Biography
Philip J. Cook, Ph.D., is ITT/Sanford Professor of Public Policy, and Professor of Economics and Sociology, at Duke University. His research on violence over the last 40 years has focused on the role of alcohol, firearms, school dropout, private prevention, and other topics. His most recent book (with Kristin A. Goss) is The Gun Debate: What Everyone Needs to Know (Oxford, 2014).
He has served as an advisor to the Criminal Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, and to the Enforcement Division of the U.S. Department of Treasury. He has also served on a number of expert panels of the National Academy of Sciences, dealing with alcohol-abuse prevention, injury control, violence, school rampage shootings, underage drinking, the prospects for a ballistics reference data base, the deterrent effect of the death sentence, and tax evasion for tobacco products. He serves as co-organizer of the NBER Workshop on the Economics of Crime.
Dr. Cook was elected to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences in 2001. He is an honorary Fellow in both the American Society of Criminology and of the Academy of Experimental Criminology.