Robert E. Hall is an applied economist with interests in employment issues, technology, competition, and economic policy in the aggregate economy and in particular markets. His current research focuses on levels of employment and output in market economies and on the economics of high technology.

Hall is President-elect of the American Economic Association and will serve as President in 2010. He presented the Ely Lecture to the Association in 2001 and served as Vice President in 2005.

Along with Hoover Institution colleague Alvin Rabushka, Hall developed a framework for equitable and efficient consumption taxation. Their article in the Wall Street Journal in December 1981 was the starting point for an upsurge of interest in consumption taxation. The proposal is spelled out in more detail in their book, The Flat Tax (Hoover Institution Press). The pair were recognized in Money magazine's Money Hall of Fame for their contributions to financial innovation.

Hall is coauthor, with Marc Lieberman, of Economics: Principles and Applications.

Hall also serves as director of the research program on economic fluctuations and growth of the National Bureau of Economic Research, an interuniversity research organization. He is chairman of the Bureau's Committee on Business Cycle Dating, which maintains the semiofficial chronology of the U.S. business cycle.

Hall has advised a number of government agencies on national economic policy, including the Justice Department, the Treasury Department, the Federal Reserve Board, and the Congressional Budget Office, where he serves on the Advisory Committee. He served on the National Presidential Advisory Committee on Productivity. He has testified on numerous occasions before congressional committees concerning national economic policy.

Before coming to Stanford Department of Economics in 1978, Hall taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and at the University of California, Berkeley. Born in Palo Alto, he attended school in Palo Alto and Los Angeles, received his B.A. from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1964 and his Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1967.

Hall is married to economist Susan Woodward, chairman of Sand Hill Econometrics, and lives in Menlo Park, California.

Visit http://www.bob-sooz.blogspot.com/ for pictures and information about our visits to places with villages, ruins, and good food.