The Capitalism and Freedom in the Twenty-First Century Podcast – Details, episodes & analysis

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

Bob and Jon discuss Bob’s role in the history of the development of quantitative finance at Goldman Sachs, including his seminal work with Fischer Black, along with the carry trade liquidity crisis of August 2024 and its similarities to the quant crisis of 2007. They also discuss the case for quantitative investing and its ability to ride out risky environments. They also discuss a risk management approach to climate policy, Bob’s E-Z climate carbon pricing model, as well Bob’s advocacy for carbon taxes.

Recorded on August 9, 2024.

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS:

Robert Litterman is the Chairman of the Risk Committee at Kepos Capital LP. Prior to joining Kepos Capital in 2010, Litterman enjoyed a 23-year career at Goldman, Sachs & Co., where he served in research, risk management, investments, and thought leadership roles. While at Goldman, Litterman also spent six years as one of three external advisors to Singapore’s Government Investment Corporation (GIC). Bob was named a partner of Goldman Sachs in 1994 and became head of the firm-wide risk function; prior to that role, he was co-head of the Fixed Income Research and Model Development Group with Fischer Black. During his tenure at Goldman, Bob researched and published a number of groundbreaking papers in asset allocation and risk management. He is the co-developer of the Black-Litterman Global Asset Allocation Model, a key tool in investment management, and has co-authored books including The Practice of Risk Management and Modern Investment Management: An Equilibrium Approach (Wiley & Co.).

Litterman earned a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Minnesota and a B.S. in human biology from Stanford University. He is also the inaugural recipient of the S. Donald Sussman Fellowship at MIT’s Sloan School of Management and serves on a number of boards, including Commonfund, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Sloan Foundation, and World Wildlife Fund. He is also currently serving as the chair of the CFTC Climate-Related Market Risk Subcommittee.

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/

Jennifer Burns (Hoover Reserch Fellow and Stanford Associate Professor of History) joins the podcast to discuss her career as well as her new biography Milton Friedman: The Last Conservative (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2023). We discuss the life of Milton Friedman including his very brief time in Chile, his intellectual development before and after joining the University of Chicago economics faculty, the role of various people who contributed to the development of his ideas behind the scenes, along with the extent of his influence nearly 20 years after his death.

Jon Hartley is an economics researcher with interests in international macroeconomics, finance, and labor economics and is currently an economics PhD student at Stanford University. He is also currently a Research Fellow at the Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity, a Senior Fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, and a research associate at the Hoover Institution.

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Luke Froeb joins the podcast to talk about his career in economics, what it's like to be the chief economist at the FTC and DOJ antitrust division, how these agencies make decisions about merger cases, the history of the Chicago School consumer welfare standard and the types of analytical tools and modeling that underlies the approach, along with the rise of the New Brandeisians and their failures thus far.

Jon Hartley is an economics researcher with interests in international macroeconomics, finance, and labor economics and is currently an economics PhD student at Stanford University. He is also currently a Research Fellow at the Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity, a Senior Fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, and a research associate at the Hoover Institution.

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Glenn Hubbard (Former White House CEA Chair and Columbia Business School Professor) joins the podcast to discuss his career in academia and government along with his views on tax policy, including the legacy of the Bush tax cuts and corporate tax reforms, the optimal features of consumption taxes, the current path of government spending and public debt as well as the political economy issues underlying the recent rise of populism.

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Andrew Olmem (Former White House National Economic Council Deputy Director) joins the podcast to discuss his views on the CARES Act and inflation as well as the state of financial and banking regulation, including everything from deposit insurance to lender of last resort, in the wake of Silicon Valley Bank's failure and over ten years since the Dodd-Frank Act was passed.

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DJ Nordquist (Former World Bank US Executive Director and Economic Innovation Group SVP) joins the podcast to discuss her experience serving as World Bank US Executive Director from 2019 to 2021 and as White House Council of Economic Advisers Chief-of-Staff, discussing topics ranging from China's graduation from being a World Bank aid recipient, COVID-19 World Bank/IMF fiscal aid, international corporate tax competition, and opportunity zones.

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Tyler Cowen (George Mason University Economics Professor and Mercatus Center Director) joins the podcast to discuss his career, various long-run economic and political trends, whether policy or culture matters most for economic growth, whether schools of economic thought are still relevant, the state of economics education, the success of Marginal Revolution University as well as finding entrepreneurial talent through Emergent Ventures.  

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Josh Rauh (Stanford GSB Finance Professor and Hoover Senior Fellow) joins the podcast to discuss his distinguished academic career, his research in public economics on taxes and public pensions, his time at the Trump Administration White House Council of Economic Advisors, the legacy of the CARES Act together with other COVID-19 era spending, and the future path of U.S. public debt.

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Simon Johnson (MIT Sloan Economics Professor and Former IMF Chief Economist) joins the podcast to discuss his new book "Power and Progress", co-authored with his MIT colleague Daron Acemoglu, on the interplay between technology, political economy, and economic development.

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