Today, Bill Whalen charts what the past 24 years would have looked like had Al Gore won the 2000 US presidential election. Amit Seru and Mickey Levy outline concrete steps the Fed could enact to ensure greater financial market stability. And John Cochrane jumps on the “abundance” train, urging communities to drop restrictive zoning measures and let more housing be built.
Revitalizing History
Marking the 25th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s decision in Bush v. Gore, Distinguished Policy Fellow Bill Whalen writes an alternate history where Al Gore wins the 2000 presidential election, tracking how he contends with the September 11 attacks, and continuing the narrative all the way to the outcome of the 2024 election. Some unlikely alternatives occur in this story, including former Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick winning the 2016 presidential election and Marco Rubio winning in 2024. Whalen’s story includes how each participant in this alternate history deals with other real events, like the 2008 Global Financial Crisis and COVID, and how each president would make changes to the makeup of the Supreme Court. “For all the talk of change, there’s one other element in American politics that stays the same regardless of the outcome of Bush v. Gore: eroding confidence in election integrity,” Whalen writes. Read more here.
The Economy
In Barron’s, fellows Amit Seru and Mickey D. Levy argue that the Federal Reserve needs a raft of as many as eight major reforms to its duties, outside of setting interest rates, that would serve to strengthen its independence as well as its credibility in the marketplace. Many of the changes concern how the Fed evaluates the stability of banks and other market participants, as well as how much information it receives from those market participants and what it is required to disclose to Congress. “The Fed should realize that promoting financial stability isn’t a follow-up chore after it completes its ‘real’ work—setting monetary policy,” Seru and Levy write. “Financial stability is entangled with monetary policy, and it must be addressed systematically.” Read more here. [subscription required]
In this week’s Grumpy Economist Weekly Rant, Senior Fellow John H. Cochrane digs into one of the most persistent challenges across the country: the high cost of housing. Federal and state governments have continually moved to pump out subsidies, down-payment assistance, and low-interest loans in hopes of making homes more affordable. But with a fixed supply of housing, boosting demand doesn’t create more places to live—it simply drives prices higher. Cochrane argues that the real solution is straightforward: Let people build. Across the US, restrictive zoning, burdensome permitting, construction mandates, and limits on density have strangled the supply of new housing. The rising “abundance movement” recognizes that true affordability comes from expanding supply, not subsidizing demand. Building more homes—of all types—lowers pressure on prices and opens up opportunities for everyone. Watch the rant here.
On the latest episode of Economics, Applied, Senior Fellow Steven J. Davis speaks with Stanford economist and frequent research collaborator Nicholas Bloom about findings from the latest Hoover-Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research conference on remote work. They explore papers that suggest employers can save on wages by offering employees the options to work remotely or in a hybrid arrangement. They also talk about research that suggests the children of parents who can work from home do better on standardized tests, whether the rise of work from home has impacted fertility in some cases, and what remote work means for the health and vibrancy of major cities. Watch or listen to the conversation here.
Reforming K–12 Education
A piece in The 74 features research from three Hoover fellows: Senior Fellow Eric Hanushek proves reading and math test scores were falling up to six years prior to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Senior Fellow Thomas Dee finds that an immigration raid in California’s Central Valley in January 2025 increased school absences in the surrounding area for up to two months afterward. And Visiting Fellow David Figlio and a coauthor explore whether cell phone bans in a Florida district contributed to rising test scores in the years that followed. The piece also examines enrollment declines, critical race theory in classrooms, and falling vaccination rates among various regions of the country. Read more here.
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