Katharine Abraham
Abraham in 1993
Commissioner of Labor Statistics Bureau of Labor Statistics
In office October 1993 – October 2001
President	Bill Clinton George W. Bush
Preceded by	Janet L. Norwood
Succeeded by	Kathleen Utgoff
Member of the Council of Economic Advisers
In office 2011–2013
President	Barack Obama
Preceded by	Cecilia Rouse
Succeeded by	Betsey Stevenson
Personal details
Born	(1954-08-28) August 28, 1954 (age 69) Ames, Iowa [1]
Spouse	Graham N. Horkley
Children	2
Academic career
Institutions	Sloan School of Management, MIT University of Maryland, College Park
Field	labor economics
Alma mater	Iowa State University (BA) Harvard University (PhD)
Awards	Julius Shiskin Award for Economic Statistics (2002) [2] Roger Herriot Award for Innovation in Federal Statistics (2010) Susan C. Eaton Scholar-Practitioner Award of the Labor and Employment Relations Association (2013) Distinguished Fellow of the American Economic Association (2020)

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

• Abraham, Katharine G.; Houseman, Susan N. (May 1993). "Female workers as a buffer in the Japanese economy". The American Economic Review. 83 (2). American Economic Association: 45–51. JSTOR  2117638.
• Abraham, Katharine G.; Houseman, Susan N. (Summer 1993). "Job security in America: a better approach". The Brookings Review. 11 (3): 34–35. doi: 10.2307/20080404. JSTOR  20080404.
• Abraham, Katharine G.; Haltiwanger, John C. (September 1995). "Real wages and the business cycle". Journal of Economic Literature. 33 (3). American Economic Association: 1215–1264. JSTOR  2729121.
• Abraham, Katharine G. (March 2003). "Toward a cost-of-living index: progress and prospects". Journal of Economic Perspectives. 17 (1): 45–58. doi: 10.1257/089533003321164949. JSTOR  3216839.
• Abraham, Katharine G.; Maitland, Aaron; Bianchi, Suzanne M. (2006). "Nonresponse in the American time use survey: who is missing from the data and how much does it matter?". Public Opinion Quarterly. 70 (5): 676–703. doi: 10.1093/poq/nfl037. S2CID  145566407.
• Abraham, Katharine G.; Spletzer, James R. (May 2009). "New evidence on the returns to job skills". The American Economic Review. 99 (2): 52–57. doi: 10.1257/aer.99.2.52. JSTOR  25592374.
• Abraham, Katharine G.; Haltiwanger, John C.; Sandusky, Kristin; Spletzer, James R. (April 2013). "Exploring differences in employment between household and establishment data" (PDF). Journal of Labor Economics. 31 (S1): S129–S172. doi: 10.1086/669062. JSTOR  669062. S2CID  158263405.
• Abraham, Katharine G.; Houseman, Susan N. (October 2014). "Short-time compensation as a tool to mitigate job loss? Evidence on the U.S. experience during the recent recession". Industrial Relations: A Journal of Economy and Society. 53 (4): 543–567. doi: 10.1111/irel.12069. hdl: 10419/64398. SSRN  2048540. Pdf.
• Working papers and National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) papers.
• Abraham, Katharine G.; Haltiwanger, John C. (March 2019). "The Consequences of Long Term Unemployment: Evidence from Matched Employer-Employee Data". ILR Review. 72 (2): 266–299. doi: 10.3386/w22665.

References