Professional Affiliation

Professor of History,The University of Texas at Austin

Expert Bio

I teach history at the University of Texas at Austin. Business history has traditionally focused on the modern corporation and its evolution during the twentieth century. New scholarship has addressed other topics, such as the intersection between social history and the corporate world or the cultural dimensions of doing business. My current interests are informed by one area of this new research that concerns the firm and social costs. In a previous book, I studied automobile defects. In my current project, I continue to investigate social costs--in this case, pollution--but examine how firms and policy makers have worked together (or not) to address the environmental problems through innovation.

 

Education

B.A. (1980) Johns Hopkins University; M.A. (1986) Brown University; Ph.D (1987) Brown University

 

Experience

• Assistant Professor of History, University of Texas at Arlington




• Assistant Professor of History, University of Texas at Austin




• Associate Professor of History, University of Texas at Austin

 

 

Expertise

 

 

Business history

Wilson Center Project

"Environmental Policy and Innovation: Case Studies in Business History"

Project Summary

Although convention pictures environmentalists at odds with business because corporations have been the source of so many environmental problems, some environmentalists have recognized that firms need to be enlisted in efforts to resolve these problems. My project is premised on the idea of investigating how public policies have influenced business innovation for the environment. I plan to consider a set of case studies framed around three different types of policy--the so-called "command-and-control" regulation; bans on toxic substances; and emissions trading. Case studies include the ban on asbestos and the emissions trading program used to reduce sulfur dioxide or what is known popularly as "cap and trade."

Major Publications

• The Challenge of Remaining Innovative , co-edited with Naomi R. Lamoreaux and Steven W. Usselman (Stanford University Press, forthcoming 2009).




• Trust and Power: Consumers, the Modern Corporation, and the Making of the United States Automobile Market. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007).




• Regulation and the Revolution in United States Farm Productivity. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994).