Navigating Economic Policy Uncertainty

Jon Hartley and Steven Davis discuss Steven’s research career and seminal work on job flows, including the legacy of his classic book Job Creation and Destruction, co-authored with John Haltiwanger and Scott Schuh. They also discuss how we should think about full employment, how significant economic policy uncertainty is, and how important the shift to work from home has been and may continue to be in the future.

Recorded on August 27, 2024.

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS:

Steven Davis is the Thomas W. and Susan B. Ford Senior Fellow and Director of Research at the Hoover Institution, and Senior Fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR). He was on the faculty at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business for more than 35 years, including service as deputy dean of the faculty. 

He is also a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, visiting scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, senior adviser to the Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, advisor to the Monetary Authority of Singapore, elected fellow of the Society of Labor Economists,IZA Research Fellow, and senior academic fellow of the Asian Bureau of Finance and Economic Research. He hosts Economics, Applied – a video podcast series sponsored by the Hoover Institution.

Davis is a co-creator of the Economic Policy Uncertainty Indices, the Survey of Business Uncertainty, the U.S. Survey of Working Arrangements and Attitudes, the Global Survey of Working Arrangements, the Work-from-Home Map project, and the Stock Market Jumps project. He cofounded and co-organizes the Asian Monetary Policy Forum, held annually in Singapore.

Jon Hartley is a Research Associate at the Hoover Institution and an PhD candidate in economics 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 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, the International Monetaty Fund, the Committee on Capital Markets Regulation, the 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, the Globe and Mail, the National Post, and the 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 and the 2017 Wharton 40 under 40 list, and was previously a World Economic Forum Global Shaper.

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.

For more information, visit: capitalismandfreedom.substack.com/

RELATED RESOURCES:

• Steven Davis Website