Edward J. McCaffery
Robert C. Packard Trustee Chair in Law and Professor of Law, Economics and Political Science
B.A., Yale University; J.D., Harvard University; M.A. Economics, University of Southern California. Clerked for The Honorable Robert N. Wilentz, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of New Jersey.
An internationlly recognized expert in tax law, Professor McCaffery studies tax policy, tax structures, public finance theory including behavioral public finance, as well as propoerty law and theory, intellectual property, and law and economics. He teaches Federal Income Taxation, Property, Intellectual Property, and Tax Law and Policy at USC, Law and Economics and Law and Technology at the California Institute of Technology.
Professor McCaffery also teaches Corporate Taxation, Federal Income Taxation, Partnership Taxation, Property and a Tax Policy seminar.
Professor McCaffery's scholarship has been widely cited by economists, government oficials, journalists and policy analysts. Among his publications are his recent books, Behavioral Public Finance (which McCaffery co-edited); Fair Not Flat: How to Make the Tax System Better and Simpler, which proposes a tax system based on taxing spending rather than income; and Taxing Women, which examines how working women suffer under current tax laws. Other publications include Rethinking the Vote: The Politics and Prospects of American Election Reform, which he co-edited. Another book, A New Understanding of Property, will be published later this year.
His other writings include "Cognitive Theory and Tax," "Framing the Jury: Cognitive Perspectives on Pain and Suffering Awards" (with Daniel Kahneman and Matthew Spitzer), and "Slouching Towards Equality: Gender Discrimination, Market Efficiency, and Social Change." Dean McCaffery has served as an official consultant to the Russian Federation to help design a comprehensive tax code. Prior to joining the USC faculty, Dean McCaffery practiced law with a San Francisco law firm.
A summa cum laude graduate of Yale University, Professor McCaffery received his J.D. magna cum laude from Harvard Law School and a master's degree in economics from USC. He served as a clerk to Chief Justice Robert N. Wilentz of the New Jersey Supreme Court and was an attorney with Titchell, Maltman, Mark, Bass, Ohleyer & Mishell before joining the USC Law faculty in 1989. He held the Maruice Jones, Jr., Professorship in Law from 1998 to 2004 and has served as a visiting professor of law and economics at the California Institute of Technology since 1994. He has chaired the USC Institute on Federal Taxation since 1997, and he found the USC-Caltech Center for the Study of Law and Politics and served as its director from 2000 to 2003. He is an elected fellow of the American Law Institute (ALI) and the American College of Tax Counsel. Professor McCaffery also is counsel to the Los Angeles office of Sonnenschin Nath & Rosenthal LLP.
