Program to Host Conference on Challenges Facing the US Economy on January 21
Hoover Institution (Stanford, CA) — In the 2024‒25 academic year, an array of Hoover Institution scholars joined forces to launch the Hoover Prosperity Program, a research-driven initiative to advance the state of knowledge so that citizens and public officials can make informed decisions about the laws, policies, and regulations that are mostly likely to ensure a prosperous future.
According to Stephen Haber, Peter and Helen Bing Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and director of the new program, “The founders of the United States had extraordinary insights about the relationships between competitive markets, limited government, private property, and individual liberty.” He holds that experiments with alternative political and economic systems proved the founders right, resulting in improved living standards, expanded economic opportunities, and increased social mobility more than any other system throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Haber said the Prosperity Program aims to use empirical data to address negative perceptions of capitalism that are held by an increasing number of Americans who have come to believe that a government-led means of organizing the global economy is the only way to manage the rising complexity and demographic challenges facing societies in the twenty-first century.
Adjudicating among these two competing views of what will make for a prosperous twenty-first-century society is a task of first order importance for academics, Haber said.
Senior Fellow Amit Seru, who serves on the program’s leadership board along with senior fellows Peter Blair Henry, Dan Kessler, Ross Levine, Josiah Ober, and Paola Sapienza, added, “The Hoover Prosperity Program is grounded in the belief that addressing the challenges of the twenty-first century requires both a deep understanding of the principles that have historically driven human progress and a willingness to critically evaluate how these principles apply in today’s world. By fostering rigorous, evidence-based dialogue, this program aims to illuminate pathways for sustainable growth, opportunity, and shared prosperity.”
Research initiatives to address a wide array of policy challenges
The new program spearheads several existing Hoover initiatives, including the working groups on Corporate Governance, Emerging Market and Developing Economies, Financial Regulation, and Long-Run Prosperity, as well as the new J-P Conte Initiative on Immigration.
In a fall gathering, the Conference on the Economics of Immigration, scholars dealt with contemporary issues of immigration, zeroing in on its benefits to the US economy.
Conference presenters showed how immigration has supported income growth, skills development, innovation, and capital formation in America throughout its history.
In October, the Emerging Market and Developing Economies research program cohosted World Bank President Ajay Banga at the Hoover Institution, where he engaged in a conversation with senior fellows Peter Blair Henry and Arun Majumdar on the importance of the World Bank leading informed risk taking to catalyze blended (public and private) finance to invest in development and accelerate the global energy transition.
In December, the Hoover Prosperity Program convened experts in Mexico City to explore why many Latin American economies have stagnated and have not transitioned to high-income countries.
Other conferences planned for 2025 will tackle subjects including Chinese economic history and prospects for twenty-first-century growth, banking regulation, and the challenges associated with decentralized corporate governance.
Tackling challenges to American prosperity
On January 21, the Prosperity Program will present Challenges Facing the US Economy, a conference exploring how the rise of AI, the federal deficit, and other trends will impact future American growth. (Register to attend here.)
The conference will also investigate the most recent data on domestic income inequality and other challenges that threaten future US prosperity.
“In a time of contentious debates about our future, the Hoover Prosperity Program is committed to evidence-based research that will guide policymakers toward solutions that expand opportunities and foster economic growth and prosperity,” said Senior Fellow Ross Levine, who is organizing the conference along with Haber and Seru.
Register to attend the Conference on Challenges Facing the American Economy.
For coverage opportunities, contact Jeffrey Marschner, 202-760-3187, jmarsch@stanford.edu.
