Economic Growth, Macro-Models, and a Move to the Hoover Institution

The Capitalism and Freedom in the Twenty-First Century Podcast

Jon Hartley and John Cochrane introduce the Capitalism and Freedom in the 21st Century podcast to the Hoover audience. They speak on a number of topics including the usefulness of existing macroeconomic models, the use of economic models at central banks, the state of macroeconomics, the fiscal theory of the price level, and how technology, institutions, and policy play a role in fostering economic growth.

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS:

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 The Fiscal Theory of the Price Level (Princeton University Press, 2023). He also refularly writes articles on inflation, 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 and is a regular host of Hoover’s flagship broadcast, GoodFellows.

Jon Hartley is a Research Associate at the Hoover Institution and an economics PhD Candidate at Stanford University, where he specializes in finance, labor economics, and macroeconomics. He is also currently a Research Fellow at the Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity (FREOPP) and a Senior Fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute. Jon is also a member of the Canadian Group of Economists, and serves as chair of the Economic Club of Miami.

Jon has previously worked at Goldman Sachs Asset Management as well as in various policy roles at the World Bank, IMF, Committee on Capital Markets Regulation, US Congress Joint Economic Committee, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, and the Bank of Canada.

Jon has also been a regular economics contributor for National Review Online, Forbes, and The Huffington Post and has contributed to The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, USA Today, Globe and Mail, National Post, and Toronto Star among other outlets. Jon has also appeared on CNBC, Fox Business, Fox News, Bloomberg, and NBC, and was named to the 2017 Forbes 30 Under 30 Law & Policy list, the 2017 Wharton 40 Under 40 list, and was previously a World Economic Forum Global Shaper.

RELATED RESOURCES:

• The Fiscal Theory of the Price Level
• Reforming the Euro: Lessons From Four Crises

ABOUT THE SERIES:

Each episode of Capitalism and Freedom in the 21st Century, a video podcast series and the official podcast of the Hoover Economic Policy Working Group, focuses on getting into the weeds of economics, finance, and public policy on important current topics through one-on-one interviews. Host Jon Hartley asks guests about their main ideas and contributions to academic research and policy. The podcast is titled after Milton Friedman‘s famous 1962 bestselling book Capitalism and Freedom, which after 60 years, remains prescient from its focus on various topics which are now at the forefront of economic debates, such as monetary policy and inflation, fiscal policy, occupational licensing, education vouchers, income share agreements, the distribution of income, and negative income taxes, among many other topics.