Joseph H. Cook


Joseph H. Cook
Assistant Professor of Public Affairs
Ph.D., University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, 2007

Contact Information:
Parrington Hall, Room 209F
jhcook@uw.edu
206.685.8927

Areas of Specialization:
Environmental Economics, Health Economics, Water and Sanitation Policy in Developing Countries, Water Resource Economics, Benefit-Cost Analysis

Joseph Cook joined the Evans School faculty in 2007. His research uses tools from economics to inform environmental and health policy, often in economically-developing countries. His current focus is primarily on water and sanitation policy, water resources management, stated preference methods, and vaccine policy. He is also affiliated with the Benefit-Cost Analysis Center at the Evans School.

Two of Cook's current research projects include studying the impact on intra-household time allocation of providing convenient water access in rural Ethiopia, and investigating the barriers to the use of water markets in coping with drought in the Yakima basin of Washington state.

While at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for his graduate training, Cook studied private demand for cholera and typhoid vaccines using stated preference methodologies (both contingent valuation and stated choice), doing extensive fieldwork in India, Vietnam, and Mozambique. He has also worked as a research assistant at the non-partisan think-tank Resources for the Future in Washington D.C., examining the benefits of natural resource improvements in Adirondack State Park, the costs and benefits of controlling air pollution from informal brick kilns in Mexico, and willingness-to-pay to avoid mortality risks.

Outside of academia, he served as a consultant to the Asian Development Bank on Nepal’s Melamchi water supply project, the International Vaccine Institute, the Hopi Tribe, Global Water Challenge, and Orange County (NC).

Scholarly work by Cook has been published in the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, Economic Inquiry, World Development, Environment and Development Economics, and the Value in Health. He also co-authored a chapter in Small Firms and the Environment in Developing Countries: Collective Impacts, Collective Action (RFF Press, 2006).

Cook holds a Ph.D. and MS in environmental management and policy from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He also holds a BS in natural resources from Cornell University.

Curriculum Vitae (32 KB PDF)

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