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

Featured

Brexit Or Fixit

by John H. Cochranevia Grumpy Economist
Monday, June 27, 2016

Many commenters compare Brexit to the American revolution. I think the constitutional convention is a better analogy for the moment and challenge ahead. A first attempt at union resulted in an unworkable Federal structure. Europe needs a constitutional convention to fix its union.

Analysis and Commentary

Transport Innovation

by John H. Cochranevia Grumpy Economist
Saturday, June 25, 2016

I saw this in the parking lot of the hotel where I'm staying. Inspection: yes, it's the chassis of an early 1970s VW, with motor and transmission in place. The motor appears functional. It's connected to the gas cans. Yet, this is a trailer. Why? (Hint: it's parked next to a new Toyota CRV electric car.)

Featured

Rajan On Cash Transfers And Corruption

by John H. Cochranevia Grumpy Economist
Wednesday, June 22, 2016

Raghu Rajan, who just announced he is stepping down as Governor of the Central Bank of India, gave a very interesting speech, that bears among other things on the question of social programs vs. cash transfers.

Featured

Syverson On The Productivity Slowdown

by John H. Cochranevia Grumpy Economist
Friday, June 17, 2016

Chad Syverson has an interesting new paper on the sources of the productivity slowdown.

Featured

Financial Choice

by John H. Cochranevia Grumpy Economist
Wednesday, June 15, 2016

If you're interested in policy rather than politics, the package of legislative proposals coming out of Congress are a lot more interesting than the Presidential race at the moment. Speaker Paul Ryan is rolling out "A Better Way" package and Rep. Jeb Hensarling has just announced a "financial choice act" to fundamentally reform Dodd-Frank.

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Lottery Winners Don't Get Healthier

by John H. Cochranevia Grumpy Economist
Monday, June 13, 2016

Alex Tabarrok at Marginal Revolution had a great post last week, Lottery Winners Don't get Healthier.

Analysis and Commentary

How To Raise GDP 10%, And Reduce Inequality Too

by John H. Cochranevia Grumpy Economist
Wednesday, June 8, 2016

Chang-Tai Hsieh and Enrico Moretti have a very nice new working paper "Why do Cities Matter?"

Hoover fellow Richard Epstein on income inequality.
Featured

Universal Basic Income

by John H. Cochranevia Grumpy Economist
Tuesday, June 7, 2016

Universal Basic Income is in the news. Charles Murray wrote a thoughtful piece in the Wall Street Journal Saturday Review. The Swiss overwhelmingly rejected a referendum -- but on a proposal quite different from Murray's.

Featured

Summers On Roadblocks To Infrastructure

by John H. Cochranevia Grumpy Economist
Tuesday, May 31, 2016

The bureaucrats of Massachusetts have done the nation a wonderful service, by parking an abject lesson in America's infrastructure sclerosis right in front of Larry Summers' office.

Featured

Bush V. Reagan On Immigration

by John H. Cochranevia Grumpy Economist
Wednesday, May 25, 2016

Scott Sumner posted this beautiful exchange between Ronald Reagan and George Bush Sr. on immigration. Scott titles the post "when the GOP still had some decency," which I think he should more accurately state as "when the two leading GOP presidential candidates still had some decency."

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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. . .