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Business and Economics Statistics Section

Welcome to the Business and Economics Statistics Section website, which features news about our section, and information on workshops and awards that our section sponsors. 

The section organizes and sponsors sessions for the Joint Statistical Meetings (JSM) each year. This year's Joint Statistical Meetings will be held in Nashville, Tennessee, from August 3rd to 7th.

UPCOMING EVENTS

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SECTION NEWS

Webinar Series: A First Course with Bootstrap Starter

Description: Join our comprehensive web course led by Dr. McElroy, Senior Time Series Mathematical Statistician at U.S. Census Bureau and co-author of the book Time Series: A First Course with Bootstrap Starter (Chapman and Hall/CRC, 2020). Whether you're new to time series analysis or looking to expand your knowledge, this course is the perfect opportunity to learn fundamentals of analyzing time series data, while including a few non-standard concepts such as entropy, volatility filtering, and time series bootstraps. The course will incorporate coding in the powerful statistical software R of all concepts, methods, and examples. Don’t miss out on this chance to enhance your skills with guidance from a seasoned expert in time series analysis. 

The full course consists of twelve 1-hour webinars. Registration is now open for the first four webinars. Those who register will receive free access to the remaining webinars. 

Dates: Thursdays in April: 3, 10, 17, 24
Time: 11:00 AM – 12:00 PM ET
Format: Live, virtual via Zoom. Notebooks available for free on the course's GitHub page.

Sign up now


Lecturer Information:
Tucker S. McElroy is Senior Time Series Mathematical Statistician at the U.S. Census Bureau, where he has contributed to developing time series research and software for the last 21 years. He has published more than 100 papers and is a recipient of the Arthur S. Flemming award (2011).

Nominations - 2025 Julius Shiskin Memorial Award for Economic Statistics

Nominations are invited for the annual Julius Shiskin Memorial Award for Economic Statistics. The Award is given in recognition of unusually original and important contributions in the development of economic statistics or in the use of statistics in interpreting the economy. Contributions are recognized for statistical research, development of statistical tools, application of information technology techniques, use of economic statistical programs, management of statistical programs, or developing public understanding of measurement issues. The Award was established in 1980 by the Washington Statistical Society (WSS) and is now co-sponsored by the WSS, the National Association for Business Economics, and the Business and Economics Statistics Section of the American Statistical Association.

Deadline: April 18, 2025

For more details, visit the Awards tab on the section's website.

B & E Student Paper Award Winners for 2025

The Business and Economic Statistics Section announced the winners of the 2025 American Statistical Association Student Paper Awards, given by the section. 

    • Young Hyun Cho, Purdue University, “Privacy-preserving dynamic assortment selection”
    • Alex Hayes, University of Wisconsin-Madison, “Peer effects in the linear-in-means model may be inestimable even when identified”
    • Yang Xu, North Carolina State University, “Linear contextual bandits with interference”
    • Maoyu Zhang, Renmin University, Emory University, “Preferential latent space models for networks with textual edges”

The award-winning students will present their papers at the Joint Statistical Meetings (JSM) in a Topic-Contributed session. They will also receive a cash award.

For more details, including a complete list of the members of the 2025 B&E Student Paper Awards Committee, access the student awards announcement (PDF file).

Congratulations to the award winners for their submissions.

Anne Polivka Receives 2024 Shiskin Award

Anne Polivka, Research Chief in the,Office of Employment and Unemployment Statistics (OEUS) at the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS)

Anne Polivka, Research Chief in the Office of Employment and Unemployment Statistics (OEUS) at the U. S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), has been selected as the recipient of the 2024 Julius Shiskin Memorial Award for Economic Statistics. 

Dr. Polivka is recognized for her leadership in developing the Contingent and Alternative Work Arrangements Supplement (CWS) to the Current Population Survey (CPS). The CWS is a crucial source of data on the growth of alternative work arrangements, including the relatively recent growth of platform-mediated work in the gig economy.

Dr. Polivka is also recognized for her leadership of the modernization of the Current Population Survey (CPS), which provided improved insight into work activity, hours of work, and earnings, and for her contributions to our understanding of the labor market impacts of Katrina and Covid-19 and of the effects of manufacturers’ increased use of staffing agency employees on standard measures of manufacturing employment and productivity

For more information, access the Shiskin Award Page or the Shiskin Award press release.

Dr. Erica Goshen is the 2024 Economic Outlook Lunchtime Speaker

Dr. Goshen presents at the Economic Outlook LuncheonDr. Erica Goshen, Senior Economic Advisor of the Institute for Compensation Studies of Cornell University, was the speaker at this year’s Economic Outlook Luncheon, which was held on Tuesday, August 6th starting at 12:30 PM.

Dr. Goshen's' talk was titled "Let's Standardize Our Way to Better Economic Data". The abstract for this talk appears below:

Societies use standards to facilitate exchange, whether for weights and measures or electrical and plumbing equipment. As we enter the Information Age, we need more complete standards for highly exchanged data. This matters because, ironically, despite the advent of the information age has seen eroding quality in many timely and important official economic indicators—due to declining household and business survey response rates. As part of modernizing, statistical agencies are responding by relying more heavily on burgeoning public and private administrative data. But, as analysts know, much administrative data fails to measure what is needed, or is messy, inconsistent, incomplete, or difficult to obtain reliably. Current solutions to these challenges, such as blending multiple sources and applying computationally intensive fixes, can only take you so far. The talk will explore how wide adoption of data standards by the private sector could graft many advantages of surveys onto administrative sources. The main example discussed will be the Jobs and Employment Data Exchange initiative (led by the US Chamber of Commerce Foundation) to devise and promote data standards for employers.

Keywords: Data standards, Official statistics, Economic statistics, Labor Market, Employment, Jobs

A PDF copy of the slides can be accessed from this website.

More information on this talk is available in the JSM 2024 Online Program.

Biographical information for Dr. Goshen is available on the Cornell University website.

B&E Section Election Results Announced

The B&E Section announces the results for the 2024 ASA Election for section officers:

    • Chair-Elect 2025 Beth Andrews, Northwestern University
    • Program Chair-Elect 2025 Yao Zheng, University of Connecticut
    • Secretary/Treasurer 2025–2026 Mariana Saenz-Ayala, Georgia Southern University

Many thanks to all the candidates and congratulations to the winners.

2024 Zellner Award Winner Announced

The Business and Economic Statistics Section of the American Statistical Association and sponsor SAS are proud to announce the recipient of the 2024 Arnold Zellner Thesis Award: Jiafeng Chen for the Harvard University thesis "Essays in Econometrics."  An honorable mention was awarded to both Jackson Lautier for the University of Connecticut thesis "Essays on Discrete-Time Survival Analysis with Applications to Securitization and Consumer Finance," as well as to Rahul Singh for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology thesis "Essays on Econometrics, Causal Inference, and Machine Learning."

The award includes a $1500 prize, generously provided by SAS Institute.

For more information on the Zellner Thesis Award, including submission information for the Zellner Thesis Award, access the Zellner Thesis Award Page.