Short Introduction:

Peter Philips received his B.A from Pomona College (1970) and his Ph.D. from Stanford University (1980). He is a Professor of Economics at the University of Utah. He is a labor economist and economic historian. His research focuses on the construction industry. Philips is a respected expert on prevailing wage laws and on employment, training, wages, benefits and safety in the construction industry. He has many academic publications to his credit. He has also served as an expert on the construction industry for the U.S. Labor Department and the U.S. Justice Department. He has testified before many state legislatures on construction regulation issues. His most recent books, Building Chaos: An International Comparison of Deregulation in the Construction Industry (Routledge Press, 2003) and The Economics of Prevailing Wage Laws (Ashgate Press 2005) and his most recent journal articles focus on school construction costs, construction labor market regulation, fatalities in the construction workplace and the effect of subcontracting on construction safety. In the summers, Dr. Philips is a volunteer back-country ranger in the Grand Tetons National Park. . He is co-editor with Garth Mangum of Three Worlds of Labor Economics (M.E. Sharpe, 1986) and coauthor of Portable Pensions for Casual Labor Markets: the Central Pension Fund of the Operating Engineers (Quorum Books, 1995).

Biography

Peter Philips grew up in Compton and Pomona, California. He received his B.A. from Pomona College in 1970 where he majored in economics and received the Leland Backstrand Graduating Senior Award in Economics. Philips received his M.A. in economics (1976) and his PhD in applied economics (1980) from Stanford University. Philips is a Professor of Economics at the University of Utah. He is co-editor with Garth Mangum of Three Worlds of Labor Economics (M.E. Sharpe, 1986) and coauthor of Portable Pensions for Casual Labor Markets: the Central Pension Fund of the Operating Engineers (Quorum Books, 1995). He is also co-editor with Gerhard Bosch of Building Chaos: An InternationalComparison of the Effects of Deregulation in the Construction Industry (forthcoming Routledge Press, London). Philips has published widely on the canning and construction industries in journals such as Industrial and Labor Relations Review, Industrial Relations, Business History, the Journal of Economic History, Historical Methods, The Journal of Economic Literature, The Journal of Education Finance and the Cambridge Journal of Economics. Philips has been a consultant for the U.S. Labor Department analyzing the supply of cannery labor in California, and he has worked as an expert on the Davis-Bacon Act for the U.S. Justice Department. The Davis-Bacon Act regulates wage payments to construction workers on federal public works. Philips is a respected expert on prevailing wage laws and on employment, training, wages, benefits and safety in the construction industry. He has testified before state legislative committees in Ohio, Indiana, Kansas, Oklahoma, New Mexico and California on their state prevailing wage laws. Along with other researchers at the University of Utah, Philips has analyzed the effects of prevailing wage laws on public construction costs, construction worker incomes, apprenticeship training, worker safety and minority access to construction work.

Philips journal publications for 2003 are:

“Race and Prevailing Wage Laws in Construction Industry, Comment on Thieblot,” (with Hamid Azari-Rad) Journal of Labor Research, Vol. XXIV No. 1, Winter 2003, pp161-168; “State Prevailing Wage Laws and School Construction Costs,” (with Hamid Azari-Rad and Mark Prus), Industrial Relations, Vol. 42, No. 3, July 2003, pp. 445-457; “Organizational Change and Workers' Safety in the Construction Industry: The Case of Articulated Subcontracting and Extended Division of Labor,” (with Hamid Azari and Wendine Thompson-Dawson), Industrial Relations Research Association Series, Annual Research Volume, Proceedings of the 55th Annual Meeting, Adrienne E. Eaton, ed., 2003, pp. 240-47; “Building for the Rich, Broadcasting to the Poor: How the N.B.A. Responded to a Changing Economy,” Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Sports Economics, Panhellenic Association of Sports Economics and Managers, with Cory Sinclair (forthcoming 2003) and "Fatal Injuries to Teenage Construction Workers in the U.S.," (with Anthony Suruda, Dean Lillquist and Richard Sesek), American Journal of Industrial Medicine, Volume 44, Issue 5 (November 2003) pp. 510-14.

Also in 2003, Philips published the edited volume Building Chaos: An International Comparison of the Effects of Deregulation on the Construction, (co-edited with Gerhard Bosch) Routledge Press, London, 2003, 240pp. index. This book looks at deregulation across several European, North American and Southeast Asian construction industries.

Philips is the senior labor economist at the University of Utah. He teaches a wide range of courses in the area of labor economics, labor law and collective bargaining. He also teaches econometrics and economic history. Philips has received awards for his teaching and community service, including University of Utah Public Service Professorship, the University of Utah Presidential Teaching Scholar Award and the University of Utah, College of Social and Behavior Science Superior Teacher Award. Philips is married with two children.