Faculty Profile

Robert Goldfarb joined the faculty in 1973. He received his PhD in Economics from Yale University in 1968, where he was an Assistant Professor from 1968 till 1973. Most of his research and publications through the 1980s were in labor economics, covering such topics as wage and hours determination, geographical wage variation, wage regulation, economic effects of U.S. immigration laws, and labor compensation provisions under legislated deregulation.

In the mid-1980s he began pursuing research interests in economic methodology and economics and ethics. Topics here have included: how economists choose assumptions; the status of claims that moral norms should be incorporated in microeconomic modeling of individual behavior; empirical testing of economic theories; problems in drawing inferences from large empirical literatures in economics; methodological issues in economic forecasting; and the relation between economic modeling and empirical work. His other research interest involves applied microeconomics and public policy. Topics here have included: investigating why people choose harmful behaviors, such as smoking or repeated cycles of weight gain and dieting; and the economics of vaccination, of controversial public sculpture, and of nursing shortages.

Professor
PhD, Yale University

Interests: Labor economics, ethics and economics, economic methodology.

References to specific papers, some downloadable, can also be found on RePEc at http://authors.repec.org/pro/pgo32/

Courses:

• Spring 2007
  • Econ 195: Microeconomic Public Policy Analysis
  • Econ 198: Proseminar in Economics
• Fall 2007
  • Honors 43: Honors Introductory Microeconomics
  • Econ 221: Microeconomic Public Policy Analysis
• Spring 2008
  • On sabbatical

Contact Information:
Office: Monroe 372
(202) 994-7581
gldfrb@gwu.edu