Gary Sheldon Fields (born October 1, 1946) is an American

economist An economist is a professional and practitioner in the social sciences, social science discipline of economics. The individual may also study, develop, and apply theories and concepts from economics and write about economic policy. Within this ...

, the John P. Windmuller Professor of International and Comparative Labor and Professor of Economics at

Cornell University Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to teach an ...

. Fields has performed extensive research in labor economics and development economics, in particular labor mobility, which was rewarded with the

IZA Prize in Labor Economics The Institute for the Study of Labor awards a prize each year (from 2016 on every two years in turn with the IZA Young Labor Economist Award) for outstanding academic achievement in the field of labor economics. The IZA Prize in Labor Economics has ...

in 2014.

Education

Fields obtained his B.A. (1967), M.A. (1969) and

Ph.D. A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Because it is a ...

(1972) from the

University of Michigan , mottoeng = "Arts, Knowledge, Truth" , former_names = Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania (1817–1821) , budget = $10.3 billion (2021) , endowment = $17 billion (2021)As o ...

in economics.

Academic career

Fields joined

Yale University Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wo ...

as an assistant professor of economics in 1972, being promoted to

associate professor Associate professor is an academic title with two principal meanings: in the North American system and that of the ''Commonwealth system''. Overview In the ''North American system'', used in the United States and many other countries, it is a ...

in 1976 and directing the Economic Growth Center from 1977 to 1978. In 1978 he moved to

as associate professor of industrial and labor relations, becoming full professor in 1982 and being endowed with the John P. Windmuller Chair of International and Comparative Labor in 2008. At Cornell University he has been director of the ILR International Initiative (1991–94) and of the Program on Globalization and the Workplace (2007–10) as well as chairman of Department of Labor Economics and the Department of International and Comparative Labor. He has also worked as an advisor for the

World Bank The World Bank is an international financial institution that provides loans and grants to the governments of low- and middle-income countries for the purpose of pursuing capital projects. The World Bank is the collective name for the Interna ...

International Labour Organization The International Labour Organization (ILO) is a United Nations agency whose mandate is to advance social and economic justice by setting international labour standards. Founded in October 1919 under the League of Nations, it is the first and o ...

Asian Development Bank The Asian Development Bank (ADB) is a regional development bank established on 19 December 1966, which is headquartered in the Ortigas Center located in the city of Mandaluyong, Metro Manila, Philippines. The bank also maintains 31 field office ...

Inter-American Development Bank The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB or IADB) is an international financial institution headquartered in Washington, D.C., United States of America, and serving as the largest source of development financing for Latin America and the Caribb ...

Global Development Network The Global Development Network (GDN) is a worldwide network of research and policy institutes working to provide new perspectives to the development challenges of our time. A spin-off of the World Bank, GDN works to make policy-relevant research a ...

, and the

United Nations The United Nations (UN) is an intergovernmental organization whose stated purposes are to maintain international peace and international security, security, develop friendly relations among nations, achieve international cooperation, and be ...

, private companies like

Deloitte Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited (), commonly referred to as Deloitte, is an international professional services network headquartered in London, England. Deloitte is the largest professional services network by revenue and number of profession ...

and governments.

Research

Fields' fields of academic interest include labor economics, development economics, and the economics of the workplace and management, although his current research concentrates on

economic mobility Economic mobility is the ability of an individual, family or some other group to improve (or lower) their economic status—usually measured in income. Economic mobility is often measured by movement between income quintiles. Economic mobility ...

, labor market models, and labor markets in

developing economies A developing country is a sovereign state with a lesser developed industrial base and a lower Human Development Index (HDI) relative to other countries. However, this definition is not universally agreed upon. There is also no clear agreeme ...

. The bibliographic database

IDEAS/RePEc Research Papers in Economics (RePEc) is a collaborative effort of hundreds of volunteers in many countries to enhance the dissemination of research in economics. The heart of the project is a decentralized database of working papers, preprints, ...

lists him among the top 5% authors in economics according to a number of metrics, e.g. ''average rank score'' and ''number of citations''. His most-cited research article, published in 1975, analyzes the

unemployment Unemployment, according to the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development), is people above a specified age (usually 15) not being in paid employment or self-employment but currently available for Work (human activity), w ...

and

underemployment Underemployment is the underuse of a worker because a job does not use the worker's skills, is part-time, or leaves the worker idle. Examples include holding a part-time job despite desiring full-time work, and overqualification, in which the em ...

in least developed countries in a quantity adjustment framework by making extensions to the Harris-Todaro model of

rural-urban migration Urbanization (or urbanisation) refers to the population shift from rural to urban areas, the corresponding decrease in the proportion of people living in rural areas, and the ways in which societies adapt to this change. It is predominantly the ...

, namely (1) allowances for more generalized job search behavior, an urban traditional sector, preferential hiring by educational level, and labor turnover considerations. A predicted unemployment rate much lower than in the initial model and more in line with empirical observations is the result of these modifications, explaining the appeal of Fields' labor market model in development economics. In another highly cited article, co-authored with Efe A. Ok and published in 1996, Fields defines the concept of

income mobility Economic mobility is the ability of an individual, family or some other group to improve (or lower) their economic status—usually measured in income. Economic mobility is often measured by movement between income quintiles. Economic mobility ...

and develops a measure of income mobility which is additively decomposable into its two sources, namely the transfer of income among individuals within a given structure and the change in total income, e.g. due to economic growth or contraction. His most recent work centers on the

working poor The working poor are working people whose incomes fall below a given poverty line due to low-income jobs and low familial household income. These are people who spend at least 27 weeks in a year working or looking for employment, but remain und ...

, defined as individuals working (often as self-employed) but earning less than $2 (PPP) per day, and their attempts to enter wage-paying employment or improve their earnings within self-employment.''Gary Fields: The link between jobs, unemployment, and poverty.'' Video published by the World Bank Jobs Group on YouTube on November 17th, 2014 and accessed on March 24th, 2015.
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References

External links

Profile of Gary Fields at the ILR School
{{DEFAULTSORT:Fields, Gary 21st-century American economists Labor economists American development economists Cornell University faculty University of Michigan College of Literature, Science, and the Arts alumni Living people 1946 births