W. Kip Viscusi
University Distinguished Professor of Law, Economics, and Management
Co-Director, Ph.D. Program in Law and Economics
W. Kip Viscusi is Vanderbilt's 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. Before joining the Vanderbilt faculty, Professor 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 professor of economics at Northwestern University.
Viscusi is the award-winning author of more than 30 books and nearly 400 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. Viscusi's estimates of the value of risks to life and health are currently used throughout the Federal government. His book Pricing Lives: Guideposts for a Safer Society synthesized much of his work in this area. 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 different panels of the Science Advisory Board of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for over a decade. Professor Viscusi served as the President of the Society for Benefit-Cost Analysis and the President of the Southern Economic Association.
Viscusi is the founding editor of the Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, which he has edited since 1988. He recently collaborated with Joseph Harrington and David Sappington on the fifth edition of his textbook, Economics of Regulation and Antitrust, which has retained its monopoly position in that field. In 2019 he received the Earl Sutherland Prize for Achievement in Research, which is Vanderbilt’s most prestigious honor for faculty research and scholarship. He is the third most frequently cited U.S. law professor according to Brian Leiter’s Law School Reports (Google Scholar h-index)..
Specializations
Regulation of health, safety, and environmental risks; law and economics; tort liability; risk and uncertainty
Representative Publications
- Pricing Lives: Guideposts for a Safer Society (Princeton University Press, 2018). Winner of the Kulp Memorial Award, Best Book of 2020, American Risk and Insurance Association.
- Economics of Regulation and Antitrust (Cambridge: MIT Press, 5th edition 2018) (with Joseph E. Harrington, Jr. and David Sappington)
- Handbook of the Economics of Risk and Uncertainty, edited with Mark J. Machina (Amsterdam: Elsevier, 2014)
- Smoke-Filled Rooms: A Postmortem on the Tobacco Deal (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002)
- 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.
- 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.
- Reforming Products Liability (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991). Winner of the Kulp Memorial Award, Best Book of 1993, American Risk and Insurance Association.
- 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.
- 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)
- Smoke-Filled Rooms: A Postmortem on the Tobacco Deal (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002)
- 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.
- 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.