On May 13, 2025, the Hoover Institution will host its third annual one-day conference Markets vs. Mandates: Promoting Environmental Quality and Economic Prosperity. As in previous years, the conference will foster discussion and debate on how markets and regulatory frameworks can best govern environmental concerns while also promoting economic growth and safeguarding individual freedom. This year’s conference will focus on “Policy Considerations for the New Administration.” Academic experts will join practitioners to cover a range of topics including climate adaptation, tribal energy sovereignty, public lands, and barriers to decarbonization. The program will feature a lunch address by Wall Street Journal editorial columnist Kim Strassel. It will be introduced by Hoover Director, Condoleezza Rice, and culminate with a summary of policy recommendations for the new administration. Refreshments will be served after the conference to give the audience time to mingle with the stellar cast. The conference is open to the public and registration is required.
Terry L. Anderson has been a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution since 1998 and is currently the John and Jean De Nault Senior Fellow. He is the past president of the Property and Environment Research Center in Bozeman, Montana, and a professor emeritus at Montana State University, where he won many teaching awards during his twenty-five-year career. Anderson is the author of Free Market Environmentalism (published in its third edition in 2015) and one of the founders of the idea it espouses: using markets and property rights to solve environmental problems. Dr. Anderson received his PhD from the University of Washington in 1972 and has been a visiting scholar at Oxford University, Basel University, Clemson University, and Cornell University, and a Fulbright Fellow at the University of Canterbury.
Judson Boomhower is an assistant professor in the Department of Economics at the University of California San Diego and a faculty research fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research. His research focuses on environmental economics, energy markets, climate risk and adaptation, and the design of environmental and energy policy. Boomhower is a contributor to the US National Climate Assessment, an invited researcher at the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab and a faculty affiliate at the Empowered to Empower (E2E) Initiative. He joined UC San Diego after completing a postdoctoral fellowship at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research. He earned his PhD in agricultural and resource economics at the University of California–Berkeley and BA and MS degrees from Stanford University. He has been an Andrew Carnegie Fellow and a Fulbright Scholar and is an award-winning undergraduate teacher.
Daniel C. Cardenas Jr. is a member of the Hammawi Band of the Pit River Tribe of California. He makes his home at Saint Stephens, Wyoming, on the Wind River Indian Reservation. Cardenas attended the University of California–Berkeley and served as an elected member of the Tribal Council of the Pit River Tribe. He was elected in April 2024 to the Board of Directors of Equitable Origin, a nonprofit organization that is a leader in certifying natural gas. Cardenas was also appointed in February 2024 by the US secretary of energy to the National Petroleum Council. He currently serves as the CEO, president, and chairman of the National Tribal Energy Association, a trade association representing the interests of tribes across the United States. Cardenas is also the cofounder of the Native American Mining and Energy Sovereignty Initiative in partnership with the Colorado School of Mines.
James Coleman is a law professor at the University of Minnesota Law School and a nonresident fellow at American Enterprise Institute. He has also taught law at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, the University of Calgary’s law and business schools, and Harvard Law School. He practiced law at Sidley Austin LLP in Washington, DC, clerked for Judge Colloton on the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals, and did his law school and undergraduate work at Harvard. His undergrad thesis in biology led to a central Asian butterfly being named for him.
Jonathan Colmer is an associate professor of economics and public policy in the Department of Economics at the University of Virginia and the director of the Environmental Inequality Lab. His research combines data with insights from economic theory and environmental science to examine how economic activity and the environment influence each other, and how government actions shape these interactions.
Samantha Gross is the director of the Energy Security and Climate Initiative at the Brookings Institution. Her work is focused on the intersection of energy, environment, and policy. Prior to joining Brookings, Gross was the director of the Office of International Climate and Clean Energy at US Department of Energy and director of integrated research at IHS Cambridge Energy Research Associates. She has been a Brookings Robert Bosch Foundation Transatlantic Fellow in Berlin and a visiting fellow at the King Abdullah Petroleum Studies and Research Center in Riyadh. Gross holds a BS in chemical engineering, an MS in environmental engineering, and an MBA.
P. J. Hill is professor of economics emeritus at Wheaton College, in Wheaton, Illinois, and a senior fellow at the Property and Environment Research Center in Bozeman, Montana. He is the coauthor, with Terry L. Anderson and Douglass C. North, of Growth and Welfare in the American Past: A New Economic History; and with Anderson of The Birth of a Transfer Society and The Not So Wild, Wild West: Property Rights on the Frontier. He has also authored numerous articles on the theory of property rights and institutional change and has edited six books on environmental economics. His undergraduate degree is from Montana State and his PhD from the University of Chicago.
Jordan Horrillo is an incoming Hoover fellow who uses spatial geographic information systems (GIS) techniques to understand the relationship between forest management policy and extreme wildfire. Horrillo’s current work builds a 120-year panel for the state of Oregon and shows that, contrary to the claims of much academic literature, prior clearcutting reduces the long-run likelihood of extreme fire for both regions that are clearcut and regions surrounding former clearcuts. In other work with Stephen Haber, Horrillo uses the same GIS techniques to model economic development in the premodern world. He will be receiving his PhD in political science from Stanford in June.
Matthew E. Kahn is a provost professor of economics at the University of Southern California; a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research; a research fellow at the Institute of Labor Economics (IZA); a senior fellow at the Schaeffer Center for Health Policy and Economics at University of Southern California; and a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution. He has taught at Columbia University, the Fletcher School at Tufts University, UCLA, and Johns Hopkins University. He is a graduate of Hamilton College and the London School of Economics. He holds a PhD in economics from the University of Chicago.
Steven E. Koonin, a senior fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution, has served as the Department of Energy’s under secretary for science, as chief scientist for BP, as a university professor at New York University, and as professor and provost at Caltech. He is member of the National Academy of Sciences and a governor of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Koonin holds a BS in physics from Caltech and a PhD in theoretical physics from MIT.
Gary D. Libecap is distinguished professor emeritus at the Bren School of Environmental Science and Management and the Department of Economics, University of California–Santa Barbara; research associate, National Bureau of Economic Research; a member of the Research Group on Political Institutions and Economic Policy, Harvard University; Erskine Professor, University of Canterbury, New Zealand; and Pitt Professor, Cambridge University. He is president of the Economic History Association, and a member of the Western Economics Association and the Society for Organizational and Institutional Economics. A recipient of the Elinor Ostrom Lifetime Achievement Award, he is the author of twelve books and more than 100 research articles in publications including the American Economic Review, Journal of Political Economy, Journal of Economic Literature, Journal of Law and Economics, and Journal of Economic History. His primary research area is in property institutions, regulation, and resource use.
Dr. Richard Luarkie is a two-term governor for the Pueblo of Laguna and has served on various boards and committees, including the Board of Trustees for the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian. Dr. Luarkie has a BA from the University of New Mexico, an MBA from New Mexico State University, and a PhD from Arizona State University. He is a founding principal of the Emerging Equities Solutions Group LLC and the program director for the Native American Mining and Energy Sovereignty program at the Colorado School of Mines.
G. Tracy Mehan III is executive director of government affairs for the American Water Works Association. He previously served as interim president of the US Water Alliance, as national source water protection coordinator for the US Endowment for Forestry and Communities, and as principal at the Cadmus Group Inc. (2004–14). Mehan was assistant administrator for water at the US Environmental Protection Agency (2001–3), environmental stewardship counselor to the 2004 G-8 Summit Planning Organization, director of the Michigan Office of the Great Lakes (1993–2001), associate deputy administrator of EPA (1992), and director of the Missouri Department of Natural Resources (1989–92). He is an adjunct professor at George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law School and Carnegie Mellon University’s Heinz College. A graduate of Saint Louis University and its School of Law, Mehan has served on the Water Science and Technology Board and the Committee on the Mississippi River and the Clean Water Act for the National Academies; the Environmental Protection Agency’s Environmental Financial Advisory Board; and the boards of the US Water Alliance, the Great Lakes Observing System, and the Potomac Conservancy. He is a member of the Environmental Law Institute, a regular book reviewer for The Environmental Forum, and an independent expert judge for the US Conference of Mayors’ City Water Conservation Achievement Award program.
Dominic Parker is the Ilene and Morton Harris Senior Fellow (adjunct) at the Hoover Institution, where he codirects the Renewing Indigenous Economies and Markets vs. Mandates for the Environment and Energy projects. He is the Anderson-Bascom Professor of Applied Economics at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Parker’s expertise is in the economics of development, natural resources, and energy policy with a focus on the role of property rights, rule of law, and governance.
Seren Pendleton-Knoll has been in the corporate social responsibility and sustainable finance field for over a decade. She is currently the managing director of external affairs at Blue Forest, a conservation finance organization that advances ecosystem restoration to reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfire. Prior to joining Blue Forest, and following a career in social services, Pendleton-Knoll was associate director at the Center for Responsible Business at the University of California–Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, where she helped launch and lead the Sustainable and Impact Finance Initiative. She has an MS in development practice from UC Berkeley, and a BA from Whitman College.
Will Rafey works as an assistant professor in the Department of Economics at UCLA. He is also a faculty research fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research. He graduated summa cum laude from Harvard College, completed Part III of the Mathematical Tripos at the University of Cambridge, and received his PhD in economics from MIT. His research focuses on the design and regulation of environmental markets and has been published in leading academic journals such as the American Economic Review and the Journal of Public Economics.
Joshua Rauh is the Ormond Family Professor of Finance at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. He leads Hoover’s Fiscal Policy Initiative and the State and Local Governance Initiative. He formerly served at the White House, where he was principal chief economist on the President’s Council of Economic Advisers from 2019 to 2020, and he has taught at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business and the Kellogg School of Management. His research focuses on government liabilities, corporate and individual taxation, and institutional investing. He is the founder of the Liberty Lens economics Substack.
Condoleezza Rice is the Tad and Dianne Taube Director and the Stephenson Senior Fellow on Public Policy at the Hoover Institution. She is also the Denning Professor in Global Business and the Economy at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business and a founding partner of international strategic consulting firm Rice, Hadley, Gates & Manuel LLC. Rice served as the sixty-sixth US secretary of state (2005–9) and as national security advisor (2001–5) in the George W. Bush administration. She previously served on President George H. W. Bush’s National Security Council staff and as Stanford University’s provost. She has been on the Stanford faculty since 1981 and has won two of the university’s highest teaching honors. Rice is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and has been awarded more than fifteen honorary doctorates. Born in Birmingham, Alabama, Rice earned her bachelor’s degree, cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, from the University of Denver; her master’s degree from the University of Notre Dame; and her PhD from the Graduate School of International Studies at the University of Denver, all in political science.
Kimberley Strassel is a member of the editorial board for The Wall Street Journal. She writes editorials and the weekly Potomac Watch column and All Things with Kim Strassel newsletter. Strassel joined The Wall Street Journal in 1994, working in its news department in Brussels and London, and then for its editorial page in New York, Washington, and Alaska. A 2014 Bradley Prize recipient, she is a Fox News contributor and the author of three books, including The Biden Malaise. An Oregon native, Strassel earned a bachelor’s degree from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University.
C. J. Stewart, a member of the Crow Tribe’s Big Lodge Clan and Child of the Greasy Mouth Clan, currently serves as the Crow Nation energy director. With nearly five years of experience as a Crow tribal entrepreneur and energy consultant specializing in Indian energy development and infrastructure, he is also a board member and cofounder of the National Tribal Energy Association. Stewart served two terms in the Crow Legislative Branch, chairing the Natural Resource and Infrastructure Development Committees for eight years and playing a key role in securing coal development deals with Cloud Peak Energy and Westmoreland Coal. In 2016, he served as the Crow Nation energy advisor and legislative liaison. Stewart was appointed to Congressman Ryan Zinke’s Natural Resource Advisory Committee for the 114th Congress and was elected vice chairman in 2014. In 2013 he became the first Native American named to the Montana Coal Board, appointed by Governor Steve Bullock, and served as its vice chairman. He also worked as a coal miner for ten years. In 2019 Stewart was appointed to the National Coal Council by US Secretary of Energy Rick Perry and was reappointed by US Secretary of Energy Dan Brouillette for a term from 2020 to 2022.
Dr. Scott Tinker is an energy explorer who brings organizations together to address societal challenges in energy, the environment, and the economy. Tinker is director emeritus of the Bureau of Economic Geology at the University of Texas at Austin, and CEO of Tinker Energy Associates, the Switch Energy Alliance, and Energy Corps. Tinker is featured in the award-winning films Switch and Switch On. He is host of Energy Switch, airing in 110 million households, and the voice of Earth Date, featured weekly on 460 radio stations nationwide. In his visits to sixty countries, Tinker has given 1,200 keynote and invited lectures, and presented a TEDx talk titled “The Dual Challenge: Energy and Environment.” Tinker serves on many boards and councils and is an AGI Campbell Medalist, AAPG Halbouty Medalist, GCAGS Boyd Medalist, AIPG Parker Medalist, and Geological Society of America fellow.
Margaret Walls is an economist and senior fellow at Resources for the Future (RFF), an independent, nonprofit research organization in Washington, DC, where she is director of the Climate Risks and Resilience Program and a cohost of Resources Radio, the RFF weekly podcast. Dr. Walls’s research focuses on the impacts of extreme weather, floods, hurricanes, and wildfires on people and communities and the design of programs and policies to improve resilience. She has published widely in peer-reviewed journals and is the author of more than forty book chapters and published reports. She is a features editor of the Review of Environmental Economics and Policy, a member of the advisory board for the US Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Office of Policy Development and Research, a member of the Technical Advisory Committee for the Louisiana Coastal Master Plan, and a former board member of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists.
Andrew Waxman is an assistant professor of economics and public policy at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs and, by courtesy, in the Department of Economics at the University of Texas at Austin. In 2022–3, he was a visiting scholar at the Belfer Center at the Harvard Kennedy School. He is also an affiliate of the Cornell Institute for China Economic Research. He has a PhD from Cornell University in applied economics, an MSc from the University of Oxford in economics for development, and a BA from Stanford University in economics. Waxman is an applied microeconomist examining the relationship between environmental outcomes, urban and energy policies, and inequality. Much of his work results from thinking about how policies and individual decisions have implications for levels of pollution through the outcomes of home electricity usage or commuting using personal vehicles. He has worked at understanding the economic effects of tolling, subway expansion, and carbon capture and storage technology in the United States and China.
