Joshua Rauh is the Ormond Family Professor of Finance at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. He leads the Hoover Institution’s Fiscal Policy Initiative and the Hoover Institution State and Local Governance Initiative. He formerly served at the White House where he was principal chief economist on the President’s Council of Economic Advisers (2019-20), and taught at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business (2004–9) and the Kellogg School of Management (2009–12). At the Hoover Institution he has served as Director of Research (2018-19). He has testified before House, Joint, and Joint Select Committees of the United States Congress, and he is a member of the Panel of Economic Advisers of the Congressional Budget Office.

His research focuses on government liabilities, corporate and individual taxation, and institutional investing. His work has received media coverage in outlets such as the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Financial Times, and The Economist. He has received various awards recognizing his scholarship including the Brattle Prize and the Smith Breeden Prize of the American Finance Association. His scholarly papers have appeared in journals such as the Journal of Political Economy, the Quarterly Journal of Economics, the Journal of Finance, the Journal of Financial Economics, the Review of Financial Studies, and the Journal of Public Economics. He is a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research.

He has published numerous op-eds in outlets including the Wall Street Journal, The Hill, and The National Review online. His PragerU videos on public pensions, the role of government, and taxation and inequality have together been viewed over 10 million times. He is the founder of the Liberty Lens Economics Substack.

Prior to his academic career, Dr. Rauh was an associate economist at Goldman Sachs in London. He received a BA from Yale University and a PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, both in economics.

Douglas Irwin is John French Professor of Economics at Dartmouth College. He is the author of Clashing over Commerce: A History of U.S. Trade Policy (University of Chicago Press, 2017), which The Economist and Foreign Affairs selected as one of their Best Books of the Year. He is president-elect of the Economic History Association (2022-23).

He is the author of Free Trade Under Fire (Princeton University Press, fifth edition 2020), Trade Policy Disaster: Lessons from the 1930s (MIT Press, 2012), Peddling Protectionism: Smoot-Hawley and the Great Depression (Princeton University Press, 2011), The Genesis of the GATT (Cambridge University Press, 2008, co-authored with Petros Mavroidis and Alan Sykes), Against the Tide:  An Intellectual History of Free Trade (Princeton University Press, 1996), and many articles on trade policy and economic history in books and professional journals.

He is a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research and a non-resident Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. He worked on trade policy issues while on the staff of President Ronald Reagan’s Council of Economic Advisers and later worked in the International Finance Division at the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System in Washington, D.C. Before joining Dartmouth, Irwin taught at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business.

Gale L. Pooley teaches U.S. economic history at Utah Tech University. He has taught economics and statistics at Brigham Young University-Hawaii, Alfaisal University in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Brigham Young University-Idaho, Boise State University, and the College of Idaho. Dr. Pooley serves on the board of HumanProgress.org.

Dr. Pooley earned his BBA in Economics at Boise State University. He did graduate work at Montana State University and completed his PhD at the University of Idaho. His dissertation topic was on the Knowledge Acquisition Preferences of the CEOs of the Inc. 500.

In 1986 he founded Analytix Group, a real estate valuation and consulting firm. The Analytix Group has performed over 5,000 appraisals in the U.S. and Saudi Arabia. Dr. Pooley has held professional designations from the Appraisal Institute, the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors, and the CCIM Institute.

He has published articles in National Review, HumanProgress, The American Spectator, FEE, the Utah Bar Journal, the Appraisal Journal, Quillette, and RealClearMarkets. 

Dr. Pooley is a Fellow with the Discovery Institute and serves on the board of HumanProgress.org. He also serves on the Foundation for Economic Education Faculty Network and is a Scholar with Hawaii’s Grassroot Institute. He is also a member of the Mont Pelerin Society. He has presented at FreedomFest and the COSM Technology conference.

His major research activity has been the Simon Abundance Index, which he co-authored with Dr. Marian Tupy.

Dr. Michael Sarel is Director of Kohelet Economic Forum. Served as the Israeli Chief Economist and Director of State Revenue, Research and International Affairs until April 2014 . Obtained his doctoral degree from Harvard. Dr. Sarel has worked for the World Bank, The International Monetary Fund and The Bank of Israel’s Research Department, and served as Head of Research in the Ministry of Finance and Head of the Economics and Research Department at Harel Insurance and Finance Group.

Naomi is an expert and leader in driving technology for societal impact, building innovation and investment ecosystems, and promoting international collaboration in business and tech. She is an independent advisor and Co-Founder of Remedy CoLab, offering strategies and solutions to build trust and combat malicious online influence in the age of digital media and AI.
Originally a technology investment banker, Naomi was VP at the Israel Innovation Authority and Head of its Societal Challenges division – shaping policy to support impact tech, grow the innovation ecosystem and make it more inclusive; and managing $25M of public investments into ventures annually. She has led organizations across sectors, including the UK Israel Tech Hub – an award-winning model for bi-national tech partnerships, Nova (Social Finance Israel group) – an NGO providing data solutions for the social and public sectors, and a workforce development NGO. She helped launch the DatA-IL innovation community.
Naomi is a graduate of Harvard and Hebrew Universities, a former fellow at Cambridge CSaP and at RISE Israel Tech Policy Institute. Frequent speaker (English & Hebrew native), former top competitive debater.

Mr. Amir Shavit is the Chairman of the Israel Electricity Authority. Shavit is a graduate of the Hebrew University with a bachelor’s degree in Economics and International Relations.
Previously, he served as the Water and Energy Coordinator in the Budget Department of the Ministry of Finance and as a member of the Electricity Authority’s Plenum. He then served as Chief Financial Officer of Israel Railways. Later, he was CEO of a subsidiary of Adeltek, and most recently he was CEO of the investment holding company Mashkei HaDarom.

Mr. Shavit is married and the father of four daughters. He is a member of Kibbutz Na’an.

Maayan Grinshpon is an Economist at the Israel Competition Authority, where she leads economic analyses of mergers and advises government and Knesset committees on competition policy—particularly in the transportation sector. Previously, she managed finance projects and payment integrations at Wolt Israel, following earlier roles overseeing payments operations. Maayan holds a B.A. in Philosophy, Politics & Economics (PPE, Honors) from Tel Aviv University and brings expertise in applied competition economics, strategic policy design, and data‑driven financial processes.

Jonathan Schwartz is Senior Vice President and Head of the Non‑Life Actuarial Department at Harel Insurance & Finance, where he directs pricing, reserving, and reinsurance strategy across all general‑insurance lines. An Israel Association of Actuaries Fellow, Jonathan previously served as Chief Actuary at Shlomo Insurance and held actuarial leadership roles at Phoenix Insurance. He holds a B.Sc. in Statistics & Economics from Tel Aviv University and is recognized for leveraging geospatial analytics and AI to advance underwriting, claims, and insurtech innovation.

Asaf Weksler is a Real Estate & Infrastructure Investment Analyst at Sphera Fund, evaluating large‑scale property and transport deals across Israel. He previously spent nearly six years in Israel’s Ministry of Finance Budget Department—most recently as Head of the Housing Team—shaping national housing and infrastructure policy and managing multi‑billion‑shekel budgets. Asaf holds an MBA from Tel Aviv University’s Coller School of Management and a B.A. in Economics & Statistics from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.