Ernst Stromsdorfer, Emeritus Professor of Economics at Washington State University, joins the podcast to discuss his impressive body of research on the impact of labor market programs on different groups of people, and his wide-ranging career across academia, the private sector, and state and federal governments.

Read a transcript of the podcast here: https://irs100.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/2024-06/029-TWGO-Stromsdorfer_transcript3.pdf

For more details on this episode, visit: https://irs100.princeton.edu/podcasts/ernst-stromsdorfer-2024

Ernst Stromsdorfer on studying vocational training in academia, government, and the private sector

For the 30th episode of "The Work Goes On", we flipped the script and asked our long-time host Orley Ashenfelter, the Joseph Douglas Green 1895 Professor of Economics, Emeritus at Princeton University and former director of Princeton’s Industrial Relations Section (IR Section), to start answering questions instead of asking them. Janet Currie, the Henry Putnam Professor of Economics and Public Affairs at Princeton and one of Orley’s former students, joins us in this episode as a special guest host.

Read a transcript of the podcast here: https://irs100.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/2024-09/030-TWGO-Ashenfelter_transcript.pdf.

For more details on this episode, visit: https://irs100.princeton.edu/podcasts/orley-ashenfelter-2024

Orley Ashenfelter on the “irresistible” pull of policy evaluation & why the IR Section is so special

Marjorie McElroy, Professor of Economics at Duke University, joins the podcast to discuss her long and varied academic career, her research on the economics of marriage and the family, and, especially, the challenges and gender discrimination she faced as, at the time, one of the few female economists pursuing a traditionally male-dominated profession.

Read a transcript of the podcast here: https://irs100.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/2024-09/031-TWGO-McElroy_transcript.pdf

For more details on this episode, visit: https://irs100.princeton.edu/podcasts/marjorie-mcelroy-2024

Marjorie McElroy on a long academic career and navigating the economics profession as a woman

Samuel Bowles, Emeritus Professor of Economics at the University of Massachusetts and Research Professor and Director of the Behavioral Sciences Program at the Santa Fe Institute, discusses his deep-rooted interest in economic inequality and how his work has challenged many of the conventional assumptions of modern economic theory. 

Read a transcript of the podcast here: https://irs100.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/2024-10/032-TWGO-Bowles_transcript.pdf

For more details on this episode, visit: https://irs100.princeton.edu/podcasts/samuel-bowles-2024

Samuel Bowles on his deep interest in the causes of inequality & his work to transform economics

Robert Moffitt, the Krieger-Eisenhower Professor of Economics at Johns Hopkins University, discusses his early education, his interest in labor economics, applied microeconometrics, and welfare policy, and how his work has influenced major debates in public policy, especially the economics of low-income populations in the United States.

Read a transcript of the podcast here: https://irs100.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/2024-10/033-TWGO-Moffitt_transcript.pdf

For more details on this episode, visit: https://irs100.princeton.edu/podcasts/robert-moffitt-2024

Robert Moffitt on his “rewarding” career integrating economics, sociology and public policy

George Borjas, the Robert W. Scrivner Professor of Economics and Social Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, discusses his early life in Cuba, his experiences as an immigrant in the United States, his schooling at Columbia University, and his thoughts on the current immigration debate in the United States.

Read a transcript of the podcast here: https://irs100.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/2024-11/034-TWGO-Borjas_transcript.pdf. 

For more details on this episode, visit: https://irs100.princeton.edu/podcasts/George-Borjas-2024.

George Borjas on his journey from Cuba to Harvard and his work on the “hot” topic of immigration

Henry Farber, Hughes-Rogers Professor of Economics emeritus at Princeton University, discusses his early life growing up in an industrial, working-class town in New Jersey, his early interest in labor unions and his nearly fifty-year-long study of labor economics.

Read a transcript of the podcast here: https://irs100.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/2024-11/035-TWGO-Farber_transcript.pdf

For more details on this episode, visit: https://irs100.princeton.edu/podcasts/henry-farber-2024

Henry Farber on his path from Teamster to one of the preeminent researchers of labor economics

Harry Katz, the Jack Sheinkman Professor of Collective Bargaining at Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations, discusses his academic background, his studies of collective bargaining, his work with the United Auto Workers (UAW), and his ongoing thoughts on how to make labor negotiations more inclusive and cooperative.

Read a transcript of the podcast here: https://irs100.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/2024-12/036-TWGO-Katz_transcript.pdf

For more details on this episode, visit: https://irs100.princeton.edu/podcasts/harry-katz-2024

Harry Katz on his push for a more cooperative environment in labor-management relationships

Gavin Wright, William Robertson Coe Professor of American Economic History, emeritus, at Stanford University, discusses his work on the economics of slavery, Black mobility patterns after the Civil War, and his thoughts on the current state of Black economies in the American South.

Read a transcript of the podcast here: https://irs100.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/2025-04/039-TWGO-Wright_transcript.pdf  

For more details on this episode, visit: https://irs100.princeton.edu/podcasts/gavin-wright-2025

Gavin Wright on the Civil Rights Revolution through the eyes of an economic historian

Professor Benjamin Arold, a faculty member in the Department of Economics at the University of Cambridge, shares compelling insights from his research titled “The Value of Worker Rights in Collective Bargaining.”

This research introduces innovative natural language methods to measure worker rights from 30,000 Canadian collective bargaining agreements (1986–2015). By parsing legal obligations and rights using unsupervised text-as-data techniques, it shows that stronger worker rights correlate with pro-worker management practices. The study finds that higher labor taxes shift compensation from wages to untaxed amenities like worker rights, and that improved outside job options lead to stronger worker rights clauses. Overall, a one-standard-deviation increase in worker rights is valued at approximately 5.7% of wages.

Prof. Benjamin, previously served as a postdoctoral researcher at the Center for Law & Economics at ETH Zurich and holds a Ph.D. in Economics from LMU Munich. He has also held visiting positions at Harvard University and Princeton University.

Dr. Arold is an applied microeconomist with research interests in labor and education economics, the economics of religion, and the intersection of AI and economics. His work explores how school curricula shape student achievement, beliefs, choices, and long-term labor market outcomes. Another strand of his research leverages tools from AI, natural language processing (NLP), and computational linguistics to analyze the impact of economic policies and educational interventions on workers and students. His doctoral thesis received the Best Dissertation Award (2021/2022) from the German Economic Association’s Section on Economics of Education, and he was awarded the Fürther Ludwig Erhard Prize in 2023.

This podcast is brought to you by Global Management Consultancy. For more information, please visit www.globalmanagementconsultancy.com.

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How Worker Rights Shape Wages and Workplaces: Insights from Cambridge Economist Prof. Benjamin Arold

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