Burton Weisbrod

Burton A. Weisbrod (born February 13, 1931, in Chicago, Illinois) is an American economist who pioneered the theory of option value, and the theory of why voluntary nonprofit organizations exist, He also developed the methodology for valuing voluntary labor.

He advanced methods for benefit-cost analysis of public policy by recognizing the roles of externality effects and collective public goods in program evaluation.

He applied those methods to the fields of education, health care, poverty, public interest law, and nonprofit organization.

Over a career of fifty years, he published 16 books and over 200 scholarly articles.

He is currently the Cardiss Collins Professor of Economics Emeritus and a Fellow of the Institute for Policy Research at Northwestern University.

Weisbrod was born on February 13, 1931, in Chicago.

He graduated from Von Steuben High School and then earned a bachelor's degree from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, followed by a Ph.D. in Economics from Northwestern University.

Weisbrod is currently the Cardiss Collins Professor of Economics Emeritus at Northwestern University.

From 1990 to 1995, Weisbrod served as director of Northwestern University's Institute for Policy Research (IPR), then known as the Center for Urban Affairs and Policy Research.

Before that, he spent 26 years on the economics faculty at the University of Wisconsin–Madison where he was Evjue-Bascom Professor of Economics, Director of the Center for Health Economics and Law, and Director of the National Institute of Mental Health Training Program in Health and Mental Health Economics.

Other honors include being recipient of the Lifetime Distinguished Research Award from the Association for Research on Nonprofit Organizations and Voluntary Action (ARNOVA) in 1997, and receiving the Carl Taube award from the American Public Health Association in 1993 for his research on evaluation of community mental health programs.

Weisbrod authored over 200 scholarly journal articles.

A list can be accessed via his Northwestern University web page.

He was elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, in addition to being elected to its Governing Council for 1998-2000.

He was also elected to the Executive Committee of the American Economic Association, and served as President of the Midwest Economics Association.

Weisbrod was appointed by then-Secretary of Health and Human Services Donna Shalala to the National Advisory Research Resources Council of the National Institutes of Health for a four-year term from 1999 to 2003.

From 2000 to 2005, Weisbrod was chair of the Social Science Research Council (SSRC) Committee overseeing its program on Philanthropy and the Nonprofit Sector; from 2002 to 2005 he was a member of the National Academy of Sciences Panel on the Measurement of Nonmarket Activity, and since 2005 he has been a member of the Internal Revenue Service User Group Advisory Committee.

Weisbrod served earlier as a Senior Staff Economist on the Council of Economic Advisors under Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson.

He also previously held positions on the Economics faculty at Washington University in St. Louis and Carleton College in Minnesota.

During his career, he also served as a Visiting Professor at Harvard University John F. Kennedy School of Government, Yale University, Princeton University, University of California-Berkeley, University of California-San Diego, Brandeis University, Binghamton University, the Australian National University and Universidad Autonoma de Madrid.

Weisbrod was elected to the Institute of Medicine, National Academy of Sciences.