Kevin D. Hoover, Professor of Economics and Philosophy

Kevin D. Hoover joined Duke University in 2006 as Professor of Economics and Philosophy. He was previously professor and chair of the Economics Department of the University of California, Davis. Hoover was educated at the College of William and Mary, the University of St. Andrews, and Balliol and Nuffield Colleges of the University of Oxford. He had worked in the Research Department of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, and held positions as a Heyworth Prize Research Fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford and lecturer in economics at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford. Hoover’s teaching and research interests include monetary and macroeconomics, econometric search algorithms, causal modeling, the methodology of economics and the philosophy of science applied to economics, and the history of economics. Hoover is a former fellow of the National Humanities Center and a past recipient of grants from the National Science Foundation and the Trent Foundation. He has organized conferences in the history of economics and economic methodology -- most recently the 2008 conference: "Robert Solow and the Development of Growth Economics." The author of more than eighty academic articles, four books, and has edited eight volumes of articles. He has presented his work widely in conferences and seminars in universities, central banks, and government departments throughout the world. In 2009, for instance, he presented an invited lectures, “Was Harrod Right?” to the 5th International Keynes Conference: On Modern Finance and Keynes, Sophia University, Tokyo; “Identity, Structure, and Causation in Economic Models,” to the Conference on Modeling the World: Perspectives from Biology and Economics, University of Helsinki"; and "Microfoundational Programs," to the First International Symposium on the History of Economic Thought, University of São Paulo, Brazil. He is past President of the History of Economics Society and past Chair of the International Network for Economic Method. He was for many years an editor of the Journal of Economic Methodology and is curretly an associate editor of the journal History of Political Economy. He serves on a number of editorial boards.

Contact Info:

Office Location:	231 Soc Sciences
Office Phone:	+1 919 660 1876
Email Address:
Web Page:	http://econ.duke.edu/~kdh9/

Teaching (Fall 2009):

• ECON 110D.001, INTERMEDIATE MACROECONOMICS Synopsis

  White 107, WF 10:05 AM-11:20 AM

• PHIL 145.01, PHILOSOPHY OF ECONOMICS Synopsis

  West Duke 08A, M 03:05 PM-05:35 PM

• PHIL 291S.01, CAUSATION Synopsis

  West Duke 204, Th 04:25 PM-06:55 PM

Research Interests:

Professor Hoover's research interests include macroeconomics, monetary economics, the history of economics, and the philosophy and methodology of empirical economics. His recent work in economics has focused on the application of causal search methodologies for structural vector autoregression, the history of microfoundational programs in macroeconomics, and Roy Harrod's early work on dynamic macroeconomics. In philosophy, he has concentrated on issues related to causality, especially in economics, and on reductionism -- the philosophical counterpart to microfoundations. Recently published papers include: He has conducted studies to investigate the history of twentieth century macroeconomics, the structure of vector auto-regression models, and causality in macroeconomics examined via specification search methodologies. Recent working papers include: “Still Puzzling: Evaluating the Price Puzzle in an Empirically Identified Structural Vector Autoregression,” “Was Harrod Right?” "Identity, Structure, and Causal Representation in Scientific Models."