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Daniel S. Hamermesh
Former Editor, Country labour markets

University of Texas at Austin, USA, and IZA@LISER, Luxembourg

World of Labour role

Author, Topic spokesperson, Former Editor

Current position

Sue Killam Professor Emeritus, University of Texas at Austin, USA

Research interest

Labor economics, including time use, discrimination, labor demand

Website

https://www.iza.org/people/fellows/122/daniel-s-hamermesh

Positions/functions as a policy advisor

Member, US Bureau of Labor Statistics, Technical Advisory Committee, 2012–2015; Chair, Scientific Advisory Committee, and Member, ex officio, Board of Trustees, German Institute for Economic Research (DIW), 2003–2009

Past positions

Distinguished Scholar, Barnard College, USA, 2017–2021; Professor of Economics, Royal Holloway University of London, UK, 2013–2017; Sue Killam Professor of Economics, University of Texas at Austin, USA, 1993–2014; Professor of Economics, Michigan State University, USA, 1973–1993; Assistant Professor of Economics, Princeton University, USA, 1969–1973

Qualifications

PhD Economics, Yale University, 1969

Selected publications

  • "Human Beauty Illustrates the Economic Impact of Heritable Physical Traits: Hot Parents, Rich Kid?” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2025) (with A. Zhang).

  • Spending Time: The Most Valuable Resources. New York: Oxford University Press, 2019.

  • Beauty Pays. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011.

  • “Strike three: Discrimination, incentives and evaluation.” American Economic Review (2011) (with C. Parsons, J. Sulaeman, and M. Yates).

  • “Stressed out on four continents: Time crunch or yuppie kvetch.” Review of Economics and Statistics (2007) (with J. Lee).

  • Labor Demand. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993.

Article(s)

  • The labor market in the US, 2000–2020 Updated

    Covid-19 ended the longest US economic expansion, pushing unemployment to its highest level with a slow and incomplete recovery

    Daniel S. Hamermesh, October 2021
    As the largest economy in the world, the US labor market is crucial to the economic well-being of citizens worldwide as well as, of course, that of its own citizens. Since 2000 the US labor market has undergone substantial changes, reflecting the Great Recession and the Covid Recession, but also resulting from some striking trends. Most interesting have been a remarkable drop in the labor force participation rate, reversing a nearly 50-year trend; the full recovery of unemployment after 2010 and its skyrocketing in 2020; and the little-known continuing growth in post-inflation average earnings.
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  • Do labor costs affect companies’ demand for labor? Updated

    Overtime penalties, payroll taxes, and other labor policies alter costs and change employment and output

    Daniel S. Hamermesh, February 2021
    Higher labor costs (higher wage rates and employee benefits) make workers better off, but they can reduce companies’ profits, the number of jobs, and the hours each person works. The minimum wage, overtime pay, payroll taxes, and hiring subsidies are just a few of the policies that affect labor costs. Policies that increase labor costs can substantially affect both employment and hours, in individual companies as well as in the overall economy.
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