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Gary S. Fields

Cornell University, USA, and IZA, Germany

IZA World of Labor role

Author, Topic spokesperson

Expertise

Developing countries, (Un)employment, Poverty and inequality, Economic mobility

Country

United States

Languages

English - Native speaker, Spanish - Non-native speaker, French - Non-native speaker

Media experience

Print, Digital, Television, Radio

Email

gsf2@cornell.edu

Current position

Professor of Economics and John P. Windmuller Chair of International and Comparative Labor, Cornell University, USA

Website

http://bit.ly/Fields_IZApage

Positions/functions as a policy advisor

Advisor to the World Bank, WIDER, Asian Development Bank, Inter-American Development Bank, International Labor Organization, Global Development Network and the United Nations, among others

Past positions

Assistant and Associate Professor of Economics, Yale University, USA 1972–1978

Qualifications

PhD Economics, University of Michigan, 1972

Selected publications

  • Working Hard, Working Poor. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012.Distribution and Development. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press and the Russell Sage Foundation, 2001.

  • “Labor market modeling and the urban informal sector: Theory and evidence.” In: Turnham, D., B. Salomé, and A. Schwarz (eds). The Informal Sector Revisited. Paris: OECD, 1990.

  • “On inequality comparisons.” Econometrica (1978) (with J. C. H. Fei).

  • “Rural-urban migration, urban unemployment and underemployment, and job search activity in LDCs.” Journal of Development Economics (1975).

article(s)

  • Self-employment and poverty in developing countries Updated

    The right policies can help the self-employed to boost their earnings above the poverty level and earn more for the work they do

    Gary S. Fields, March 2019
    A key way for the world’s poor to escape poverty is to earn more for their labor. Most of the world’s poor people are self-employed, but because there are few opportunities in most developing countries for them to earn enough to escape poverty, they are working hard but working poor. Two key policy planks in the fight against poverty should be: raising the returns to self-employment and creating more opportunities to move from self-employment into higher paying wage employment.
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