Ross Levine
Ross Levine is the Booth Derbas Family/Edward Lazear Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, co-director of Hoover’s Financial Regulation Working Group, and an economist whose research focuses on financial regulation, finance and growth, economic development, entrepreneurship, and how financial systems affect prosperity and stability.
Central Banks Face Accountability Tests Across Independence, Reserves, and Stability Policy
At a Hoover Institution conference on central-bank independence, Marvin Barth, Darrell Duffie and Christina Skinner each framed the next phase of monetary and financial policy as an accountability problem. Barth argued that the Federal Reserve’s policy failures and lack of humility have weakened its political legitimacy; Duffie said shrinking the Fed’s balance sheet depends on changing reserve demand and payment mechanics, not simply selling assets; and Skinner argued that financial stability policy should weigh growth and economic security rather than treating every visible risk reduction as a net gain.
The American Dream Is Weakening Where Competition and Mobility Are Blocked
In a Hoover Institution discussion moderated by Washington Post columnist Megan McArdle, economists John Cochrane, Valerie Ramey and Ross Levine argue that American prosperity has depended less on wealth itself than on institutions and habits that allow competition, risk-taking, mobility and disruption. They differ on emphasis — Cochrane stresses limits on government and regulatory failure, Levine competition joined to justice and stability, and Ramey education, culture and immigration — but converge on a warning that the American Dream weakens when schools fail, incumbents are protected, fiscal space erodes and politics stops doing routine maintenance.