of law, and democracy. He is author of
Violence and Social Orders: A Conceptual Framework for Interpreting Recorded Human History (with Douglass North and John Wallis, 2009, Cambridge University Press)
Editor (with Donald Wittman) of The Handbook of Political Economy (Oxford University Press, 2006)
“The Industrial Organization of Congress” (with William Marshall), Journal of Political Economy (1988)
"Structure and Process, Politics and Policy: Administrative Arrangements and the Political Control of Agencies" (with Mathew McCubbins and Roger Noll) Virginia Law Review (1989)
"Constitutions and Commitment: The Evolution of Institutions Governing Public Choice in 17th Century England" (with Douglass North), Journal of Economic History (1989)
"The Economic Role of Political Institutions: Market-Preserving Federalism and Economic Development," Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization (1995)
“The Political Foundations of Democracy and the Rule of Law," American Political Science Review (1997)
"Second Generation Fiscal Federalism: The Implications of Fiscal Incentives," Journal of Urban Economics (2009)
Paul R. Gregory
Research Fellow
Paul Gregory is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution. He is Cullen Professor Emeritus in the Department of Economics at the University of Houston, a research fellow at the German Institute for Economic Research in Berlin, and emeritus chair of the International Advisory Board of the Kiev School of Economics. Gregory has held visiting teaching appointments at Moscow State University and the Free University of Berlin.
Gregory was the director of the Russian Petroleum Legislation Project of the University of Houston Law Center from 1992 to 1997 and has written broadly on Russian energy.
The holder of a PhD in economics from Harvard University, he is the author or coauthor of twelve books and more than one hundred articles on economic history, the Soviet economy, transition economies, comparative economics, and economic demography. His most recent books are Women of the Gulag: Portraits of Five Remarkable Lives (Hoover Institution Press, 2013), Politics, Murder, and Love in Stalin’s Kremlin: The Story of Nikolai Bukharin and Anna Larina (Hoover Institution Press, 2010), Lenin’s Brain and Other Tales from the Secret Soviet Archives (Hoover Institution Press, 2008), Terror by Quota (Yale, 2009), and The Political Economy of Stalinism (Cambridge, 2004), for which he received the Hewett Prize, awarded to works on the political economy of Russia, Eurasia, or Eastern Europe. He co-edited The Lost Transcripts of the Politburo (Yale, 2008). His archival work is summarized in “Allocation under Dictatorship: Research in Stalin’s Archive” (Journal of Economic Literature.) As a producer, Gregory worked with director Marianna Yarovskaya on the documentary film Women of the Gulag, which was short-listed for the 2019 Academy Awards.
Gregory blogs for Defining Ideas and The Hill and tweets at @PaulR_Gregory.
This series animates succinct policy explanations from various talks, podcasts, and presentations given by policy experts. These videos explain first principles and real world examples in a way that are easy to understand and share with your friends.
PolicyEd introduces the new educational video series Perspectives on Policy, which brings Hoover scholars' research and analysis to life in engaging narratives. Visual metaphors and illustrations convey insights about public policy. This series enhances traditional academic lectures with modern motion graphics and story-telling.