Faculty Spotlight: Dr. James Griffin
Dr. James Griffin, holder of the Bob Bullock Chair in Public Policy and Finance, is in his seventh year as a professor of economics and public policy in the Bush School of Government and Public Service. Dr. Griffin, or Dr. G as he is known by his students, is a native Texan and part-time rancher. He holds a B.A. in mathematics and economics from Southern Methodist University and a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Pennsylvania. More of his background information can be found here: http://bush.tamu.edu/faculty/jgriffin.
Dr. G is known among Bush School students as a lively but demanding professor, intent on teaching students the economic way of thinking. He likes to use some of his colorful experiences in the private sector and federal government as classroom examples, including his trips to Montana to buy prized Angus bulls, stories of which are familiar to any of his students. Dr. G's teaching specialty is energy economics and policy, relying on his broad experience in the oil industry and his extensive travel in the Middle East. Students are challenged to consider policy alternatives and are encouraged to think critically of social, political, and economic consequences of different alternatives. This is a highly engaging course, demanding considerable student participation.
Dr. Griffin has received numerous professional awards including a listing in Who's Who in Economics and a Humboldt Fellowship. In addition, he serves on the editorial boards of three journals specializing in energy economics. As a director at the LECG Corporation, Dr. Griffin is also frequently called upon to testify regarding anti-trust and regulatory issues.
Dr. Griffin is currently editing a book called Balancing Cheap, Clean, and Secure Energy: An Economist's Prescription to be published by the American Enterprise Institute, due out in March 2008. This book is quite critical of U.S. energy policy, which he describes as a combination of ad hoc legislation featuring congressional "beauty pageants" for alternative fuels and command-and-control regulations. The current ethanol fiasco is symptomatic of the current approach, comments Dr. Griffin. His major thesis in this new project is that we must get the prices right of fossil fuels by taxing carbon and oil security, and he hopes these ideas will gain traction in the upcoming presidential election.
Besides promoting his ideas on a new energy policy, Dr. Griffin plans to focus on immigration policy and to develop concrete policy suggestions for dealing with various immigration issues.
As director of the Economics of Public Policy program at the Bush School, Dr. Griffin has organized a series of annual conferences, bringing leading experts to the Bush School to present their ideas on a wide variety of public policy issues. Conference topics include Medicare reform, the causes of increasing income inequality, globalization, climate change, the new economy, and electricity deregulation. The results of these conferences appear in published volumes by the University of Chicago Press and Edward Elgar.
