Overview
Robert Hutchens is a Professor in the Department of Labor Economics at Cornell’s ILR School. He received his Ph.D. in economics from the University of Wisconsin in 1976, specializing in labor economics, public finance, and econometrics. His teaching focuses on labor economics and on the economics of government tax and transfer programs. His early research dealt with the economics of government transfer programs, with an emphasis on social security, unemployment insurance and Aid to Families with Dependent Children. More recently his research has concentrated on the labor market for older workers. As part of this research focus, he recently completed a survey of employers that examined employer policies toward phased retirement.
Professor Hutchens served as a Policy Fellow at the Brookings Institution, as an Associate Editor at the Industrial and Labor Relations Review, as Chairman of the Department of Labor Economics, and as a Research Fellow at the Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA). He has held visiting positions at the University of British Columbia, at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and at the International Labor Organization. He is currently the Director of the Cornell in Washington program.
Research Focus
Robert Hutchens focuses his research on the labor market for older workers as well as the problem of developing measures of labor market segregation. His most recent article is "Symmetric Measures of Segregation, Segregation Curves, and Blackwell's Criterion," Mathematical Social Sciences.