Katharine Abraham
Abraham in 1993
Commissioner of Labor Statistics
Bureau of Labor Statistics
In office
October 1993 – October 2001
President
Preceded byJanet L. Norwood
Succeeded byKathleen Utgoff
Member of the Council of Economic Advisers
In office
2011–2013
PresidentBarack Obama
Preceded byCecilia Rouse
Succeeded byBetsey Stevenson
Personal details
Born (1954-08-28) August 28, 1954
Ames, Iowa[1]
SpouseGraham N. Horkley
Children2
Academic career
InstitutionsSloan School of Management, MIT
University of Maryland, College Park
Fieldlabor economics
Alma mater
Awards

Katharine G. Abraham (born August 28, 1954[3]) is an American economist who is the director of the Maryland Center for Economics and Policy,[4] and a professor of survey methodology and economics[5] at the University of Maryland. She was commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics from 1993–2001[2] and a member of the Council of Economic Advisers from 2011–2013.[6][7] She was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 2022.[8]

Education

Abraham holds a bachelor of science degree in economics from Iowa State University (1976) and a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University (1982). She was an assistant professor at MIT's Sloan School of Management and a research associate at the Brookings Institution before joining the faculty at the University of Maryland in 1988.[1]

Career

During her time as commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Abraham laid the groundwork for the American Time Use Survey, the first U.S. government survey of time use, and established the Federal Economic Statistics Advisory Committee. During extensive public debate on the Consumer Price Index in the 1990s, Abraham testified repeatedly before Congress on the shortcomings of existing methodology and the necessity of making revisions based on objective research.[9][10][11] She expanded coverage of the prices of services in the Producer Price Index; instituted improvements in the Current Employment Statistics, including the substitution of a probability sample for the quota sample; accelerated delivery of employment and wage statistics; and took steps toward expanding coverage of wages and salaries in the Occupational Employment Statistics program.[2]

Abraham's research has included studies of the effects of job duration on wages; the effects of advertising on job vacancies, wages and the business cycle; and comparisons among the U.S., European, and Japanese labor markets; work-sharing policies, unemployment, and job openings; the operation of internal labor markets; and the measurement of market and nonmarket economic activity.[12][13]

Awards

She is a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research[14] and the recipient of an honorary doctorate by Iowa State University. She has been awarded the Julius Shiskin Award for Economic Statistics (2002),[2] the Roger Herriot Award for Innovation in Federal Statistics (2010), the Susan C. Eaton Scholar-Practitioner Award of the Labor and Employment Relations Association (2013), and was named a Distinguished Fellow of the American Economic Association in 2020.[15] She is a fellow of the American Statistical Association and the Society of Labor Economists.[4] She was elected to fellowship of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2020.[16]

Selected bibliography

Books
  • Abraham, Katharine G.; McKersie, Robert B. (1990). New developments in the labor market: toward a new institutional paradigm. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press. ISBN 9780262011181. Based on papers presented at a conference held at MIT in June 1987.
  • Abraham, Katharine G.; Houseman, Susan N. (1993). Job security in America: lessons from Germany. Washington, D.C: Brookings Institution. ISBN 9780815700753.
  • Abraham, Katharine G.; Mackie, Christopher D. (2005). Beyond the market designing nonmarket accounts for the United States. Washington, D.C.: National Academies Press. ISBN 9780309093194.
  • Abraham, Katharine G.; Spletzer, James R.; Harper, Michael J. (2010). Labor in the new economy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 9780226001432.
Journal articles

References

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