Misplaced Pages

Paul Harold Rubin (born August 9, 1942) was an American economist and the Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Economics Emeritus at Emory University. He was President of the Southern Economic Association in 2012-2013. He was also a research fellow at The Independent Institute.

Education

Rubin received his B.A. with honors from the University of Cincinnati in 1963 and his Ph.D. in economics from Purdue University in 1970, with a thesis entitled "A theoretical model of the diversification decision of the firm".

Career

Rubin served on the faculty of the University of Georgia from 1968 to 1982. For one year (1982-83) he was a professor at Baruch College and the Graduate Center, CUNY. He held senior positions on the President's Council of Economic Advisors in 1981-82 and at the Federal Trade Commission, 1983-85. From 1985 to 1989, he was an adjunct professor at George Washington University Law School. From 1985 to 1987, he was the chief economist at the Consumer Product Safety Commission. From 1987-1991 he was Vice-President of Glassman-Oliver Economic Consultants in Washington, D.C. He first joined the faculty of Emory in 1991, and became the Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of economics there in 2003. From 1999-2009 he served as a Professor of Economics and Law at Emory, and as the Acting Chair of the Economics department there for one year (1993–94).

Work

Rubin's areas of research included: the economics of franchising; determinants of Congressional voting; theoretical models of the evolution of law; Folk economics; the effect of tort reform and capital punishment on death rates; and the costs and benefits of direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical advertising. He has also authored a survey article on the economics of the United States Bill of Rights. In a 2004 study, he argued that the government's encouragement of doctors and patients to use fewer antibiotics and to increase the required number of patients in antibiotic clinical trials, which the government did in an effort to reduce antibiotic resistance, was misguided. He argued that this was the case because these decisions have driven many pharmaceutical companies away from making antibiotics because it is now too expensive to do so. He has also written about evolutionary economics, arguing that different fiscal policies proposed by Democrats and Republicans in part result from different perceptions of human nature by the two parties. He has written about the evolutionary basis for distrust of markets. His most recent book argues that markets are actually cooperative, and that competition is less important than cooperation in economics.

Books

• A Student's Guide to Socialism: How It Will Trash Your Lives, Bombardier Books, 2020
• The Capitalism Paradox: How Cooperation Enables Free Market Competition, Bombardier Books, 2019
• The evolution of efficient common law E. Elgar, 2007
• Darwinian Politics: The Evolutionary Origin of Freedom, Rutgers University Press, 2002 (Choice Outstanding Academic Title, 2004)
• (with Thomas M Lenard; Privacy and the commercial use of personal information Kluwer, 2002
• Managing business transactions : controlling the cost of coordinating, communicating, and decision making Free Press, 1990
• Business firms and the common law : the evolution of efficient rules Prager, 1983

References

1. Rowley, Charles (2008). The Encyclopedia of Public Choice. Springer Science & Business Media. p. 388. ISBN 9780306478284.
2. "Paul H. Rubin". The Independent Institute. Retrieved 15 April 2016.
3. WorldCat item entry
4. ^ "Paul H. Rubin Curriculum Vitae" (PDF). Retrieved 20 February 2016.
5. Felcher, Marla (November–December 1998). "Silent Recall". Mother Jones. Retrieved 21 February 2016.
6. Dezhbakhsh, H. (1 August 2003). "Does Capital Punishment Have a Deterrent Effect? New Evidence from Postmoratorium Panel Data" (PDF). American Law and Economics Association. 5 (2): 344–376. doi:10.1093/aler/ahg021.
7. Alfano, Sean (11 June 2007). "Death Penalty Deters Murders, Studies Say". CBS News. Retrieved 29 June 2016.
8. "Paul Rubin". Emory University. Retrieved 20 February 2016.
9. Carnahan, Ira (18 August 2004). "Uncle Sam's Malpractice". Forbes. Retrieved 21 February 2016.
10. Aquino, John T. (19 March 2015). "Antibiotics Development Down, Congress, FDA Catch Up". Bloomberg BNA. Retrieved 21 February 2016.
11. Tuschman, Avi (15 September 2015). "Inside the conservative brain: What explains their wiring?". Salon. Retrieved 21 February 2016.
12. WorldCat book record

External links

• Paul Rubin publications indexed by Google Scholar

• 21st-century American economists
• Living people
• Emory University faculty
• Purdue University alumni
• University of Cincinnati alumni
• University of Georgia faculty
• 1942 births
• Member of the Mont Pelerin Society