PRESIDENT-ELECT: RICHARD V. BURKHAUSER, Cornell University
It would be an honor to serve as your president since you are my peers and have shaped the way I think
about public policy problems. Ray Vernon’s advice and hands-on editing of my first publication in JPAM
in 1983 helped shape the way I write about public policy and made particularly special my receipt of the
Vernon Memorial Prize in 1989. It also served as a model for my treatment of young researchers during
my tenure as Associate Editor of the Journal of Human Resources. The annual APPAM conference has
been a major testing ground for my research ideas and those of my research partners and graduate
students over the years. And my experience as Chair of the APPAM Dissertation Award Committee made
me a more knowledgeable dissertation chair for both my economics and public policy students. To me
APPAM’s most valuable role, and one I will work to strengthen, is as an open marketplace for research
based public policy ideas. Our association more than any other has shaped the way modern multidisciplinary
public policy is taught and practiced in the United States and hopefully will be done more so
throughout the world.

I have always believed that policy matters. After a year teaching high school math and two years in the
Peace Corps I entered the Ph.D. Economics program at the University of Chicago in 1972. After receiving
my degree in 1976, I spent a year as an Economist at ASPE (HEW) and two years as a Research
Associate at the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin. I then joined the
Department of Economics and the Institute for Public Policy Studies at Vanderbilt University in 1979. I
rose through the academic ranks there before leaving to join the Department of Economics in the Maxwell
School at Syracuse University in 1988. In 1998, I came to Cornell University as the Sarah Gibson
Blanding Professor of Policy Analysis and Chair of the newly formed multi-disciplinary Department of
Policy Analysis and Management. After stepping down as Chair in 2005, I happily returned to my
classroom and research duties. I teach a Micro Economic Principles course to 450 Cornell undergraduates
and a public policy seminar course in the Economics of Social Security each year. My research focuses on
the behavioral and distributional consequences of public policies aimed at economically vulnerable
populations—aged, disabled, and low skilled. There should be a link to my web page as part of the
nominations information on the APPAM website if you would like more details about these efforts, or
you may follow the link here:

http://www.human.cornell.edu/che/bio.cfm?netid=rvb1

I have been the PI on numerous NIH and other grants and for the last decade have been a Co-PI of
Cornell’s NIDRR Center on Employment Policy for Persons with Disabilities. Over the last few years, I
have worked with other members of our group to better integrate disability policy research under the
umbrella of APPAM. My public services over the years includes time on National Academy of Science
and Institute of Medicine panels, as well as membership on government panels including Senator
Moynihan’s recommended appointment to the 2000-2002 Ticket to Work Act Advisory Panel; the 2002-
2003 Technical Panel on Assumptions and Methods of the Social Security Actuaries and the 2006 Social
Security Advisory Board Panel on a New Definition of Eligibility for Disability Benefits.

I am currently on sabbatical. I spent the first six months of 2008 as a Visiting Scholar at the American
Enterprise Institute and am spending the final six months at the Melbourne Institute of Applied
Economics and Social Research at the University of Melbourne in Australia. Unfortunately, my
commitments in Australia make it impossible for me to attend the Annual Membership Meeting on
November 7, 2008 when my nomination will be considered and please accept my sincere regrets for
missing that occasion.