Robert Ernest Hall

Background

Hall, Robert Ernest was born on August 13, 1943 in Palo Alto, California, United States. Son of Victor Ernest and Frances Marie Hall.

Education

Bob Hall received a Bachelor in Economics at the University of California, Berkeley and a Doctor of Philosophy in Economics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology for thesis titled Essays on the Theory of Wealth under the supervision of Robert Solow.

Career

He is generally considered a macroeconomist, but he describes himself as an "applied economist". Hall served as President of the American Economic Association in 2010. Hall has a broad range of interest, including technology, competition, employment, policy and the such.

Hall is perhaps most famous for co-originating the flat tax with Alvin Rabushka.

They co-authored a book with the same name. Hall and Rabuska often act as advisors to countries in Eastern Europe that wish to adopt the flat tax

In 1978, Hall changed the direction of research on consumption by showing that under rational expectations, consumption should be a martingale. Prior to this time, influenced by Milton Friedman"s permanent income hypothesis under adaptive expectations, economists had expected past income to affect current consumption by altering individuals" expectations about their permanent income.

Instead, Hall"s theory pointed to a relation between current consumption and expected future income, which implied that consumption should only change when there is surprising news about income.

This, in turn, implies that changes in consumption should be unpredictable (which is called the "martingale" property in statistics). Hall surprised the macroeconomic profession by providing evidence that consumption was, in fact, unpredictable. Subsequent evidence has shown that consumption is more predictable than he claimed, but ever since Hall"s paper most empirical research on consumption has taken the martingale case as the baseline and focused on what mechanisms could cause deviations from martingale consumption.

In describing if marginal cost is procyclical, Hall argued that the key is knowing the productivity shocks in real business cycle theory are actually the result of monopoly power.

Because monopolies can sell where their price exceeds marginal cost, they tend to have excess capacity. Thus, as demand increases, the excess capacity shrinks and marginal cost approaches price and in that way it is procyclical.

This idea captures the distinction between real productivity and productivity growth. While there is greater productivity (less is being wasted), workers aren"t becoming more productive.

To explain sticky wages, Hall emphasizes the importance of costs borne by the employer.

Firms benefit when times are good but are penalized when times are slim (because wages are usually fixed) and they pay for searching for a good employee/employer match. Thus, employers are more risk averse in hiring and have less incentive to engage in search. Hence employers simply do not hire in down times.

This idea is reinforced because workers cannot collectively signal that they would work for less in down times, wages have a tendency to stick upwards.

Achievements

• Robert Ernest Hall has been listed as a noteworthy Economics educator by Marquis Who's Who.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Macroeconomics: Principles and Applications

    (Discover how today's macroeconomic policy issues, decisio...)

  • Low Tax, Simple Tax, Flat Tax

    (From the inner book flap: "In this persuasive treatise on...)

  • The Rational Consumer: Theory and Evidence

    ( Since the late 1960s, Robert Hall's research has had a ...)

  • Booms and Recessions in a Noisy Economy (Arthur Okun Memorial Lectures Series)

    (One task of macroeconomics is to understand and predict f...)

  • The Flat Tax Second Edition
  • The Flat Tax (HOOVER CLASSICS) by Robert E. Hall (2007-04-01)
  • (The Flat Tax ) Author: Robert E Hall Apr-2007
  • Digital dealing-Accordi digitali
  • The Flat Tax (HOOVER CLASSICS)
  • Digital Dealing: How E-Markets Are Transforming the Economy
  • The Flat Tax: Updated Revised Edition (Hoover Institution Press Publication) by Robert E. Hall (1995-03-17)

Membership

Fellow: Society Labor Economists, American Academy Arts and Sciences, Econometric Society. Member: National Academy of Sciences, American Statis Association, American Economics Association (Ely lecturer 2001, vice president 2005-2008, president-elect 2009, president 2010).

Connections

Married Susan E. Woodward. Children: Jonathan, Andrew, Christopher, Anne.

Father:

Victor Ernest Hall

Mother:

Frances Marie Hall

Spouse:

Susan E. Woodward

child:

Andrew Hall

child:

Christopher Hall

child:

Anne Hall

child:

Jonathan Hall