Orley Ashenfelter is Joseph Douglas Green 1895 Professor of Economics at Princeton University. His areas of specialization include labor economics, econometrics, and law and economics. He is director of the Industrial Relations Section at Princeton University, and has been director of the Office of Evaluation of the U.S. Department of Labor, a Guggenheim fellow, and the Benjamin Meeker Visiting Professor at the University of Bristol. He edited the Handbook of Labor Economics and is currently editor of The American Economic Review and co-editor of the American Law and Economics Review. His current research includes the evaluation of the effect of schooling on earnings, the cross-country measurement of wage rates, and many other issues related to the economics of labor markets.

He joined IZA as a Research Fellow in March 2000 and received the 2003 IZA Prize in Labor Economics.