James P. Ziliak holds the Carol Martin Gatton Endowed Chair in Microeconomics in the Department of Economics at the University of Kentucky, and he is the Founding Director of the University of Kentucky Center for Poverty Research. He is a research affiliate with the National Poverty Center at the University of Michigan and with the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin. Professor Ziliak received his Ph.D. in Economics from Indiana University in 1993. From 1993 to 2002 he served as assistant and associate professor of economics at the University of Oregon. He has held visiting positions at the Brookings Institution, University of Michigan, University of Wisconsin, and University College London. Professor Ziliak's research expertise is in the areas of labor economics, poverty policy, and tax policy. He has published in leading academic journals of economics, including the American Economic Review and the Journal of Political Economy. Most recently he co-edited the book Income Volatility and Food Assistance in the United States (2008).