Don Coursey

Don L. Coursey is the Ameritech Professor of Public Policy Studies at the Irving B. Harris Graduate School of Public Policy Studies at the University of Chicago. From 1996 to 1998, Coursey served as Dean of the Harris School. 

Coursey's research has focused on new ways to understand and balance public preferences among the competing public policy goals. He has also done extensive research on the design of regulation, particularly in the area of the environment and natural resources. Coursey recently led an investigation of environmental equity in Chicago by examining the relationship between the location of older hazardous industrial sites and the racial composition of the surrounding neighborhoods. In 1996, Coursey co-authored The Locality of Waste Sites Within the City of Chicago: A Demographic, Social and Economic Analysis, a report that examined the relationship between active hazardous sites (such as incinerators or landfills), minority populations, and public health concerns.

Coursey joined the faculty of the Harris School in 1993. He received both a B.A. in mathematics and a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Arizona, and has previously taught at the University of Wyoming and Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. He has received the Burlington-Northern Foundation Award for Distinguished Achievement in Teaching; the Greater St. Louis Award for Excellence in University Teaching; and the John M. Olin School of Business Teacher of the Year Award in 1989 and 1990.

Donald Cox

Donald Cox is a professor of Economics at Boston College.  His areas of policy and teaching expertise include labor economics, the economics of the family and statistical analysis.  His current research focuses on intergenerational transfers of money and time, in both developing and developed countries.  His latest paper deals with the connection between reproductive biology and the economics of family behavior.  His research and teaching takes an inter-disciplinary approach, using ideas from fields such as biology, psychology and anthropology to improve economic models.  He is a long-time teacher of statistics and econometrics. 

He has served as a consultant for the World Bank and is currently a study section participant at the National Institutes of Health.  He was a National Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.  Cox holds a Ph.D. in economics from Brown University and received his undergraduate degree in economics from Boston College.

Richard J. Mahoney

Richard J. Mahoney is the Distinguished Executive in Residence at the Weidenbaum Center.  He was Chairman & CEO of the Monsanto Company from 1983-1995. During that period he changed Monsanto from a largely chemical commodity company to the world leader in Agricultural Biotechnology, a strong player in the pharmaceutical industry, and a company recognized for its forward-thinking environmental policies.  A prolific writer and lecturer on public policy issues, he was a regular contributor to the Sunday New York Times as a columnist for “From the Desk of” and “Viewpoint.”  He has written numerous op-eds on subjects including Regulation, Taxation, Tort Law, Environmental Policy, Corporate Governance, Health Care, Science Policy, Corporate Political Contributions, and Trade Policy.  He established the CEO Series at the Weidenbaum Center — a collection of original essays by prominent corporate CEOs.  His essay, “The Anatomy of a Public Policy Crisis,” is widely quoted and used in university classwork.  He holds honorary degrees from Exeter College, Oxford University, England; UMASS; University of Missouri-St. Louis; and Westminster College. 
 

Paul Rothstein

Rothstein is an associate professor in the Department of Economics and associate director of the Weidenbaum Center.  Rothstein's specialty is public sector economics, and he has written in the areas of local public finance, taxation, and public choice.  His recent work includes, "Group Welfare and the Formation of a Common Labor Market:  Some Global Results," International Tax and Public Finance (2006) and "Possibility, Impossibility and History in the Origins of the Marriage Tax," National Tax Journal (2003).  Professor Rothstein is currently interested in the benefits and costs of competition among local governments and the role of political processes, legal institutions and central government in channeling this competition.  He is also studying the development of region-specific philanthropy and its effects on business location, regional economic growth, and the local public sector.

Russell Roberts

Roberts is Director of the Weidenbaum Center's Media Retreat and Professor of Economics at George Mason University. He is interested in making economic ideas accessible to non-economists. His latest book is The Invisible Heart: An Economic Romance (MIT Press, 2001). Written in the form of a novel, it takes a provocative look at corporate responsibility, government regulation and the role of business in our lives.

His novel on international trade policy, The Choice: A Fable of Free Trade and Protectionism, was named one of the top ten books of 1994 by Business Week and one of the best books of 1994 by the Financial Times. An updated and revised edition was published in the spring of 2000. 

Roberts is a frequent commentator on business and economics for National Public Radio's "Morning Edition." In addition to numerous academic publications, he has written for the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal.

Murray Weidenbaum

Murray Weidenbaum has been an economist in three worlds -- business, government and academia. He holds the Mallinckrodt Distinguished University Professorship at Washington University in St. Louis, where he also serves as Honorary Chairman of the University's Weidenbaum Center on the Economy, Government, and Public Policy. He was chairman of the Congressional Trade Deficit Review Commission in 1999-2000.

In 1981 and 1982, Dr. Weidenbaum was President Reagan's first chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers. He helped to formulate the economic policy of the Reagan Administration and was a key spokesman for the Administration on economic and financial issues. In 1983-89, he was a member of the President's Economic Policy Advisory Board.

Earlier, Dr. Weidenbaum was the Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy in the Nixon Administration. He also served as the Corporate Economist at the Boeing Company. He is a member of the board of directors of Harbour Group, Macroeconomic Advisers, and Center for Strategic and International Studies. He is a member of advisory boards of the Congressional Joint Tax Committee, the Center for Strategic Tax Reform, the American Council for Capital Formation, the American Enterprise Institute, the Committee for Economic Development, and the Foreign Policy Research Institute.

He received a B.B.A. from City College of New York, an M.A. from Columbia University, and a Ph.D. from Princeton University. He has been a faculty member at Washington University since 1964 and was Chairman of the Economics Department from 1966 to 1969.