John M. Abowd

John M. Abowd is the Edmund Ezra Day Professor Emeritus of Economics, Statistics and Data Science at Cornell University. From October 2022 until July 1, 2023, he served as Executive Senior Advisor for Research and Methodology at the United States Census Bureau, a member of the federal career senior executive service. From June 2016 until October 2022, he served as Chief Scientist and Associate Director for Research and Methodology, where he led a directorate of five research centers each devoted to domains of investigation important to the future of social and economic statistics. At Cornell, his primary appointment was in the Department of Economics in the ILR School. He is also Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER, Cambridge, MA, Research Affiliate at the Centre de Recherche en Economie et Statistique (CREST, Paris, France), Research Fellow at the Institute for Labor Economics (IZA, Bonn, Germany), and Research Fellow at IAB (Institut für Arbeitsmarkt-und Berufsforschung, Nürnberg, Germany). Prof. Abowd was the founding Director of the Labor Dynamics Institute (LDI) at Cornell. He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science; past President (2014-2015) and Fellow of the Society of Labor Economists; past Chair (2013) of the Business and Economic Statistics Section and Fellow of the American Statistical Association; Elected Member of the International Statistical Institute; and Fellow of the Econometric Society. He is the recipient of the Epic Foundation Champion of Freedom Award (2022), the Edward P. Lazear Prize from the Society of Labor Economists (2022), the Julius Shiskin Award (2016), and the Roger Herriot Award (2014). He served as a member of the Inaugural Board of the Canadian Research Data Centre Network (2017-2019). Prof. Abowd was Distinguished Senior Research Fellow at the United States Census Bureau from 1998 until 2016. He served on the National Academy of Sciences Committee on National Statistics (2010-2016) and the American Economic Association’s Committee on Economic Statistics (2013-2018). He was Director of the Cornell Institute for Social and Economic Research (CISER) from 1999 to 2007. Prof. Abowd has taught and done research at Cornell University since 1987, including seven years on the faculty of the Johnson Graduate School of Management. His current research focuses on the creation, dissemination, privacy protection, and use of linked, longitudinal data on employees and employers. In his earlier work at the Census Bureau, he provided scientific leadership for the Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics Program, which produces research and public-use data integrating censuses, demographic surveys, economic surveys, and administrative data. The LEHD Program’s public use data products include the Quarterly Workforce Indicators, the most detailed time series data produced on the demographic characteristics of local American labor markets and OnTheMap, a user-driven mapping tool for studying work-related commuting patterns. His original and ongoing research on integrated labor market data is often done in collaboration with the Institut National de la Statistique et des Etudes Economiques (INSEE), the French national statistical institute. Prof. Abowd’s other research interests include network models for integrated labor market data; statistical methods for confidentiality protection of microdata; international comparisons of labor market outcomes; executive compensation with a focus on international comparisons; bargaining and other wage-setting institutions; and the econometric tools of labor market analysis. Prof. Abowd has been Principal Investigator or Co-Principal Investigator for multiyear grants and contracts from the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Russell Sage Foundation, and the U.S. Census Bureau. He has published articles in the American Economic Review, Econometrica, the Review of Economics and Statistics, the Quarterly Journal of Economics, the Journal of the American Statistical Association, the Journal of Business and Economic Statistics, the Journal of Econometrics, the Journal of Survey Statistics and Methodology, Quantitative Economics, and other major economics and statistics journals. Prof. Abowd served on the faculty at Princeton University, the University of Chicago, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology before moving to Cornell. When he is not traveling, he enjoys polishing his French and playing with his grandchildren.