Joni Hersch, professor of law and economics, has been elected a vice president of the Southern Economic Association (SEA).
Professor Hersch will serve as the SEA’s second vice-president in 2010-11 and as its first vice president in 2011-12. Her term will begin at the organization’s meeting in Atlanta November 20-22.
The SEA is one of the oldest regional economics associations in the United States. From its founding in 1928, the SEA’s purpose has been to further the education of scholars and the public in economic affairs, seeking to stimulate interest in and disseminate results of recent research in theory and applied economics. The organization has published The Southern Economic Journal since 1933; it is the eighth oldest American scholarly journal in economics. SEA holds an annual conference for its members, who include a diverse set of scholars, with a great range in their substantive interests and in their methods of inquiry, at which scholars representing all fields of economic research and economists around the world are invited to present their work.
Professor Hersch is an economist who works in the areas of employment discrimination and empirical law and economics. Her recent research examines skin color discrimination, job risks faced by immigrant workers, costs of smoking, punitive damages awards, and judge and jury behavior. Professor Hersch joined Vanderbilt Law School as Professor of Law and Economics in 2006, and holds 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.
