Dr.
Robert
Whaples
,
M.D., Double B.A. in Economics and History
University of Maryland, College Park (1983)
Ph.D. in Economics
University of Pennsylvania (1990)
Robert Whaples graduated from the University of Maryland in 1983 with B.A.'s in economics and history and earned his Ph.D. in economics from the University of Pennsylvania in 1990. His dissertation, "The Shortening of the American Work Week: An Economic and Historical Analysis," won the Allen Nevins Prize from the Economic History Association.
Whaples was an Assistant Professor at the University of Wisconsin Department of History and Urban Studies Program from 1988-1991. He has worked in the Wake Forest University Department of Economics since 1991. He served as Chair of the Department of Economics from 2006-2013. He regularly teaches Introduction to Economics, Current Economic Issues, American Economic Development, and Natural Resource Economics. Professor Whaples has been awarded the Hough Family Faculty Fellowship. The Wake Forest Faculty Fellowship is a program of financial support designed to honor the university’s best teacher-scholars.
In 1996 to the present, he began working as Director and Book Review Editor for EH.Net (economic history), which provides electronic services for economic historians. In early 2013 to the present, he became Managing Editor and Co-Editor (with Michael Munger and Chris Coyne) of The Independent Review. As a Quiz Bowl aficionado, he has moderated and coached the Wake Forest Quiz Bowl Team for three decades. Whaples and his wife, are the proud parents of five – three of whom are Wake Forest graduates.
Contact
Office: 209 Kirby Hall
Phone: 336-758-4916
Email: whaples@wfu.edu
Site: users.wfu.edu/whaples
View Whaples CV
Research and Publications
Whaples early research focused on the history of American labor markets and consensus among economists, with emphasis on the length of the work week, aging, and discrimination. Several of his papers explore consensus among economic historians and economists, especially the widely-cited "Do Economists Agree on Anything?" and “Are Disagreements among Male and Female Economists Marginal at Best?” (with Ann Mari May and Mary McGarvey, in Contemporary Economic Policy).
His Modern Economic Issues course (2007) is available through The Teaching Company. It consists of 36 half hour lectures on issues ranging from inflation, unemployment, inequality, trade, global climate change and taxes to Wal-Mart, Social Security, health care, baseball, obesity and immigration.
Whaples has edited a number of books: Historical Perspectives on the American Economy (with Dianne Betts, 1995), Public Choice Interpretations of American Economic History (with Jac Heckelman and John Moorhouse, 1999), The Routledge Handbook of Modern Economic History and The Routledge Handbook of Major Events in Economic History (both with Randall Parker, 2012 and 2013 respectively), The Economic Crisis in Retrospect: Explanations by Great Economists (with Page West and Edward Elgar, 2013), as well as Future: Economic Peril or Prosperity? (with Michael Munger and Christopher Coyne, 2016).
His research has been published in the Journal of Economic History, Southern Economic Journal, Economic Inquiry, Contemporary Economic Policy, and other journals. View Whaple's CV for an extensive view of awards, publications, and other professional activities.
Courses Taught at Wake Forest
Econ 150: Introduction to Economics
Econ 241: Natural Resource and Environmental Economics
Econ 266: Economics of Entrepreneurship
Econ 270: Current Economic Issues
Interests
American Economic History
Consensus Among Economists
Political Economy
