Stephen T Ziliak is Professor of Economics & Faculty Member of the Social Justice Studies Program at Roosevelt University, Chicago, where as a faculty member he served on the Board of Trustees from 2010 to 2013. Formerly Conjoint Professor Faculty of Business and Law, University of Newcastle (Australia, 2015-2020), he is a Faculty Affiliate in the Economics Graduate Program at Colorado State University & occasional Faculty Member of The Angiogenesis Foundation (Cambridge, MA).
CV of Stephen T. Ziliak (2024)
Previous appointments include Emory University, Bowling Green State University, and the Georgia Institute of Technology. At Georgia Tech he was voted Faculty Member of the Year (in 2002) and Most Intellectual Professor (in 2003). At the University of Iowa he earned (in 1996) the Ph.D. in Economics and, at the same time, the Ph.D. Certificate in the Rhetoric of the Human Sciences. He has been a Visiting Professor of Economics, Statistics, Rhetoric, Justice, Law, Social Welfare, and Methodology at leading universities of the United States, Belgium, Denmark, England, France, Germany, Ireland, Northern Ireland, Turkey, Australia, and the Netherlands.
Ziliak’s early work was on econometric methodology and quantitative economic history, where he established himself as a leading economic historian of welfare and charity in the United States. His seminal contributions to welfare analysis appeared initially in his dissertation, wherein he discovered, among other things, “the contradiction of compassion” (1996) and “the Malthusian vice” (1996). He, at the same time, published a seminal article of econometrics, “The Standard Error of Regressions“ (1996, with Deirdre N. McCloskey), prior to tackling in a path-breaking book the history, philosophy, and practice of all the testing sciences.
Ziliak’s contributions to the seemingly disparate fields of statistics and poetry include Guinnessometrics, the cult of statistical significance, JEDI statistics, haiku economics, renganomics, and economics rap. His research has appeared in many leading journals, such as The Lancet, Journal of Economic Literature, Journal of Economic Perspectives, Poetry, Biological Theory, International Journal of Forecasting, Journal of Economic History, The American Statistician, and Journal of Wine Economics.
He is the lead author of The Cult of Statistical Significance: How the Standard Error Costs Us Jobs, Justice, and Lives (2008) a best-selling and critically-acclaimed book at the University of Michigan Press, with Deirdre N. McCloskey; with McCloskey and Arjo Klamer he is co-author of The Economic Conversation, an evolving textbook and blog, emphasizing dialogue and openness; and he edited and contributed to Measurement and Meaning in Economics: The Essential Deirdre McCloskey (Edward Elgar, 2001). An Associate Editor of Historical Statistics of the United States (Cambridge, 2006), Ziliak’s work has been featured in Science, Nature, The Economist, Poetry, Wall Street Journal, BBC, NPR, Forbes, Inside Higher Ed, Chronicle of Higher Education, National Review, Slate, Salon, Washington Post, Financial Times, New York Times, and the Supreme Court of the United States.
His signature courses include Big Think Microeconomics: History, Problems, and Prospects (I and II); Theories of Justice in Economics and Philosophy; What is Social Justice?; Rhetoric and Writing in Economics and Other Human Sciences; Guinnessometrics and The Cult of Statistical Significance; Introduction to Economics through The Grapes of Wrath; The Psychology and Ethics of Adam Smith; and Self-Reliance and Poverty Before and After the Welfare State.
He has been appointed to a number of international committees, including: American Statistical Association Committee on P-values and Statistical Significance (Alexandria, VA, 2014-present); American Statistical Association Anti-Racism Task Force (2020-2021); American Statistical Association (ASA) Representative for the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS, Section: History and Philosophy of Science), term 2017-2020; the Economics Curriculum Committee Task Force of the Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET) (New York, 2010-); Chair of the “Best Article in the History of Economics” Committee (History of Economics Society, 2011-2012); Scientific Advisory Committee of the GTC Drug Design and Molecular Chemistry Conference (Berlin, 2014), and the Scientific Committees of the second, third, and fourth Beeronomics Society conferences on the economics of beer and brewing (Freising and Munich, 2011; York 2013; Seattle 2015). In 2015 he was elected to the Board of Directors of AIRLEAP. A founding member of the World Economics Association, he is a member or co-founding member of several journal boards.
He is Consulting Editor of Ethics and Quantitative Methods for the Journal of Business Ethics and co-edits Schmollers Jahrbuch – Journal of Contextual Economics (Berlin).
