Russell Roberts, Hoover Fellow and professor of economics at George Mason University, speaks on Hillary, Daisuke, and China: The Peculiar Economics of Political Pandering.
This event was part of the Hoover Institution's Spring Retreat 2007.
Bio
John Raisian
John Raisian is director of the Hoover Institution, assuming his position in 1989. He also holds an appointment as a senior fellow and is an economist who has specialized in national and international labor market and human resource issues. He joined the Hoover Institution in 1986 as a fellow, while serving as associate director during 1986-88, and deputy director during 1988-89.
He received his B.A. in economics and mathematics from Ohio University in 1971 and his Ph.D. in economics from the University of California at Los Angeles in 1978.
Raisian was a consultant to the Rand Corporation from 1974 to 1975 after which he went to the University of Washington as a visiting assistant professor of economics in 1975-76.
From 1976 to 1980, he was an assistant professor of economics at the University of Houston where he received a distinguished teaching award from the College of Social Sciences.
In 1980, he entered public service as a senior economist in the Office of Research and Evaluation, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. In 1981, he joined the U.S. Department of Labor, Office of the Assistant Secretary for Policy, in two capacities - Special Assistant for Economic Policy, a role he held until 1983, and Director of Research and Technical Support, which he left in 1984.
As a result of his work for the U.S. Department of Labor, he received the Department's Distinguished Service Award. In 1983, he took a leave of absence from the Labor Department to serve as executive director of the President's Task Force on Food Assistance.
After leaving the Department of Labor, Raisian became president of Unicon Research Corporation, an economic consulting firm in Los Angeles, where he worked until joining the Hoover Institution in 1986.
Russell Roberts
Russell Roberts is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution and a professor of economics and the J. Fish and Lillian F. Smith Distinguished Scholar at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University.
His latest book is The Invisible Heart: An Economic Romance (MIT Press, 2001). The Invisible Heart explores the economics and morality of the marketplace in the framework of a novel. His first book, The Choice: A Fable of Free Trade and Protectionism, a novel on international trade policy and the human side of international trade, was named one of the top ten books of 1994 by Business Week and one of the best books of 1994 by the Financial Times. An updated and revised edition was published in the spring of 2000.
Roberts is features editor and a founding advisory board member for the Library of Economics and Liberty, an on-line resource for economics research and education. He is a frequent commentator on National Public Radio's Morning Edition.
Improper and usually unlawful conduct intended to secure a benefit for oneself or another. Its forms include bribery, extortion, and the misuse of inside information. It exists where there is community indifference or a lack of enforcement policies. In societies with a culture of ritualized gift giving, the line between acceptable and unacceptable gifts is often hard to draw. See alsoorganized crime.
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