Professor Dickens is an internationally renowned expert in labor markets, wage determination, unemployment, monetary policy, inner-city employment problems, effects of trade on employment and wages, poverty, income support, intelligence testing and psychology and economics.

He is currently co-director of a major international research project on wage rigidity. The project relies on data on individual wage changes to measure the extent, nature, causes and consequences of wage rigidity and is a collaborative effort involving the Brookings Institute, New York Federal Reserve Bank, European Central Bank, and economists from 13 countries.

During his first year at Northeastern University, Dickens will be a Visiting Scholar at the Russell Sage Foundation where he will pursue writing and research as part of an interdisciplinary group studying the malleability of cognitive ability. He is also a non-resident senior fellow in the Economics Studies Program at The Brookings Institution, a nonprofit public policy organization based in Washington, DC, where he researches the malleability of cognitive ability; fiscal effects of investment in early education; the relationship of inflation, wage and unemployment; and economic development.

Dickens received his Ph.D. in economics from M.I.T