Meet the Hoover Institution experts partnering with Innovate Alabama – Alabama NewsCenter

Six experts from Stanford Universitys Hoover Institution are partnering with Innovate Alabama to develop policy recommendations that will grow Alabamas economy, particularly in technology.

Created last summer by Gov. Kay Ivey, the 15-member Alabama Innovation Commission is the first statewide commission focused on inclusive growth in entrepreneurship, innovation and technology.

The commission is tasked with developing policy recommendations aimed at fostering economic growth and encouraging recruitment of technology-based companies, while also establishing and broadening paths to entrepreneurship and jobs in innovation.

The commission, which is supported by an advisory council, is partnering with Silicon Valley-based Hoover Institution to address the starting, recruitment and retention of companies and jobs; the development of innovation hubs; and the commercialization of startups. Within these focus areas, they will identify ways to improve education and skills-based learning and leverage the states successes in a way that creates prosperity for Alabamians.

RELATED: AlabamaInnovationCommissionlaunches website

Former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is director of the Hoover Institution and is on the advisory council. Alabama Power Executive Vice President Zeke Smith is president of the council.

Growing our states economy in the areas of technology and innovation is at the heart of Innovate Alabamas focus, Smith said. Partnering with the Hoover Institution, and working closely with these talented individuals, adds a level of policy expertise to Innovate Alabama that will help strengthen our inclusive economy, build a national hub for innovation and elevate Alabama.

The six Hoover Institution experts are highly decorated, nationally recognized thought leaders in their fields. Following are excerpts from their bios:

Ralph Banks Racial justice and inequality

Ralph Banks is the Jackson Eli Reynolds Professor of Law at Stanford Law School and professor, by courtesy, at the School of Education. A native of Cleveland, Ohio, and a graduate of Stanford University and Harvard Law School, Banks has been a member of the Stanford faculty since 1998. He teaches and writes about family law, employment discrimination law, and race and the law. At Stanford, he is affiliated with the Michelle Clayman Institute for Gender Research, the Center for Comparative Studies in Race and the Ethnicity, the Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education and the Center for the Study of Poverty and Inequality. His writings have appeared in a wide range of popular and scholarly publications, including the Stanford Law Review, the Yale Law Journal, The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times. He has been interviewed and quoted by media including ABC News/Nightline, National Public Radio, The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times.

Erik Brynjolfsson Future of work and technological innovation

Erik Brynjolfsson holds bachelors and masters degrees from Harvard University in applied mathematics and decision sciences and a Ph.D. from MIT in managerial economics. He is director of the Digital Economy Lab and the senior fellow at Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI. He is the Ralph Landau Senior Fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research and holds appointments at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, Stanford Department of Economics and is a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. One of the most-cited authors on the economics of information, Brynjolfsson was among the first researchers to measure productivity contributions of information technology and the complementary role of organizational capital and other intangibles. He has done pioneering research on digital commerce, intangible assets and the effects of IT on business strategy, productivity and performance. Brynjolfsson speaks globally and is the author of nine books including, with co-author Andrew McAfee, the best-seller The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies and Machine, Platform, Crowd: Harnessing Our Digital Future and more than 100 academic articles and five patents.

Steve Haber: Economic policy and infrastructure (lead advisor)

Stephen Haber is the Peter and Helen Bing Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and the A.A. and Jeanne Welch Milligan Professor in the School of Humanities and Sciences at Stanford University. In addition, he is a professor of political science, professor of history and professor of economics (by courtesy), as well as a senior fellow of both the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research and the Center for International Development. He is among Stanfords most distinguished teachers, having been awarded every teaching prize Stanford has to offer. He was honored with Stanfords highest teaching honor in 2011, the Walter Gores Award. Haber has spent his academic life investigating the political institutions and economic policies that delay innovation and improvements in living standards. Much of that work has focused on how regulatory and supervisory agencies are often used by incumbent firms to stifle competition, thereby curtailing economic opportunities and slowing technological progress. His current research focuses on three areas: the creation of regulatory barriers to entry in finance; the economic and political consequences of holdup problems created by different systems of agricultural production; and the comparative development of patent systems. He is director of Hoovers Working Group on Innovation and Intellectual Property.

Eric Hanushek: Education reform

Eric Hanushek is the Paul and Jean Hanna Senior Fellow and a member of the Koret Task Force on K-12 Education at the Hoover Institution. A leader in the development of the economic analysis of educational issues, his research spans the impact on achievement of teacher quality, high-stakes accountability and class-size reduction. He pioneered measuring teacher quality on the basis of student achievement, the foundation for current research into the value-added evaluations of teachers and schools. His work on school efficiency is central to debates about school finance adequacy and equity. His analyses of the economic impact of school outcomes motivate both national and international educational policy design. Hanushek is chairman of the Executive Committee for the Texas Schools Project at the University of Texas at Dallas, a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research and area coordinator for Economics of Education with the CESifo Research Network. He formerly was chair of the board of directors of the National Board for Education Sciences. His latest book, The Knowledge Capital of Nations: Education and the Economics of Growth, identifies the close link between the skills of people and economic growth of the nation, and shows the economic impact of high-quality schools.

Josh Rauh: Economic policy and infrastructure

Joshua Rauh is a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and the Ormond Family Professor of Finance at Stanfords Graduate School of Business. He formerly served at the White House, where he was principal chief economist on the Presidents Council of Economic Advisers and taught at the University of Chicagos Booth School of Business and the Kellogg School of Management. Rauh studies corporate investment, business taxation, government pension liabilities and investment management. He has published numerous journal articles and was awarded the 2006 Brattle Prize for the outstanding research paper on corporate finance published in the Journal of Finance for his paper Investment and Financing Constraints: Evidence from the Funding of Corporate Pension Plans. In 2011, he won the Smith Breeden Prize for the outstanding research paper on capital markets, published in the Journal of Finance, for his paper Public Pension Promises: How Big Are They and What Are they Worth? co-authored with Robert Novy-Marx. His other writings include Earnings Manipulation, Pension Assumptions and Managerial Investment Decisions, co-authored with Daniel Bergstresser and Mihir Desai, which won the Barclays Global Investor Best Symposium Paper from the European Finance Association and appeared in the Quarterly Journal of Economics. Other work has appeared in the Review of Financial Studies, the Journal of Financial Economics and the Journal of Political Economy.

Macke Raymond: Education reform

Margaret Macke Raymond has served as founder and director of the Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO) at Stanford University since its inception in 1999. The CREDO team conducts rigorous and independent analysis and evaluation of promising programs that aim to improve outcomes for students in K-12 public schools. Their mantra is We let the data speak. The team conducts large-scale analyses under a collaboration with 30 state education agencies. CREDOs studies and reports are relied upon by the U.S. Department of Education, governors, state chief school officers, state legislators, the courts, other policymakers and the media. Supporters and opponents alike point to CREDO findings, moving the debate past evidence disputes to more substantive arguments. She is a regular source for local and national media, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times and the Denver Post. Mackes deep belief in building capacity for improved analysis of programs and policy has found its place through service on advisory boards, technical resource groups and peer review panels. She was selected as a Pahara-Aspen Education Fellow in recognition of her leadership in U.S. education policy.

Visit the Innovate Alabama website for more information.

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Meet the Hoover Institution experts partnering with Innovate Alabama - Alabama NewsCenter