Richard B. Freeman

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Richard B. Freeman (born 1943) is one of the leading labor economists in North America. The Herbert Ascherman Professor of Economics at Harvard University, and Co-Director of the Labor and Worklife Program at Harvard Law School, Freeman is also Senior Research Fellow on Labour Markets at the Centre for Economic Performance, an economic research lab part of the London School of Economics, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council the UK's public body funding social science. Freeman directs the Science and Engineering Workforce Project (SEWP) at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), a network focused on the economics of science, technical, engineering, and IT labor which has received major long-term support from the Sloan Foundation.

He received his B.A. from Dartmouth College in 1964 and his Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard University in 1969. He studied under Harvard Professor and Dean John T. Dunlop, who became U.S. Secretary of Labor under President Gerald Ford.

One of the most prolific social scientists of the postwar period, Freeman has published over 300 articles on a wide range of subjects including global labor standards, the scientific workforce, the economics of crime, how the internet is transforming labor movements, and historical spurts in the growth of labor unions. He has delivered the Clarendon Lectures at Oxford University (1994), the Lionel Robbins Lecture at LSE (1999), the Luigi Einauidi Lecture at Cornell University (2002), and the Okun Lectures at Yale University (2003). His books include America Works (2007) Can Labor Standards Improve Under Globalization? (2003), What Workers Want (1999), What Do Unions Do? (1984), Labor Economics (1979), The Overeducated American (1976), The Black Elite: The New Market for Highly Educated Black Americans (1976), and The Market for College Trained Manpower (1971).

Freeman appeared on The Colbert Report in early 2008.