Robert E. Hall
Robert and Carole McNeil Joint
Hoover Senior Fellow and Professor of Economics
Stanford University
Mailing
Address
Hoover
Institution
Stanford
University
Stanford,
CA 94305
E-Mail (preferred
form of communication)
Tel: (650)
723-2215
Assistant/Webmaster:
Charlotte
Pace
(650)
723-3939
Photo by Susan E. Woodward
I’m an
applied economist with interests in employment, technology, competition, and
economic policy in the aggregate economy and in particular markets.
I
served as President of the American Economic Association for the year 2010. I
presented the Ely Lecture to the Association in 2001 and served as Vice
President in 2005. I’m a member of the National Academy of Sciences,
Distinguished Fellow of the AEA, and fellow of the American Academy of Arts and
Sciences, the Econometric Society, and the Society of Labor Economists.
Along
with my Hoover Institution
colleague Alvin Rabushka, I
developed a framework for equitable and efficient consumption taxation. Our
article in the Wall Street Journal in December 1981 was the starting
point for an upsurge of interest in consumption taxation. Our book, The
Flat Tax (free download from the Hoover Institution
Press) spells out the proposal. We were recognized in Money magazine’s
Hall of Fame for our contributions to financial innovation.
I
also served as director of the research program on economic fluctuations and
growth of the National Bureau of Economic Research
from 1977 through 2013. I continue to serve as chairman of the Bureau's
Committee on Business Cycle Dating, which maintains the semiofficial chronology
of the U.S. business cycle.
I
have advised a number of government agencies on national economic policy,
including the Justice Department, the Treasury Department, the Federal Reserve
Board, and the Congressional Budget Office, where I serve on the Advisory
Committee. I served on the National Presidential Advisory Committee on
Productivity. I have testified on numerous occasions before congressional
committees concerning national economic policy.
Before
coming to Stanford’s Hoover Institution and the Department of Economics in 1978, I
taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and at the University of
California, Berkeley. I was born in Palo Alto, attended school there and in Los
Angeles, received my B.A. from the University of California, Berkeley, and my
Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
In
a 1976 paper, I introduced
the distinction between fresh-water and salt-water economists. Bloggers using
these terms are asked to contribute $1 to a fund that sends graduate students
to MIT for one year and to the University of Minnesota for a second year.
I
am married to economist Susan Woodward, chairman of Sand Hill Econometrics, and live in
Menlo Park, California.
Everything I’ve ever written, plus data
for many projects:
Selected published and
forthcoming papers
My big bib file (.bib file containing all my publications,
plus many others in macro and other branches of applied micro)
Article about me in Region
magazine (with good pictures)
Discussions and other presentations
Information about admissions
to the Stanford economics PhD program
Classes and seminars
Econ 310
Macroeconomics Seminar
Recorded interviews and blogs
Bloomberg Benchmark Podcast
interviews
Bob Hall on “How a Secretive Conclave Decides When U.S. Recessions Happen.”
EconTalk host Russ Roberts interviews Bob Hall about the current state of
the U.S. economy and what we know and don't know about
the recovery from the Great Recession.
David Beckworth in his blog, Macro and Other Market Musings,
interviews Bob Hall on such topics as NBER
recession dating, zero lower bound, secular stagnation, and monetary policy.
NBER Business Cycle Dating Committee
Other links
Beamer code to make uncluttered
good-looking slides
BLS File Showing Series Codes for CPS
Hours Data
Hall and Woodward’s Analysis of the
Financial Crisis and Recession (archive
only)
Managing Your Career as an Economist
after Tenure (from Newsletter
of the AEA Committee on the Status of Women in the Economics Profession,
Winter 2009)