Clotfelter, Charles T. 1947–

PERSONAL: Born August 20, 1947, in Birmingham, AL; son of James H. (a business executive) and Caroline (an economics professor) Clotfelter; children: James Dennison, John Roberts. Ethnicity: "European American." Education: Duke University, A.B. (summa cum laude), 1969; Harvard University, M.A., 1972, Ph.D., 1974. Religion: United Church of Christ.

ADDRESSES: Home—Durham, NC. Office—Terry San-ford Institute of Public Policy, Duke University, Durham, NC 27708. E-mail—charles.clotfelter@duke.edu.

CAREER: University of Maryland at College Park, College Park, assistant professor affiliated with Bureau of Business and Economic Research and department of economics, 1974–79; U.S. Treasury, Office of Tax Analysis, Washington, DC, financial economist and Brookings economic policy fellow, 1978–79; Duke University, Durham, NC, associate professor, 1979–84, professor, 1984–95, Z. Smith Reynolds Professor of Public Policy Studies, 1995–, professor of law, 1996–, director of graduate studies at Institute of Policy Sciences and Public Affairs, 1979–81 and 1989–90, vice provost for academic policy and planning, 1983–85, vice chancellor of university, 1985–88, director of Center for the Study of Philanthropy and Voluntarism, 1986–, vice provost for academic programs, 1993–94. National Bureau of Economic Research, research associate, 1982–; University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, visiting scholar at Institute for Research in Social Science, 1982; contributor of testimony before U.S. Senate and North Carolina House of Representatives regarding economic issues.

MEMBER: American Economic Association, National Tax Association, Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management, Southern Economic Association (vice president, 1983–84).

AWARDS, HONORS: Grants from Office of Tax Analysis, U.S. Treasury, 1980–82, and National Bureau of Economic Research, 1982–83 and 1986–87.

WRITINGS:

(With Lester M. Salamon) The Federal Government and the Nonprofit Sector: The Impact of the 1981 Tax Act on Individual Charitable Giving, Urban Institute (Washington, DC), 1981.

Federal Tax Policy and Charitable Giving, University of Chicago Press (Chicago, IL), 1985.

(With Philip J. Cook) Selling Hope: State Lotteries in America, Harvard University Press (Cambridge, MA), 1989.

(With Ronald Ehrenberg, Malcolm Getz, and John Siegfried) Economic Challenges in Higher Education, University of Chicago Press (Chicago, IL), 1991.

(Editor and author of introduction) Who Benefits from the Nonprofit Sector?, University of Chicago Press (Chicago, IL), 1992.

(Editor, with Michael Rothschild, and author of introduction) Studies of Supply and Demand in Higher Education, University of Chicago Press (Chicago, IL), 1993.

Buying the Best: Cost Escalation in Elite Higher Education, Princeton University Press (Princeton, NJ), 1996.

(Editor, with Thomas Ehrlich, and author of introduction) Philanthropy and the Nonprofit Sector in a Changing America, Indiana University Press (Bloomington, IN), 1999.

After Brown: The Rise and Retreat of School Desegregation, Princeton University Press (Princeton, NJ), 2004.

Contributor of chapters to books, including The Political Economy of Advertising, edited by David G. Tuerck, American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research (Washington, DC), 1978; Current Issues in Urban Economics, edited by Peter Mieszkowski and Mahlon Straszheim, Johns Hopkins University Press (Baltimore, MD), 1979; and Economic Consequences of Tax Simplification, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston (Boston, MA), 1986. Also contributor of articles, reviews, and editorials to professional journals and newspapers, including American Economic Review, National Tax Journal, Review of Economics and Statistics, Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Journal of Economic Perspectives, Management Science, Public Finance Quarterly, Law and Contemporary Problems, and Christian Science Monitor.

SIDELIGHTS: Charles T. Clotfelter once told CA: "The subject matter of economics is not always as intrinsically interesting as, say, fiction or history, but it nevertheless contains some important stories to tell. It often seems that economists and other social scientists are deliberately trying to make their subject either dull or incomprehensible. While some of them might well be, most are trying for precision's sake to use specialized language in a correct way."

Regarding After Brown: The Rise and Retreat of School Desegregation, Clotfelter wrote: "Brown v. Board of Education was one of the most important Supreme Court cases in U.S. history. I thought I could contribute to its evaluation by measuring the amount of interracial contact that has occurred in U.S. schools since 1954. I could not determine the amount of this contact that was actually caused by the decision, however, since many other factors are involved. Many other social science researchers have worked on related topics, so I was able to build on that work."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

American Journal of Sociology, January, 2006, John R. Logan, review of After Brown: The Rise and Retreat of School Desegregation, p. 1241.

Library Journal, May 15, 2004, Samuel T. Huang, review of After Brown, p. 97.