Bio & CV

CV - 21 Jan 2024
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Richard B. Freeman holds the Herbert Ascherman Chair in Economics at Harvard University. He is a Research Associate at the NBER, and is currently serving as Faculty co-Director of the Center for Labor and a Just Economy at the Harvard Law School.

Professor Freeman is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Science and the AAAS (American Association for the Advancement of Science). He is currently serving on the AAAS Initiative for Science and Technology. He  has served or is serving on 12 Panels and Boards of the U.S. National Academy of Science, including The NAS Panel to Evaluate the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics Approach to Measuring the Science and Engineering Workforce, The Board of Higher Education and Workforce (BHEW), The Committee on Understanding the Engineering Education-Workforce Continuum (NAE), The Committee on Assuring a Future U.S.-based Nuclear Chemistry Expertise, The Committee on National Statistics Panel on Developing Science, Technology and Innovation Indicators for the Future, The Committee on Capitalizing on the Diversity of the Science and Engineering Workforce in Industry, The Committee on National Needs for Biomedical and Behavioral Scientists, The Committee on Demographic and Economic Impacts of Immigration, and the joint NAS, NAE and IM study on Policy Implications of International Graduate Students and Postdoctoral Scholars in the U.S. United States. 

Freeman received the Mincer Lifetime Achievement Prize from the Society of Labor Economics in 2006. In 2007 he was awarded the IZA Prize in Labor Economics. In 2011 he was appointed Frances Perkins Fellow of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. In 2016 he received the Global Equity Organization (GEO) Judges Award, honoring exceptional contribution towards the promotion of of global employee share ownership. Also in 2016, he was named a Distinguished Fellow of the American Economic Association; the award citation describes Richard as "an enormously innovative labor economist who has made pioneering contributions to virtually every aspect of the field."

Professor Freeman's research interests include the job market for scientists and engineers; the transformation of scientific ideas into innovations, Chinese and Korean labor markets; the effects of AI and robots on the job market; and forms of labor market representation and employee ownership.

His recent publications include: Can Labor Standards Improve Under Globalization (2004), Emerging Labor Market Institutions for the 21st Century (2005), America Works: The Exceptional Labor Market (2007), What Workers Want (2007 2nd edition), What Workers Say: Employee Voice in the Anglo American World (2007), International Differences in the Business Practices & Productivity of Firms (2009), Science and Engineering Careers in the United States (2009), Reforming the Welfare State: Recovery and Beyond in Sweden (2010), and Shared Capitalism at Work: Employee Ownership, Profit and Gain Sharing, and Broad-based Stock Options (2010), The Citizen’s Share: Putting Ownership Back Into Democracy (2013), and U.S. Engineering in a Global Economy (2018). 

Journal Co-Editor
JPEO: Journal of Participation and Employee Ownership, 2017-present

Current Research Activities: 2015-2018 

China Air Filtration Project
China Innovations and Science Work Force
Role of firms and institutions in inequality
Unions and Workplace Organization