W. Kip Viscusi
University Distinguished Professor of Law, Economics, and Management Co-Director, Ph.D. Program in Law and Economics
Voice: (615) 343-7715
Fax: (615) 322-5953
Email: kip.viscusi@vanderbilt.edu
Office: Room 280
View curriculum vitae (.pdf)
Personal Website
Links
Research Interest(s)
Regulation of health, safety, and environmental risks; tort reform; risk and insurance; law and economics
Education
A.B., M.P.P., A.M., Ph.D., Harvard University
Biography
W. Kip Viscusi is Vanderbilt's first University Distinguished Professor, with primary appointments in the Department of Economics and the Owen Graduate School of Management as well as in the Law School. Professor Viscusi is the award-winning author of more than 20 books and 300 articles, most of which deal with different aspects of health and safety risks. His pathbreaking research has addressed a wide range of individual and societal responses to risk and uncertainty, including risky behaviors, government regulation, and tort liability. He is widely regarded as one of the world's leading authorities on benefit-cost analysis. Professor Viscusi's estimates of the value of risks to life and health are currently used throughout the Federal government. He has served as a consultant to the U.S. Office of Management and Budget, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the Federal Aviation Administration, and the U.S. Department of Justice on issues pertaining to the valuation of life and health. In the Carter administration, he was Deputy Director of the Council of Wage and Price Stability, which was responsible for White House oversight over all new federal regulations. He has served on the Science Advisory Board of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for over a decade and is currently on the EPA Homeland Security Committee. Professor Viscusi is the founding editor of the Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, now housed at Vanderbilt. Before joining the Vanderbilt faculty, Professor Viscusi was the Cogan Professor of Law and Economics and Director of the Program on Empirical Legal Studies at Harvard Law School. He has also been the Allen Professor of Economics at Duke University and Professor of Economics at Northwestern University. Please direct media inquiries to Amy Wolf, VU Senior Public Affairs Officer, at 615-343-2634 or amy.wolf@vanderbilt.edu.
Representative Publications
Books
Economics of Regulation and Antitrust (Lexington: D.C. Heath & Co., 1992; Cambridge: MIT Press: 2nd edition 1995, 3rd edition 2000 (translated into Chinese & Ukrainian), 4th edition 2005) (with Joseph E. Harrington, Jr. and John Vernon)
Punitive Damages: How Juries Decide, with Cass R. Sunstein, Reid Hastie, John Payne and David Schkade (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002). In hardcover and paperback.
Smoke-Filled Rooms: A Postmortem on the Tobacco Deal (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002)
Calculating Risks?: The Spatial and Political Dimensions of Hazardous Waste Policy (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1999), with James T. Hamilton.
Rational Risk Policy: The 1996 Arne Ryde Memorial Lectures (Oxford: Clarendon Press-Oxford University Press, 1998). Winner of the Kulp Memorial Award, Best Book of 2000, American Risk and Insurance Association.
Fatal Tradeoffs: Public and Private Responsibilities for Risk (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992) (paperback edition, 1995). Winner of the Kulp Memorial Award, Best Book of 1994, American Risk and Insurance Association.
Smoking: Making the Risky Decision (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992).
Reforming Products Liability (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991). Winner of the Kulp Memorial Award, Best Book of 1993, American Risk and Insurance Association.
Compensation Mechanisms for Job Risks: Wages, Workers' Compensation and Product Liability (Princeton University Press, 1990). Winner of Kulp Memorial Award, Best Book of 1992, American Risk and Insurance Association. With Michael J. Moore
Employment Hazards: An Investigation of Market Performance, Harvard Economic Studies No. 148 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1979). Winner of the David Wells Prize for outstanding economics dissertation, Harvard University.
Presentations
June 20, 2012: National Academies' Government-University-Industry Research Roundtable (GUIRR), sponsored by the National Academy of Science, the National Academy of Engineering, and the Institute of Medicine, Keynote Address: "Valuing Risks to Life: Ethical Issues and Policy Challenges," Washington, D.C.
October 24-26, 2012: CEVRO Institute, Law and Economics as an Applied Science: The Legacy of Guido Calabresi, "The Role of Modern Tort Liability as a Risk Distribution Mechanism," with Joni Hersch, Prague, Czech Republic
December 10-11, 2012: Munich School of Management, Behavioral Insurance Workshop, "Risk Beliefs and Insurance," Munich, Germany
December 13-14, 2012: Université de Montpellier, Rationality and Pro-Environmental Behavior Seminar, "Social Norms and Recycling Behavior," with Joel Huber and Jason Bell, Montpellier, France
May 18, 2013: American Law and Economics Association Annual Meeting, "The Relationship between the Markets for Health Insurance and Medical Malpractice Insurance," with J. Bradley Karl and Patricia Born, Nashville, TN
Some links on this page require the Adobe Acrobat Reader.