Thomas J. Kniesner’s research has clarified the level and distribution of the economic benefits of life-saving government regulations used in policymaking and policy implementation. Kniesner joined the faculty of Claremont Graduate University as University Professor in 2013.
Born in Cleveland, Ohio, Kniesner received his PhD in Economics from Ohio State University. He is a research fellow at IZA and Krisher Professor of Economics Emeritus at Syracuse University. Kniesner’s specialty is the econometric examination of labor and health economic issues. His interests are labor supply, workplace safety, and health care costs and use. He has published articles in more than 20 professional journals, including the American Economic Review, Econometrica, and Journal of Political Economy. He is the coauthor of seven books, including Labor Economics: Theory, Evidence, and Policy; Simulating Workplace Safety Policy; The Law and Economics of Workers’ Compensation Insurance; and The Effects of Recent Tax Reforms on Labor Supply. He has served as co-editor of the Journal of Human Resources and Foundations and Trends in Microeconomics and as associate editor of the Journal of Risk and Uncertainty.
Prior to joining CGU, Kniesner was on the faculty of Indiana University’s Department of Economics, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Department of Economics, Duke University’s Institute for Policy Studies, and Syracuse University, where he served as the chair of the Department of Economics from 2002 to 2006 and where he is Krisher Professor of Economics Emeritus. Kniesner also served as the senior labor economist on the staff of President Ronald Reagan’s Council of Economic Advisers. He has lived in Japan, where he was visiting scholar at Keio University; in Australia, where he was visiting fellow at the Australian National University’s Department of Statistics of the Faculties and Department of Economics of the Research School of the Social Sciences; and in the Netherlands, where he was visiting scholar at the CentER for Economic Research of Tilburg University. More recently, Kniesner was a visiting scholar at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution and University College London, a visiting research fellow in the Division of Health Services and Policy Research of Eli Lilly and Company, and a visiting scholar at Harvard University’s Center for Risk Analysis. During spring 2001, he was a visiting fellow at Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations.
Kniesner is a member of Phi Beta Kappa and has received the University of Mississippi’s Otho Smith Medallion for service to the economics profession. His biography has appeared in Marquis Who’s Who in the World, Who’s Who in America, Who’s Who in American Education, and more. In 2004, Kniesner was elected to the National Academy of Social Insurance.
Co-authored with John D. Leeth. “Regulating Occupational and Product Risks,” in Handbook of the Economics of Risk and Uncertainty, edited by M.J. Machina and W. Kip Viscusi, 493–600. Amsterdam: Elsevier BV, 2014.
Co-authored with James P. Ziliak. “Evidence of Tax-Induced Individual Behavioral Responses,” in Fundamental Tax Reform: Issues, Choices, and Implications, edited by John W. Diamond and George R. Zodrow, 375–413. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2008.
“The Full-Time Workweek in the United States, 1900–1970,” in The Economics of Leisure, Vol. II, edited by Clem Tisdell, 296–308. Cheltenham, United Kingdom: Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd., 2006.
Co-authored with James P. Ziliak, “Panel Econometrics of Labor Market Outcomes,” in The Oxford Handbook of Panel Data, edited by Badi H. Baltagi, 583–607. Oxford: Oxford University, 2015.
Co-authored with Regina L. H. Powers, and Thomas W. Croghan. “Provider Type and Depression Treatment Adequacy.” Health Policy 72(2005): 321–32.
“Graduate Labor Market Analysis Economics,” in Labor Economics Reading Lists, edited by Edward Tower, 128–35. Chapel Hill: Eno River, 1995.