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

Glaeser And Summers On Infrastructure

by John H. Cochranevia Grumpy Economist
Tuesday, September 13, 2016

Ed Glaeser has a superb essay on infrastructure at City Journal, titled "If you Build It.." I have a few excerpts, but do go and enjoy the whole thing. Larry Summers also has a new blog post on infrastructure, with some fascinating bits if you read carefully. 

Analysis and Commentary

Rosenberg In New York Times

by John H. Cochranevia Grumpy Economist
Monday, September 5, 2016

Naomi Rosenberg's Op-Ed in the Sunday New York Times is the best piece of writing I have had the painful pleasure to read in a long time. The title is How to Tell a Mother her Child Is Dead. Warning: this is not an easy piece to read.

Featured

Settlement Skulduggery

by John H. Cochranevia Grumpy Economist
Thursday, September 1, 2016

Andy Koenig had a WSJ oped on a subject getting far too little attention. When the government goes after big companies such as banks, and obtains huge out of court settlements, just where does the money go?

Analysis and Commentary

Asset Pricing Mooc, Resurrected

by John H. Cochranevia Grumpy Economist
Tuesday, August 30, 2016

The online class "Asset Pricing" is resurrected, at least half-way.

Featured

Micro Vs. Macro

by John H. Cochranevia Grumpy Economist
Monday, August 22, 2016

The cause of sclerotic growth is the major economic policy question of our time. The three big explanations are 1) We ran out of ideas (Gordon); 2) Deficient "demand," remediable by more fiscal stimulus (Summers, say) 3); Death by a thousand cuts of cronyist regulation and legal economic interference.

Featured

The New Voodoo

by John H. Cochranevia Grumpy Economist
Thursday, August 18, 2016

Scott Summner sums up contemporary stimulus proposals well ...Old hydraulic Keynesianism from the 1960s was already a pretty implausible model.

Analysis and Commentary

Interview, Talk, And Slides

by John H. Cochranevia Grumpy Economist
Tuesday, August 16, 2016

I did an interview with Cloud Yip at Econreporter, Part I and Part II, on various things macro, money, and fiscal theory of the price level. It's part of an interesting series on macroeconomics. Being a transcript of an interview, it's not as clean as a written essay, but not as incoherent as I usually am when talking.

Featured

Clinton Plan

by John H. Cochrane mentioning George P. Shultzvia Grumpy Economist
Friday, August 12, 2016

The WSJ asked me to review the Hillary Clinton economic plan, motivated by her August 11 speech introducing it.

Housing
Analysis and Commentary

Zoning Common Sense

by John H. Cochranevia Grumpy Economist
Thursday, August 11, 2016

Kate Kershaw Downing has posted a worthy letter of resignation from the Palo Alto Housing commission, that seems to be going viral. Palo Alto is absurdly expensive. People who want to come here for jobs can't afford to live anywhere nearby. What to do about it?

Analysis and Commentary

Regional Price Data

by John H. Cochranevia Grumpy Economist
Thursday, August 11, 2016

Some big news, to me at least: The Bureau of Economic Analysis is now producing "regional price parities" data that allow you to compare the cost of living in one place in the US to another. The BEA news release release is here; coverage from the tax foundation here (HT the always interesting Marginal Revolution).

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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. . .