John H. Cochrane

Rose-Marie and Jack Anderson Senior Fellow
Biography: 

John H. Cochrane is the Rose-Marie and Jack Anderson Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. He is also a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research and an adjunct scholar of the CATO Institute. 

Before joining Hoover, Cochrane was  a Professor of Finance at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business, and earlier at its Economics Department. Cochrane earned a bachelor’s degree in physics at MIT and his PhD in economics at the University of California at Berkeley. He was a junior staff economist on the Council of Economic Advisers (1982–83).

Cochrane’s recent 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 when investors can’t perfectly hedge. His monetary economics publications include articles on the relationship between deficits and inflation, the effects of monetary policy, and the fiscal theory of the price level. 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. His Asset Pricing PhD class is available online via Coursera. 

Cochrane frequently contributes editorial opinion essays to the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg.com, and other publications. He maintains the Grumpy Economist blog.

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Recent Commentary

Analysis and Commentary

Volume And Information

by John H. Cochranevia Grumpy Economist
Sunday, October 9, 2016

This is a little essay on the puzzle of volume, disguised as comments on a paper by Fernando Alvarez and Andy Atkeson, presented at the Becker-Friedman Institute Conference in Honor of Robert E. Lucas Jr.

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A First Step To Progressive Consumption Taxes

by John H. Cochrane mentioning Michael S. Bernstamvia Grumpy Economist
Wednesday, October 5, 2016

What's an easy way to get going on progressive income taxes? Simply remove all limits on contributions to and withdrawals from IRAs. (I thank my Hoover colleague Michael Bernstam for this clever idea, and the Hoover coffee room for bumping us into each other.)

Analysis and Commentary

Trump Taxes

by John H. Cochranevia Grumpy Economist
Monday, October 3, 2016

As I see it, important points about the Trump tax affair are not yet reflected in media coverage. 1) This affair reflects the intrinsic difficulties of an income tax. 

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EconTalk

by John H. Cochranevia Grumpy Economist
Tuesday, September 27, 2016

I did an EconTalk Podcast with Russ Roberts. The general subject is economic growth, the reasons it seems to be slipping away from us and policies (or non-policies) that might help.

Housing
Analysis and Commentary

Furman On Zoning

by John H. Cochranevia Grumpy Economist
Monday, September 26, 2016

On this day (Clinton vs. Trump debate) of likely partisan political bloviation, I am delighted to highlight a very nice editorial by Jason Furman, President Obama's CEA chair, on the effects of housing restrictions. A longer speech here.

Analysis and Commentary

Negative Rates And Inflation

by John H. Cochranevia Grumpy Economist
Wednesday, September 21, 2016

Have negative interest rates boosted inflation?

Analysis and Commentary

Immigration, Trade, And Child Care

by John H. Cochranevia Grumpy Economist
Tuesday, September 20, 2016

Both Mr. Trump and Mrs. Clinton want to lower the cost and, presumably, increase the amount of child care. A quick economics quiz: What is the policy change that would have the greatest such effect?

Analysis and Commentary

Testimony 2

by John H. Cochranevia Grumpy Economist
Thursday, September 15, 2016

On the way back from Washington, I passed the time reformatting my little essay for the Budget committee to html for blog readers.

Growing Risks to the Budget and the Economy

featuring John H. Cochranevia United States House of Representatives
Wednesday, September 14, 2016

On September 14, 2016, John Cochrane testified in front of the House Committee on the Budget on "Growing Risks to the Budget and the Economy."

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Testimony

by John H. Cochranevia Grumpy Economist
Wednesday, September 14, 2016

I was invited to testify at a hearing of the House budget committee on Sept 14. It's nothing novel or revolutionary, but a chance to put my thoughts together on how to get growth going again, and policy approaches that get past the usual partisan squabbling.

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Current Online Courses

Asset Pricing, Part 1, via Coursera and the University of Chicago

This course is part one of a two-part introductory survey of graduate-level academic asset pricing. We will focus on building the intuition and deep understanding of how the theory works, how to use it, and how to connect it to empirical facts. This first part builds the basic theoretical and empirical tools around some classic facts. The second part delves more deeply into applications and empirical evaluation. Learn more. . .