Ross Levine

About

Ross Levine is the Booth Derbas Family/Edward Lazear Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and co-director of Hoover’s Financial Regulation Working Group. He is a founding member of the Hoover Program on the Foundations for Economic Prosperity. Levine is also a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. Prior to joining Hoover Levine was a faculty member at the University of California, Berkeley’s Haas School of Business.

Levine’s research explains how financial regulations and the functioning of financial systems influence economic prosperity, including growth, stability, technological innovation, entrepreneurship, job opportunities, poverty, income distribution, and the environment. Besides authoring or editing six books, he has published nearly 200 articles in leading economics, finance, and management journals.

Two of his books, Rethinking Bank Regulation: Till Angels Govern and Guardians of Finance: Making Regulators Work for Us, along with numerous articles, highlight the complexities of regulatory policies. He demonstrates that these policies often hinder competition, disrupt the efficient allocation of capital, and promote excessive risk-taking, which negatively impacts living standards.

Levine’s research resonates beyond academia, shaping dialogue and policies at major international institutions like the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, and European Central Bank. He serves as an advisor to central banks and regulatory authorities worldwide, and his work has been highlighted in leading media outlets such as the Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, The Economist, The Washington Post, and Barron’s.

Having earned a BA from Cornell University and a PhD in economics from UCLA, Levine worked at the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System and the World Bank, where he conducted and managed research and operational programs. In addition to his research and policy contributions, Levine has received several teaching awards at Berkeley, Brown University, and the University of Virginia.