Tyler Goodspeed

Tyler Goodspeed is an American economist and economic historian serving as Chief Economist of ExxonMobil Corporation. He previously chaired the White House Council of Economic Advisers, chaired the OECD Economic Policy Committee, and has held academic or fellowship roles associated with Oxford, King’s College London, Hoover Institution, Cato Institute, and CSIS.

Three Centuries of Recessions Undermine the Boom-Bust Theory

Tyler Goodspeed argues in a Hoover Institution presentation that recessions are usually misread as the inevitable result of excess in the preceding boom, when the longer historical record points instead to shocks filtered through institutions that either absorb or amplify them. Drawing on UK and US data back to 1700, he says expansions do not die of old age, recession warnings routinely fail, and downturns are often given retrospective moral labels — from dot-coms to housing — that obscure what actually caused the contraction.

Hoover InstitutionJun 1, 202614 min read