Vanderbilt University Law School
Mark A. Cohen
Justin Potter Professor of American Competitive Enterprise Professor of Law
Voice: 615-322-6814
Fax: 615-343-7177
Email: mark.cohen@owen.vanderbilt.edu
View curriculum vitae (.pdf)
Personal Website
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Area(s) of Expertise
Environmental regulation, criminal justice issues, corporate crime and punishment, street crime, consumer protection and discriminatory lending practices, microeconomics, and public policy analysis
Research Interest(s)
Law and economics, government regulation, white-collar and corporate crime, and environmental management and sustainability
Education
Ph.D. Carnegie-Mellon University (economics)
M.A. Carnegie-Mellon University (economics)
B.S.F.S. Georgetown University (international economics)
Biography
Mark Cohen has extensive experience – as both a government economist and an academic – analyzing government enforcement policies with particular emphasis on environmental and criminal justice issues. A leading expert on enforcing environmental regulations and on corporate crime and punishment, Professor Cohen has published over 85 articles and books on such diverse topics as the effect of community "right to know" laws on firm behavior; why firms reduce toxic chemical emissions; cost-benefit analysis of oil spill regulation and enforcement; how the financial markets value corporate environmental policies and performance; and government enforcement policy and judicial sentencing of individuals and firms convicted of environmental crimes. He has also written extensively on the "cost of crime." Prior to joining the Owen faculty in 1986, Professor Cohen was a senior economist with the U.S. Sentencing Commission. He also served as a staff economist at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Federal Trade Commission. Professor Cohen previously served as Chairman of the American Statistical Association's Committee on Law and Justice Statistics. He has also been a member of Tennessee's Environmental Justice Steering Committee. Professor Cohen is a member of the Stakeholder Council of the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), a multi-stakeholder Collaborating Centre of the United Nations Environment Programme, dedicated to developing and disseminating globally applicable sustainability reporting guidelines. He has recently served as a member of the U.S. EPA Science Advisory Board's Illegal Competitive Advantage Economic Benefit Advisory Panel; and the General Accounting Office's Expert Panel on Disclosure of Environmental Information in SEC filings. He is also a Co-Director of the Vanderbilt Center for Environmental Management Studies (VCEMS), and the Leverhulme Visiting Professor at the University of York (U.K.).
Representative Publications
Articles
“Information Disclosure as Environmental Regulation: A Theoretical Analysis," 37 Environmental and Resource Economics 3: 599-620 (July 2007) (with V. Santhakumar)
"Assessing the Public's Demand for Hate Crime Penalties," Justice Quarterly (March 2004) (with Sara Steen)
"Costs and Benefits of Sentencing," Chapter 8, pp. 117-27, in Preventing Crime: What Works for Children, Offenders, Victims, and Places, Brandon C. Welsh and David P. Farrington eds. (Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer, 2006) (with Cynthia McDougall, Amanda Perry and Raymond Swaray)
"Prevention, Crime Control or Cash? Public Preferences towards Criminal Justice Spending Priorities," Justice Quarterly (2006) (with Roland T. Rust and Sara Steen)
"Willingness-to-Pay for Crime Control Programs," Criminology 1: 86-106 (February 2004) (with Roland Rust, Sara Steen, and Simon Tidd)
"'Willingness to Award' Nonmonetary Damages and the Implied Value of Life from Jury Awards," 23 International Review of Law and Economics 165 (June 2003) (with Ted R. Miller)
"Determinants of Environmental Innovation in U.S. Manufacturing Industries," 45 Journal of Environmental Economics and Management 2: 278-93 (March 2003) (with Smita Brunnermeier)
“Does the Market Value Environmental Performance?”83 Review of Economics and Statistics 2: 281 (May 2001) (with Shameek Konar)
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