Daniel S. Hamermesh is Distinguished Scholar, Barnard College, Professor Emeritus, Royal Holloway University of London, and Sue Killam Professor Emeritus at the University of Texas at Austin and. His A.B. is from the University of Chicago (1965), his Ph.D. from Yale (1969). He taught from 1969-73 at Princeton, from 1973-93 at Michigan State, from 2009-12 at Maastricht University, and has held visiting professorships in the United States, Europe, Australia and Asia. He is a Fellow of the Econometric Society, a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, and was President of the Society of Labor Economists in 2001. In 2013 that Society gave him the Mincer Award for Lifetime Contributions; he was awarded the IZA Labor Prize; and he received the John R. Commons Award from Omicron Delta Epsilon.

He authored Labor Demand, The Economics of Work and Pay, Economics Is Everywhere, Beauty Pays, and a wide array of articles in labor economics in the leading general and specialized economics journals.

His research concentrates on time use, labor demand, discrimination, social insurance programs (particularly unemployment insurance), and unusual applications of labor economics (to suicide, sleep and beauty).

He joined IZA as a research fellow in July 1998. From December 2001 until July 2008, he was IZA Program Director for the institute's research program "The Future of Labor." He served as IZA Director of Research from August 2008 until January 2009.