The Shiskin Award

The annual Julius Shiskin Award for Economic Statistics was established in 1979 by the Washington Statistical Society and is now co-sponsored by the National Association for  Business Economics. It is given in recognition of unusually original and important contributions in the development of economic statistics or in the use of economic statistics in interpreting the economy.

Dennis Fixler Receives 2023 Julius Shiskin Memorial Award for Economic Statistics

Dennis Fixler, Chief Economist at the Bureau of Economic Analysis, is recognized for his innovative contributions to the conceptual framework and practical methodology for the measurement of financial intermediation services in the national accounts and the producer price index and of insurance services in the national accounts. The award recognizes unusually original and important contributions to the development of economic statistics or to their use in interpreting the economy.

Dr. Fixler began his career in Federal statistics as a research economist at the Bureau of Labor Statistics, where he served as chief of the Division of Price and Index Number Research. While at BLS he drew on the theory of the user-cost of money to develop concepts and techniques for measuring the prices and output of financial intermediation services, which enabled BLS to expand the coverage of services in the producer price index.

Dr. Fixler has occupied the positions of Chief Statistician or Chief Economist at the Bureau of Economic Analysis since 2001. After arriving at BEA, he led the implementation of new measures of financial intermediation services that incorporated insights from his research in the national accounts and developed and led the implementation of an improved approach to measuring the output of property-casualty insurers that can be relied on to produce accurate estimates even at times of major disasters. The methods for estimating the output of property-casualty developed as part of implementing this approach have been adopted internationally.

Dr. Fixler also led the development of inequality indicators that show how personal income from the national accounts is distributed across households, and help to reveal whether the benefits of economic growth are widely shared.

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Previous Shiskin Award Winners

2022 - Robert Feenstra, Distinguished Professor at the University of California, Davis, for his conduct of fundamental research on price index measurement in the presence of product turnover, his pioneering work in advocating for the use of scanner data for improved economics measurement, and his major contributions to our understanding of the evolution of living standards worldwide through the creation and dissemination of the next generation of the Penn World Tables. and Charles Hulten, Professor Emeritus at the University of Maryland, College Park, for his insights into the measurement of capital and productivity, including measurement of economic depreciation, development of a methodology for aggregating industry-level productivity, and measurement of investment in intangible capital, as well as his leadership role in chairing the Committee on Research on Income and Wealth (part of the National Bureau of Economic Research -- NBER) for three decades.

2021 - Marshall Reinsdorf, for his conduct of fundamental research on sources of bias in the consumer price index (CPI) that has influenced standards for price index measures internationally and for improving the accuracy and conceptual basis for the measurement of banking services and pensions in the U.S. national accounts, and Ron Jarmin, for his leadership role at the U.S. Bureau of the Census in overseeing the 2020 Decennial Census and the central role he has played in building important new data products from administrative data and developing a compelling vision for the future of economic measurement within the Federal statistical system. 

2020 - Ernst R Berndt, Louis E. Seley Professor in Applied Economics, Emeritus, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, for conducting original and influential economic research on the measurement of multifactor productivity and quality-adjusted price change and for his leadership of key groups both within and with linkages to the U.S. economic statistics community. 

2019 - award not made

2018 - Dr. Barry Bosworth for conducting research using key federal government statistical programs to study topics such as capital formation, saving, and productivity growth, and for advising the statistical agencies to improve these programs, and Professor Danny Pfeffermann for collaborating with statistical agencies around the world to improve several major programs such as time series small area estimation, estimation of mean square error of seasonally adjusted and trend estimators, and modeling of complex survey data, accounting for informative sampling and nonresponse.

2017 - Katherine Wallman, retired U.S. Chief Statistician at the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), for her work strengthening the independence of U.S. statistical agencies; expanding confidentiality protection; improving the quality and usability of official statistics; increasing collaboration among the statistical agencies; and improving the reliability and comparability of official statistics throughout the world.

2016 - John M. Abowd, Edmund Ezra Day Professor at Cornell University and currently Associate Director for Research and Methodology and Chief Scientist at the Census Bureau, for his work related to designing and implementing disclosure avoidance techniques that enable federal statistical agencies to greatly expand the availability of their data while preserving respondents’ confidentiality and for his leadership at Cornell providing access to these data over the Internet. He is also recognized for developing econometric and statistical techniques to conduct labor market analysis.

2015 - Brent Moulton, associate director for National Economic Accounts of the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), for his leadership in implementing major innovations into the U.S. national accounts, international standards for national accounts, and expanded integration of U.S. statistical programs. The award also honors his work at the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) in developing innovations that improved the reliability of the Consumer Price Index (CPI).

2014 - Julia Ingrid Lane, Senior Managing Economist and Institute Fellow at the American Institutes for Research, for her contributions to the development of a new Census Bureau program that has significantly advanced research on employment dynamics . Dr. Lane initiated what is now known as the Longitudinal Employer Household Dynamics (LEHD) program, the first large-scale linked employer-employee dataset in the United States. This dataset filled a major data gap by providing researchers with matched employee-employer data containing information for most states on income and worker mobility and on the entry and exit of firms. She also developed one of the first remote access data enclaves with government micro data records at a private firm. 

2013 - Maurine Haver, CBE, for educating data users and producers and data budget advocacy.  She founded Haver Analytics in 1978 and at the outset was one of the few firms that integrated documentation into its database products. This effort quickly set the standard for disseminating these metadata, thereby significantly improving user knowledge of important aspects of various statistical programs.  The Shiskin Award Committee said Haver's other achievements cited by the award committee include the key role she played in the evolution of NABE's 10-year-old Economic Measurement Seminar (EMS). The committee also cited several examples of how her knowledge of statistics programs and her extensive business expertise and business contacts make Haver "a particularly effective spokesperson for the business community before Congress on the critical role federal economic statistics play in American business planning and operations." She has testified before Congress in support of issues such as data sharing and adequate funding for economic programs, and she organized NABE members in support of the Confidential Information Protection and Statistical Efficiency Act of 2002 (CIPSEA), which led to improvements in key economic statistics.

John Haltiwanger, for expanding access to Census Bureau micro-data records and for using these records to develop new statistical measures to analyze firm-level employment dynamics and productivity.

2012 - William Nordhaus, Yale University Professor, for his work in measuring economic welfare and the impact of the environment on gross domestic product (GDP), which challenged the statistical systems in the United States and other countries to think more broadly about measurement issues. His research has had a major impact on economic statistics throughout the world by providing a conceptual and empirical basis for his measures and working cooperatively with the statistical community to implement new work.

2011 -  Thomas Mesenbourg, deputy director of the U.S. Census Bureau, in recognition of his contributions to developing and advancing economic statistics programs that meet the needs of a rapidly changing economy. His major contributions to economic statistics include expanding coverage of services, introducing innovative classification systems of economic activity, and providing new data on the impact of technology.

2010 - Dale Jorgenson, an economics professor at Harvard University, in recognition of his contributions to the measurement of productivity, innovation, capital, human capital, poverty, and for his leadership and integration of the U.S. National Accounts. His research has provided contributions to the multi-factor productivity estimates produced by the European Union. His research on the concept of the cost of capital was also a major influence on the new chapter on capital services in the System of National Accounts 2008.

2009 - Helen Stone Tice, a senior research associate at the Center for Civil Society Studies at the Institute of Policy Studies at the Johns Hopkins University (JHU) in Baltimore,in recognition of her innovative research on the contribution of nonprofit institutions to the economy, for her leadership in raising awareness of the nonprofit sector, and for work that she has done that has resulted in improvements in both U.S. and international economic accounts.

2008 - William R. Bell, a senior mathematical statistician at the U.S. Census Bureau, and Robert M. Groves, director of the Survey Research Center at the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research, have been selected as the recipients of the 2008 Julius Shiskin Memorial Award for Economic Statistics. Dr. Bell was selected to receive the Shiskin Award in recognition of his statistical research that led to improved economic statistics through contributions to the theory and practice of seasonal adjustment, small area estimation, and time series modeling. Dr. Groves is receiving the award in recognition of his innovative statistical research that led to improved economic statistics through contributions to the theory and practice of survey methods for sample surveys of households and establishments

2007- Arthur B. Kennickell, Senior Economist and Head of the Microeconomic Surveys Unit at the Federal Reserve Board, received the 2007 Julius Shiskin Memorial Award for Economic Statistics. The award recognizes Dr. Kennickell for his leadership of the Federal Reserve’s Survey of Consumer Finances and his achievements as an  international expert on the design and implementation of household economic surveys.

2006 - J. Steven (Steve) Landefeld, Director of the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) of the U.S. Department of Commerce, for his leadership in strengthening the BEA economic accounts, enhancing the international reputation of BEA, and outstanding staff development.

2005 - W. Erwin Diewert, Professor of Economics at the University of British Columbia, for path-breaking economic theoretical innovations, notably in index number theory, adapted to improve national economic statistics around the world

2004 - Agustín Maravall, Bank of Spain, for outstanding leadership and contributions to methods, software, training, and consultation for model-based seasonal adjustment and its acceptance by national statistical offices and central banks.

2003 - Carol A. Corrado, Federal Reserve Board, for outstanding stewardship of industrial production and capacity measurement resulting in notable statistical improvements, for leadership in measuring productivity and information-technology output and prices, and for significant contributions to macroeconomic analysis using disaggregated data.

2003 - Susan E. Offutt, Economic Research Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, for exceptional leadership in establishing the primacy of the Economic Research Service as the Nation's leading source of economic information and policy analysis on food, farm, natural resource, and rural development issues.

2002 - Katharine G. Abraham, Bureau of Labor Statistics, for her many methodological improvements in U.S. price and employment statistics—improvements demanded by the increasingly complex roles those statistics play in business and government affairs.

2001 - George C. Tiao, University of Chicago, for his research and leadership contributions to the methodological foundations of the first model-based approach to seasonal adjustment, an approach that has been adopted by several national statistical offices and central banks.

2000 - Edwin R. Dean, Bureau of Labor Statistics,for his important contributions to the improvement and understanding of productivity measures, his leadership in international comparisons of labor statistics, and his expertise and innovation that has expanded the Bureau of Labor Statistics international technical cooperation program.

1999 - Robert P. Parker, Bureau of Economic Analysis,for important contributions to aid in the management and interpretation of the economy, for exceptionally sound and innovative research in economic statistics, and for decades of work in improving the National Income and Product Accounts in the United States and other countries.

1998 - Eva Jacobs, Bureau of Labor Statistics, for her management of the Consumer Expenditure Survey Program, her work on the use of the Consumer Expenditure Survey data to analyze and interpret the economy, and her responsiveness to customer needs.

1998 - Joseph L. Gastwirth, George Washington University,for his seminal work that clarified the statistical procedures for the Lorenz curve and related measures of income inequality and for his continuing contributions to statistical methodology needed for economic and labor analysis.

1997 - Jack E. Triplett, Bureau of Economic Analysis, for broad contributions to the field of economic measurement, including the development and introduction of hedonic price index measurement techniques and superlative price and quantity indices in the National Income and Product Accounts and, most recently, the development and implementation of the North American Industry Classification System.

1996 - David F. Findley, the U.S. Census Bureau,for outstanding scientific leadership in improving seasonal adjustment methodology for the economic times series at the Census Bureau, the Federal Government, and throughout the world.

1995 - Fritz Scheuren, Internal Revenue Service, Statistics of Income,for breaking new ground in the construction of micro economic files, as well as the statistical uses of administrative data for economic research.

1994 - Joel Popkin, Joel Popkin and Company,for his contributions to the field of economic statistics, especially in the development of price indexes and other gauges of inflationary pressures.

1994 - Richard D. Allen, National Agricultural Statistics Service,for his contributions to the application of statistics to agricultural economics and to improving the quality, integrity, and timeliness of agricultural statistics.

1993 - Barbara A. Bailar, American Statistical Association,for her contributions to modernizing the Census Bureau's statistical programs, especially her work in undercount and non-sampling errors in the Decennial Census.

1992 - Allan H. Young, Bureau of Economic Analysis,for leadership in forging and refining statistical tools that contribute substantially to the ability to analyze the United States' economy and for imaginative management of a major statistical agency through critical times.

1991 - Carol S. Carson, Bureau of Economic Analysis,for her leadership in developing and refining the economic statistical base of the U.S. and for her contributions to the development of the revised U.N. System of National Accounts.

1991 - Stephen P. Taylor, Federal Reserve Board,for his outstanding leadership in developing and maintaining the U.S. Flow of Funds Accounts and using them to interpret the behavior of financial markets.

1990 - Jerome A. Mark, Bureau of Labor Statistics, for his outstanding achievements in the development and publications of measures of multi factor productivity.

1989 - Frank deLeeuw, Bureau of Economic Analysis,for his wide range of contributions to economic statistics that were characterized by the efficient use of statistical techniques and a practical analytical focus.

1988 - Charles Waite, Bureau of Economic Analysis and U. S. Census Bureau, for his contributions to the Bureau of Economic Analysis and the U. S. Census Bureau,

1988 - Roger Herriot, U.S. Census Bureau, for his work in improving income statistics in the United States.

1987 - Irving Kravis, University of Pennsylvania, for his work in comparative studies for national income and prices.

1986 - Janet Norwood, Bureau of Labor Statistics, for her direction of the statistical program at the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

1985 - David A. Pierce, Federal Reserve Board, for his introduction and use of modern statistical techniques in the data collection and modeling program of the Federal Reserve Board.

1984 - Geoffrey Moore, Bureau of Labor Statistics and Columbia University, for his research in measurement and analysis of business cycles.

1983 - Beatrice Vaccara, Treasury and Bureau of Industrial Analysisfor her major contributions to economic statistics including the development and application of input/output modeling and improvements to the system of business cycle indicators and for her leadership and direction of practical, policy oriented economic analysis.

1982 - Edward Denison, Bureau of Economic Analysis and the Brookings Institute, for his innovative and significant contributions to economics in general and particularly in the use of economic statistics.

1981 - James Bonnen, Michigan State University,for his service to the Statistical Community as Executive Director of the Presidential Reorganization Project for the Federal Statistical System and for his report Federal Statistical System Project: Issues and Opinions.

1980 - Estella Dagum, Statistics Canada, for her outstanding achievement in economic statistics, particularly for widely recognized contributions in time series analysis and for extending Julius Shiskin's pioneering work in seasonal adjustment by combining the X-11 seasonal adjustment program with the Box-Jenkins ARIMA models and especially the development of the X-11-ARIMA method.