Philip J. Cook, Senior Associate Dean for Faculty and Research; ITT/Terry Sanford Professor of Public Policy; Professor of Economics and Sociology and Faculty Affiliate, Center for Child and Family Policy  

Office Location: 215 Sanford Building
Office Phone: (919) 613-7360
Email Address: pcook@duke.edu

Areas of Expertise

  • Crime and Criminal Justice
  • Health Policy
    • Alcohol
    • Economics
    • Smoking/Tobacco
  • Social Policy
    • Lotteries and Gambling
    • Violence

Education:
PhD (Economics), University of California, Berkeley, 1973
BA (with high distinction), University of Michigan, 1968

Current projects: prisoner reentry, crime prevention, alcohol control policy, policies to prevent gun violence

Research Description: Research: Public health policy and social policy; regulation of alchohol, guns, gambling; violence prevention

Teaching (Fall 2009):

  • Pubpol 501.01, Pol. econ. of pubpol
    Sanford 225, M 02:50 PM-05:20 PM

Recent Publications   (More Publications)

  1. P.J. Cook. The Economics of Crime by Harold Winter.  Journal of Economic Literature (September, 2009).
  2. P.J. Cook, J. Ludwig, and A. Samaha. "Gun Control After Heller: Threats and Sideshows from a Social Welfare Perspective." UCLA Law Review 56.5 (June, 2009): 1041-1093.
  3. P.J. Cook. "Crime Control in the City: A Research-Based Briefing on Public and Private Measures." Cityscape (March, 2009).
  4. P.J. Cook, symposium editor. "Explaining the growth in the prison population." Criminology & Public Policy 8.1 (February, 2009).
  5. C.T. Clotfelter and P.J. Cook. "Ends and Means in State Lotteries: The Importance of a Good Cause." Gambling: Mapping the American Moral Landscape. Ed. Alan Wolfe and Eric C. Owens Baylor University Press, 2009

Curriculum Vitae

Bio/Profile
Philip J. Cook is ITT/Sanford Professor of Public Policy and Professor of Economics and Sociology at Duke University. He served as director and chair of Duke’s Sanford Institute of Public Policy from 1985-89, and again from 1997-99. Cook is a member of Phi Beta Kappa, and an honorary Fellow in the American Society of Criminology. In 2001 he was elected to membership in the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences.

Cook joined the Duke faculty in 1973 after earning his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley. He has served as consultant to the U.S. Department of Justice (Criminal Division) and to the U.S. Department of Treasury (Enforcement Division). He has served in a variety of capacities with the National Academy of Sciences, including membership on expert panels dealing with alcohol-abuse prevention, violence, school shootings and underage drinking. He also served on the National Research Council’s Committee on Law and Justice, and is currently a member of the Division Committee for the Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education.

One strand of Cook’s research concerns the prevention of alcohol-related problems through restrictions on alcohol availability. An early article was the first to demonstrate persuasively that alcohol taxes have a direct effect on the death rate of heavy drinkers, and subsequent research demonstrated the moderate efficacy of minimum-purchase-age laws in preventing fatal crashes. Together with Michael J. Moore, he focused on the effects of beer taxes on youthful drinking and the consequences thereof, finding that more restrictive policies result in lower rates of abuse, higher college graduation rates and lower crime rates. His new book on the subject is Paying the Tab: The Costs and Benefits of Alcohol Control, (Princeton University Press, 2007).

A second strand has concerned the costs and consequences of the widespread availability of guns, and what might be done about it. His book (with Jens Ludwig), Gun Violence: The Real Costs (Oxford University Press, 2000), develops and applies a framework for assessing costs that is grounded in economic theory and is quite at odds with the traditional “Cost of Injury” framework. Ludwig and Cook are also the editors of Evaluating Gun Policy (Brookings Institution Press, 2003).

Cook has also co-authored two other books: with Charles Clotfelter on state lotteries (Selling Hope: State Lotteries in America, Harvard University Press, 1989), and with Robert H. Frank on the causes and consequences of the growing inequality of earnings (The Winner-Take-All Society, The Free Press, 1995). The Winner-Take-All Society was named a “Notable Book of the Year, 1995” by the New York Times Book Review.

Philip J. Cook