David A. Macpherson is the E.M. Stevens Distinguished Professor Economics at Trinity University. Previously, he was the Rod and Hope Brim Eminent Scholar of Economics and Director of the Pepper Institute of Aging and Public Policy at Florida State University. Macpherson is an applied labor economist whose research focuses on wage and fringe benefit determination in U.S. labor markets.

Recent work includes the study of participant direction in pension funds, firm size wage differential, and earnings in regulated and previously regulated industries. He is co-author of Contemporary Labor Economics, Economics: Private and Public Choice, and Union Membership and Earnings Data Book: Compilations from the Current Population Survey. Macpherson also co-authored Pensions and Productivity with Stuart Dorsey and Christopher Cornwell.

Publications have appeared in the Journal of Labor Economics, Industrial and Labor Relations Review, Review of Economics and Statistics, and Journal of Human Resources. He received his Ph.D. from the Pennsylvania State University.

He joined IZA as a Research Fellow in June 2004.