Dr. Philip Cook will be the 2008-09 Schelling Visiting Professor at the Maryland School of Public Policy.

Dr. 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. 

Dr. Cook has served as a consultant to the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Department of Treasury. He is a member of the Institute of Medicine and 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.

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.