Richard B. Freeman holds the Herbert Ascherman Chair in Economics at Harvard University. He is currently serving as Faculty co-Director of the Labor and Worklife Program at the Harvard Law School. He directs the National Bureau of Economic Research / Sloan Science Engineering Workforce Projects, and is Senior Research Fellow in Labour Markets at the London School of Economics' Centre for Economic Performance.

Professor Freeman is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Science and is currently serving as a member of two panels of the AAAS, The Initiative for Science and Technology, and The Commission on the Humanities and Social Sciences. He is a member of two current Panels of the National Academy of Science, The Committee on Assuring a Future U.S.-based Nuclear Chemistry Expertise, and the Committee on National Statistics Panel on Developing Science, Technology and Innovation Indicators for the Future. Freeman also served on six previous panels of the National Academy of Sciences, including the Committee on Capitalizing on the Diversity of the Science and Engineering Workforce in Industry, the Committee on National Needs for Biomedical and Behavioral Scientists, and the joint NAS, NAE and IM study on Policy Implications of International Graduate Students and Postdoctoral Scholars in the U.S. United States

Freeman received the Mincer Lifetime Achievement Prize from the Society of Labor Economics in 2006. In 2007 he was awarded the IZA Prize in Labor Economics. In 2011 he was appointed Frances Perkins Fellow of the American Academy of Political and Social Science.

His recent publications include: Can Labor Standards Improve Under Globalization (2004), Emerging Labor Market Institutions for the 21st Century (2005), America Works: The Exceptional Labor Market (2007), What Workers Want (2007 2nd edition),  What Workers Say: Employee Voice in the Anglo American World (2007), International Differences in the Business Practices & Productivity of Firms (2009), Science and Engineering Careers in the United States (2009), Reforming the Welfare State: Recovery and Beyond in Sweden (2010), and Shared Capitalism at Work: Employee Ownership, Profit and Gain Sharing, and Broad-based Stock Options (2010). His forthcoming IZA Prize book is Making Europe Work: IZA Labor Economics Series (2012).