Christopher J. Ruhm is Professor of Public Policy & Economics at the University of Virginia. He is also a Research Associate in the Health Economics, Health Care Policy and Children’s Programs of the National Bureau of Economic Research and a Research Fellow at the Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA). During 1996-97, he served as Senior Economist on the President’s Council of Economic Advisers, where his main responsibilities were in the areas of health policy, ageing and labour market issues.
Prior to joining UVA, in 2010, he held faculty positions at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and Boston University, and was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Brandeis University. Ruhm teaches in the areas of health economics, labour economics, applied microeconomics, and quantitative methods. He has conducted extensive research on parental leave policies and issues of work-family balance, the determinants of production of health and of health and risky behaviors including drug use and abuse, effects of job displacements and mandated employment benefits, transition into retirement, and the causes and the economic consequences of alcohol and illegal drug policies.
He is currently Associate Editor of the Journal of Health Economics and Southern Economic Journal and on the editorial board of the American Journal of Health Economics, Economics Letters and the Journal of Labor Research. He is on the Board of Directors of the American Society of Health Economists, a steering committee member of the Southeastern Health Economics Study Group, and past President of the Southern Economic Association. He earned his PhD from the University of California at Berkeley in 1984.
