Vanderbilt University Law School
Joni Hersch
Professor of Law and Economics
Voice: (615) 343-7717
Fax: (615) 322-6631
Email: joni.hersch@vanderbilt.edu
Office: Room 284
View curriculum vitae (.pdf)
Personal Website
Links
Research Interest(s)
Labor economics, discrimination, law and economics
Education
Ph.D. (Economics) Northwestern University
B.A. (Mathematics) University of South Florida
Biography
Joni Hersch is an economist whose work examines employment discrimination, the role of gender and household production in the labor market, and empirical law and economics. Professor Hersch joined Vanderbilt University Law School as Professor of Law and Economics in 2006, with secondary appointments in the Department of Economics and the Owen Graduate School of Management. Together with Professor W. Kip Viscusi, Professor Hersch developed and is co-director of Vanderbilt's Ph.D. Program in Law and Economics. Over the course of her career, Professor Hersch has published numerous articles in the leading economics journals on differences in labor market outcomes, the economics of home production, models of litigation, job risks, and product safety regulation. Her recent research examines skin color discrimination, job risks faced by immigrant workers, costs of smoking, punitive damages awards, and judge and jury behavior. She is the author of Sex Discrimination in the Labor Market (Foundations and Trends in Microeconomics, 2006) and co-editor of Labor Market Institutions for the Twenty-First Century (University of Chicago, 2004). Before joining Vanderbilt's law faculty, Professor Hersch was an Adjunct Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. She was Professor of Economics at the University of Wyoming from 1989-99 and has been Visiting Professor of Economics at Northwestern, Caltech, Duke, and Harvard. Please direct media inquiries to Amy Wolf, VU Senior Public Affairs Officer, at 615-343-2634 or amy.wolf@vanderbilt.edu.
Representative Publications
Articles
"Immigrant Status and the Value of Statistical Life," Journal of Human Resources (forthcoming) (with W. Kip Viscusi)
"Home Production and Wages: Evidence from the American Time Use Survey," 7(2) Review of Economics of the Household 159 (2009)
"Profiling the New Immigrant Worker: The Effects of Skin Color and Height," 26(2) Journal of Labor Economics 345 (2008)
"Demand for a Jury Trial and the Selection of Cases for Trial," 35(1) Journal of Legal Studies 119 (2006)
"Sex Discrimination in the Labor Market," 2(4) Foundations and Trends: Microeconomics 281 (2006)
"Skin Tone Effects among African Americans: Perceptions and Reality," 96(2) American Economic Review Papers and Proceedings 251 (2006)
"Smoking Restrictions as a Self-Control Mechanism," 31(1) Journal of Risk and Uncertainty 5 (2005)
"Punitive Damages: How Judges and Juries Perform," 33(1) Journal of Legal Studies 1 (2004) (with W. Kip Viscusi)
"Cigarette Smokers as Job Risk Takers," 83(2) Review of Economics and Statistics 269 (2001) (with W. Kip Viscusi)
"Compensating Differentials for Gender-Specific Job Injury Risks," 88(3) American Economic Review 598 (1998)
Presentations
October 22, 2009: "Immigrant Status and the Value of Statistical Life," University of California, Berkeley Economics Department, Labor Economics Seminar, Berkeley, CA
May 16, 2009: "Punitive Damages by Numbers: Exxon Shipping Co. v. Baker," American Law and Economics Association Annual Meeting, San Diego, CA
March 27, 2009: "Immigrant Status and the Value of Statistical Life," Heterogeneity of the Value of Statistical Life Conference, Vanderbilt Law School, Nashville, TN
April 11, 2008: EEOC E-RACE Initiative Meeting, panelist with EEOC Chair Naomi Earp and Commissioner Stuart Ishimaru, National Civil Rights Museum, Memphis, TN
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