Nationally prominent economist Steven J. Davis will join the Hoover Institution full time as the Thomas W. and Susan B. Ford senior fellow after more than thirty-five years at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business, where his career included service as chaired professor and the school’s deputy dean of the faculty. His appointment is effective November 1.
Davis became affiliated with the Hoover Institution as a W. Glenn Campbell and Rita Ricardo-Campbell National Fellow during the 1988–89 academic year. He was appointed a visiting fellow in 2015 and an adjunct senior fellow in 2017.
"Steve Davis has been a leading voice in helping government and business leaders demystify economic uncertainties and factors that generate job creation and productivity,” said Hoover Institution director Condoleezza Rice. “In particular, his research into COVID-19's impact on economies, including the future of work, exemplifies the substantial and timely impact of his scholarship."
“It is a great privilege to join the Hoover Institution, which stands at the confluence of two great human enterprises: advancing our knowledge and understanding through research; and using that research to inform policymaking and the public so as to build a more prosperous society, safeguard our freedoms, and promote a more peaceful world,” said Davis. “The chance to participate in both enterprises is, for me, tremendously exciting and rewarding. People also make the place. Hoover has world-class scholars and other fabulous folks. I love being here. I love the opportunity to engage political scientists, historians, economists, national security experts, and leaders with deep experience in government service and policymaking.”
Davis’s broad research interests include business performance, hiring practices, job loss, wage behavior, and the effects of economic uncertainty. He is well known in the economic policy community for his influential work using longitudinal data on firms and establishments to understand job creation and destruction dynamics and their relationship to economic performance. In the past decade, he has developed innovative surveys that probe the attitudes, perceptions, plans, expectations, and subjective uncertainty of workers and business executives.
Davis is the author or coauthor of numerous books and studies, including Job Creation and Destruction, named a Choice Outstanding Academic Title by the American Library Association; “Recessions and the Costs of Job Loss”; “The Establishment-Level Behavior of Vacancies and Hiring”; “Private Equity, Jobs, and Productivity”; “The Unprecedented Stock Market Reaction to COVID-19”; and “Measuring Economic Policy Uncertainty,” for which he received the Fraser Institute of Public Policy’s Addington Prize in Measurement.
Davis’s recent research focuses on the big shift to work from home catalyzed by the COVID-19 pandemic. His article “Working from Home Around the World” argues that the shift to hybrid and fully remote arrangements will endure long after the pandemic itself. His forthcoming article “The Evolution of Work from Home” distills the implications for productivity, wages, and worker well-being.
Davis cofounded the Economic Policy Uncertainty project, the U.S. Survey of Working Arrangements and Attitudes, the Global Survey of Working Arrangements, and the Atlanta Fed/Chicago Booth/Stanford Survey of Business Uncertainty. He co-organizes the Asian Monetary Policy Forum, hosted yearly in Singapore. He has received research grants from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and the US National Science Foundation.
In his private-sector work, Davis has developed new labor market indicators, advised on the macroeconomic outlook, quantified the likelihood of business tax reform, and consulted and testified as an expert witness in many litigation matters.
His teaching experience includes PhD-level courses in macroeconomics and labor economics at the University of Chicago, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the University of Maryland; MBA courses in macroeconomics, money and banking, business strategy, and financial institutions for Chicago Booth; and executive MBA courses in macroeconomics for Chicago Booth in Barcelona, Hong Kong, London, and Singapore.
In addition to conducting his fellowship at Hoover, Davis will also become a senior fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research. He will continue to serve concurrently as a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, an economic advisor to the US Congressional Budget Office, a visiting scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, and a senior adviser to the Brookings Papers on Economic Activity.
Davis was past editor of the American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics. He currently sits on the editorial board of China Economic Review and the advisory board of the Journal for Labour Market Research.
He has written for The Atlantic, Financial Times, Forbes, Los Angeles Times, Wall Street Journal, and other popular media. He has appeared on BBC, Bloomberg TV, CNBC, CNN, Fox News, NBC News, among other outlets.
Davis received his PhD and MA in economics from Brown University and his BA in economics from Portland State University.
For coverage opportunities, contact Jeffrey Marschner, 202-760-3187, jmarsch@stanford.edu.
