Christopher J. Ruhm earned a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of California at Berkeley in 1984. Professor Ruhm is currently Associate Dean of Academic Affairs and Professor of Public Policy and Economics at the University of Virginia. Dr. Ruhm is also a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. During the 1996-97 academic year he served as Senior Economist on the President's Council of Economic Advisers, where his main responsibilities were in the areas of health policy and aging. From 1991-2010 he served on the faculty at the University of North Carolina. He has also previously taught at Boston University and held a Postdoctoral Fellowship at Brandeis University.

Professor Ruhm teaches in the areas of labor and health economics, applied microeconomics, and quantitative methods. He has conducted research on the impact of parental leave policies and mandated employment benefits, causes and effects of job displacements, transition into retirement, the determinants of health and risky behaviors, and the economic consequences of alcohol and illegal drug policies. He has written more than 80 articles which have been published as book chapters or in journals such as the American Economic Review, Quarterly Journal of Economics, Journal of Economic Perspectives, Review of Economics and Statistics, Journal of Health Economics, Journal of Labor Economics, Journal of Public Economics, and Journal of Human Resources. He is currently associate editor of the Southern Economic Journal, Journal of Population Economics and International Journal of Information Security and Privacy, on the editorial board of Economics Letters and the Journal of Labor Research, on the Board of Directors of the American Society of Health Economists and a steering committee member of the Southeastern Health Economics Study Group. From 2009-2011, he served as Vice President of the Southern Economic Association.

He joined IZA as a Research Fellow in June 2002.