Steven Garber

Biography

Steven Garber is a senior economist at the RAND Corporation and an associate editor of the Journal of Empirical Legal Studies.

Garber's research areas include health, civil justice, and military recruiting, with much of that work focusing on economic and policy issues affecting U.S. industries. Recent and ongoing work in civil justice examines product liability, patents, medical malpractice, litigation finance, and mass litigation. Earlier civil justice work analyzed economic effects of product liability and punitive damages in the pharmaceutical, medical device, and automobile industries, as well as environmental liability and regulation, including the Superfund program and California's policies for reducing air pollution. Much of Garber's research in health pertains to medical innovation involving, in particular, medical devices and health care delivery. His research on military recruiting has included analyses of effects of advertising; how incentives affect their recruiter productivity; and cost-effectiveness of alternative recruiting tools such as recruiters, marketing, bonuses, and educational benefits.

Before joining RAND, Garber spent ten years in residence on the faculty of the graduate school of public policy at Carnegie Mellon University (now called the Heinz School). He has also held faculty positions at the State University of New York at Buffalo and the University of Toronto, and he has spent a year as a staff economist at the U.S. Federal Trade Commission in Washington, D.C.

Garber received his Ph.D. in economics from the University of Wisconsin–Madison.