Economist Dan Hamermesh to give public lecture on beauty and discrimination

University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa
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Posted: Dec 16, 2009

Daniel Hamermesh
Daniel Hamermesh
Daniel Hamermesh, a distinguished economist at the University of Texas-Austin and a regular New York Times contributor, will give a talk at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa campus on the role and perception of beauty in society.
 
Titled “Beauty Pays,” the free public lecture will be held at 6:00 p.m. on Thursday, January 14, at the UH Mānoa Center for Korean Studies auditorium. Hamermesh will examine issues such as beauty discrimination, the hiring of good-looking people as company strategies, whether government should offer affirmative action programs for “ugly” people, if good looks make people more productive, and does buying clothing and beauty treatments raise earning power?
 
Hamermesh is the Sue Killam Professor in the Foundation of Economics at the University of Texas at Austin, and a Professor of Labor Economics at Maastricht University in the Netherlands. He holds an A.B. from the University of Chicago (1965), and a PhD from Yale (1969). He taught from 1969-73 at Princeton, and from 1973-93 at Michigan State.
 
Hamermesh is a Fellow of the Econometric Society and the Society of Labor Economists, a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research and the Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit (IZA), and Past President of the Society of Labor Economists and Midwest Economics Association. His magnum opus, Labor Demand, was published by Princeton University Press in 1993.
 
In 2009, Worth Publishers printed the third edition of his Economics Is Everywhere, a series of 400 vignettes designed to illustrate the ubiquity of economics in everyday life and how simple tools in a microeconomics principles class can be used. Current vignettes are included on the freakonomics blog. His undergraduate teaching has gained him several university-wide teaching awards.
 
For more information on the public lecture at UH Mānoa, contact Timothy Halliday, assistant economics professor, at 956-8615.
 
On-campus parking is available for $5 after 4 p.m. There is a flat rate fee of $4 for parking in campus parking structures prior to 4 p.m. at the entry kiosks.