Valentin Bolotnyy, an economist and Kleinheinz Fellow at the Hoover Institution, has joined California governor Gavin Newsom’s Council of Economic Advisors. His appointment became effective on August 22, 2024.
Established in February 2020, the council is intended to provide California’s governor with a wide range of economic advice as well as deepen the relationship between the administration and academic researchers to move the Golden State’s economy toward expanding prosperity and opportunity. It includes Lt. Governor Eleni Kounalakis and other senior state officials as well as economists from leading California universities. It is cochaired by UC Berkeley Distinguished Professor Laura Tyson and Fernando Lozano, chair of economics at Pomona College.
Bolotnyy, who joined the Hoover fellowship in 2019, focuses his research on innovative policies that improve economic and health outcomes, especially for society’s most vulnerable populations. A member of Hoover’s State and Local Governance Initiative, he collaborates with state and local agencies on projects and uses administrative data to study questions that are pressing to public officials. His partners have included the Allegheny County (Pennsylvania) Department of Human Services, the Texas Department of Public Safety, and the Massachusetts Department of Transportation, among others.
His recent publications include a chapter on infrastructure in a federal system with Wohlford Family Senior Fellow Michael Boskin in American Federalism Today, a book from the Hoover Institution Press. Other publications address the impact of heat on law enforcement operations, the effectiveness of different infrastructure procurement practices, and immigrant intergenerational social mobility. In ongoing work, Bolotnyy and his team are studying involuntary hospitalization practices and ways to improve outcomes for those with serious mental health issues.
In 2024 Bolotnyy was awarded the Upjohn Institute Early Career Research Award and Stanford Impact Labs Stage 2: Test Solutions funding worth $786,100. He is a research affiliate at the IZA Institute of Labor Economics and an affiliated scholar at the Deliberative Democracy Lab at Stanford’s Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL).
For coverage opportunities, contact Jeffrey Marschner, 202-760-3187, jmarsch@stanford.edu.
