Shapiro holds appointments in the Department of Economics and as a research professor at SRC.  Shapiro’s general area of expertise is macroeconomics. In his research, he focuses on investment and capital utilization, business-cycle fluctuations, consumption and saving, financial markets, fiscal policy, monetary policy, time-series econometrics, economics of aging, economic measurement, and survey methodology.

Shapiro is a member of the Academic Advisory Council of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. He served as the chair of the Federal Economic Statistics Advisory Committee, the official advisory committee of the Census Bureau, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and the Bureau of Economic Analysis. He served as senior economist at the Council of Economic Advisers with responsibilities for macroeconomic analysis and the weekly economic briefing of the President.