W. Kip Viscusi, University Distinguished Professor of Law, Economics and Management, began a one-year term as president-elect of the Southern Economic Association on November 19.
Viscusi will serve as SEA’s president-elect for the next year. His one-year term as the organization’s president will start in November 2019. When his term as president concludes in November 2020, he will continue to serve on SEA’s board through November 2022.
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. As president-elect, Viscusi will be responsible for organizing the 2019 SEA conference.
Viscusi joined Vanderbilt’s faculty in 2006 as its first University Distinguished Professor, with tenured appointments in the Department of Economics and the Owen Graduate School of Management as well as in the law school. He co-directs Vanderbilt’s Ph.D. in Law and Economics Program with Cornelius Vanderbilt Chair and Professor of Law and Economics Joni Hersch. Before joining the Vanderbilt faculty, Viscusi was the Cogan Professor of Law and Economics and director of the Program on Empirical Studies at Harvard Law School. He has also been the Allen Professor of Economics at Duke University and a professor of economics at Northwestern University.
Viscusi is the award-winning author of more than 30 books and 360 articles, most of which deal with different aspects of health and safety risks. His most recent book, Pricing Lives: Guideposts for a Safer Society, was released by Princeton University Press in 2018. He is also a co-author, with Joseph E. Harrington Jr. and David E.M. Sappington, of Economics of Regulation and Antitrust, the leading textbook on government and business policy, the fifth edition of which was released by MIT Press in 2018. He is also the founding editor of the Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, which he has edited since 1988.