The Work Goes On: An Oral History of Industrial Relations and Labor Economics with Princeton’s Orley Ashenfelter

David Lewin, the Neil Jacoby Emeritus Professor of Management and Human Resources at UCLA’s Anderson Graduate School of Management. joins the podcast to discuss what sparked his interest in unions and grievance procedures, the Federal Trade Commission's new plan to ban noncompete agreements, and why unionization will re-emerge in the U.S. south and elsewhere. Read a transcript of the podcast here:...

Robert T. Michael, the Eliakim Hastings Moore Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus and Dean Emeritus at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy, joins the podcast to discuss his path to the University of Chicago, why he loves teaching, and the challenges of collecting vital data on sensitive topics like human sexual behavior. Read a transcript of the podcast here: https://irs1...

Barry Chiswick, Professor of Economics and International Affairs at George Washington University, joins the podcast to discuss his wealth of research on immigration and what he learned studying Jewish Americans in the labor market. Read a transcript of the podcast here: https://irs100.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/2024-03/026-TWGO-Chiswick_transcript.pdf For more details on this episode, visit...

Robert Flanagan, the Matsushita Professor of International Labor Economics and Policy Analysis Emeritus at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, joins the podcast to discuss what he’s learned both studying and working for unions, how his time in a musician’s union inspired him to research financial difficulties in the performing arts, and more. Read a transcript of the podcast here: https://irs1...

Bob Gregory, Professor Emeritus at the Research School of Economics at Australian National University, joins the podcast to discuss how getting polio at fourteen years old affected his life trajectory, why he fell in love with economics, and his many contributions as a public servant. Read a transcript of the podcast here: https://irs100.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/2024-02/024-TWGO-Gregory_t...

Sir Stephen John Nickell, Honorary Fellow of Nuffield College, Oxford, joins the podcast to discuss his many mentors at the London School of Economics, how an invite to meet Gordon Brown in Aspen helped put a labor economist on the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee, and his lasting impact on the field of labor economics and economic policy in the UK. Read a transcript of the podcast here...

Robert Willis, Professor of Economics Emeritus at the University of Michigan, joins the podcast to discuss his time as a seaman working the Washington State Ferries, his path to economics, and the origins of the Health and Retirement Study at the University of Michigan. Read a transcript of the podcast here: https://irs100.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/2024-02/022-TWGO-Willis_transcript.pdf Fo...

Robert Pollak, the Hernreich Distinguished Service Professor of Economics at the Washington University in St. Louis, joins the podcast to discuss his work modeling economic decisions and bargaining within families and how he and his wife, an English professor and American poetry scholar, navigated the “two career problem.” Read a transcript of the podcast here: https://irs100.princeton.edu/sites/d...

Bruno Contini, Professor Emeritus of the University of Turin and Honorary Fellow of the Collegio Carlo Alberto, joins the podcast to discuss his childhood under fascism, his experience studying and teaching in the United States, and his expertise on Italian labor markets. Read a transcript of the podcast here: https://irs100.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/2023-11/020-TWGO-Contini_transcript.pdf...

Myra Strober, Professor Emerita at the School of Education at Stanford University, joins the podcast to discuss her path as a trailblazing female labor economist and the first president of the International Association for Feminist Economics. Read a transcript of the podcast: https://irs100.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/2023-11/019-TWGO-Strober_transcript.pdf. For more details on this episode,...

Ray Marshall, Professor of Economics emeritus and Rapoport Centennial chair in Economics and Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin, joins the podcast to discuss his childhood in a Mississippi orphanage, how the GI bill helped him become an economist, and his experience as Secretary of Labor in the Carter administration. Read a transcript of the podcast here: https://irs100.princeton....

W. Craig Riddell, Professor Emeritus of Economics at the Vancouver School of Economics at the University of British Columbia, joins the podcast to discuss his early life in small-town Ontario, his brief stint in the Canadian Navy, and how he discovered a passion for labor economics. Read a transcript of the podcast here: https://irs100.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/2023-09/016-TWGO-Kochan_tran...

Thomas Kochan, the George Maverick Bunker Professor Emeritus of Management at the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, joins the podcast to discuss his life’s work studying unions, arbitrating labor disputes, and advocating for the restoration of a social contract that rewards the contributions of workers. Kochan and Ashenfelter also discuss the “deep economic d...

Bob Hall, the McNeil Joint Hoover Senior Fellow and Professor of Economics at Stanford University, joins the podcast to discuss how an interest in policy inspired him to study economics and his many contributions to applied economics. Read a transcript of the podcast here: https://irs100.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/2023-09/015-TWGO-Hall_transcript-B.pdf For more details on this episode, visi...

Michael Piore, the David W. Skinner Professor of Political Economy, Emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, joins the podcast to discuss his wide-ranging expertise across different areas of labor economics, including the function of internal labor markets, the labor market implications of immigration and migration, manufacturing and product innovation, and the social forces and stru...

Francine Blau and Lawrence Kahn, both of whom are professors of economics at Cornell University, join the podcast to discuss what inspired them to study economics, why they like working together, and the current state of gender inequities in the U.S. labor market. Read a transcript of this interview: https://irs100.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/2023-05/013-TWGO-Blau-Kahn_transcript.pdf For mor...

John Pencavel, the Levin Professor of Economics, Emeritus at Stanford University, joins the podcast to talk about his early life in London’s West End, his most popular research, and his perspective on recent efforts to unionize workers at Amazon, Starbucks, and other companies in the U.S. Read a transcript of this interview: https://irs100.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/2023-05/012-TWGO-Pencave...

Reuben Gronau, Professor of Economics Emeritus at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, joins the podcast to talk about what inspired his interest in labor economics and his many contributions to Israeli economic policy. Read a transcript of this interview: https://irs100.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/2023-04/011-TWGO-Gronau_transcript.pdf For more details about this episode, visit: https://irs1...

James J. Heckman, Henry Schultz Distinguished Service Professor in Economics at the University of Chicago, joins the podcast to discuss graduate school at Princeton, why an often overlooked paper on the effect of civil rights laws is his favorite, and much more. Read a transcript of this interview: https://irs100.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/2023-04/010-TWGO-Heckman%20transcript.pdf For more...

Daniel Hamermesh, the Sue Killam Professor of Economics Emeritus at the University of Texas at Austin, joins the podcast to talk to Princeton’s Orley Ashenfelter about “the promise” of the four-day work week, how physical appearance affects compensation, and his lifetime of contributions to the field of labor economics. Read a transcript of this interview: https://irs100.princeton.edu/sites/defaul...

Frank Stafford, Professor of Economics Emeritus at the University of Michigan, joins the podcast to talk to Princeton’s Orley Ashenfelter about the origins of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) and his research on labor supply, income volatility, household finances, and more. Read a transcript of this interview: https://irs100.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/2023-03/008-TWGO-Frank%20Staff...

In a wide-ranging interview, Robert Solow joins the podcast to talk about the origins of his remarkable career, covering everything from his being “a child of the Great Depression” to leaving Harvard to fight in WWII to his time serving in President Kennedy’s Council of Economic Advisors. Read a transcript of this interview: https://irs100.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/2023-03/007-TWGO-Robert%...

Richard Freeman, who holds the Herbert Ascherman Chair in Economics at Harvard University, joins the podcast to talk to Princeton’s Orley Ashenfelter about the early influences of Martin Segal and John Dunlap on his career, who pursues careers in STEM and why, and whether we can expect inequality at the bottom of the wage distribution, which shrunk during the pandemic for the first time in recent...

Robert McKersie, Professor of Management Emeritus at MIT's Sloan School of Management, joins the podcast to talk to Princeton’s Orley Ashenfelter about his path from being the son of an International Workers of the World (IWW) member in Paterson, NJ to becoming one of the leading global experts on labor negotiations. In this episode, McKersie and Ashenfelter discuss: • McKersie’s early academic ca...

Claudia Goldin, the Henry Lee Professor of Economics at Harvard University, joins the podcast to talk to Princeton’s Orley Ashenfelter about growing up as an “inner city kid” in the Bronx, how her famous study on the impact of blind auditions at orchestras came to be, and her life’s work on “the single most important change in the labor force” for almost every country: women’s labor force particip...