CNSTAT News 2013
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— January 4, 2013 — ≈ CNSTAT members and staff want to wish all of our friends and colleagues in the federal statistical and research communities the very best for the New Year. ≈ NOTE: We call your attention to the CNSTAT-Board on Children, Youth, and Families Workshop on the Design of the National Children’s Study to be held January 11, 2013, in the Lecture Room of the NAS main building at 2101 Constitution Ave NW. Registration and other information is available on the CNSTAT home page: www.nas.edu/cnstat/. We note with sorrow the death of Charles Louis (Lou) Kincannon, former director of the U.S. Census Bureau, on December 15, 2012, in Washington, DC. Lou began his career at the Census Bureau as a statistician in 1963. With the exception of service in the 1970s at the U.S. Office of Management and Budget and in the 1990s as chief statistician at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development in Paris, he remained at the Census Bureau until retiring in 2008 after six years as director. For those interested in learning about Lou’s years of public service and many accomplishments, two good references are his obituary in the Washington Post for December 24, and the oral history of his career through 1992 at the Census Bureau (see also Tributes to Former Census Director C. Louis Kincannon on Steve Pierson’s American Statistical Association blog). There will be a memorial service for Lou at 11:30 am, Monday, January 7, 2013, Christ Church of Capitol Hill, 620 G Street, SE, Washington, DC 20003. We congratulate Mark Doms on his confirmation by the U.S. Senate, January 1, 2013, as undersecretary for economic affairs in the U.S. Department of Commerce. He served as the chief economist at the Department of Commerce from August 2009 – December 2012 and has recently been acting under secretary. He was nominated for his current position by President Obama on September 14, 2012. The under secretary for economic affairs directs the Economics and Statistics Administration, which houses the Bureau of Economic Analysis and the U.S. Census Bureau. Prior to joining the department, he served as senior economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco and worked at the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve Bank in Washington, D.C. His policy work and research are widely cited in a variety of areas, including: innovation, productivity, wages, manufacturing, and price measurement. In 1992, he began his career in federal service at the Census Bureau’s Center for Economic Studies. He received a B.A. in mathematics and economics from the University of Maryland-Baltimore County and a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. News from CNSTAT • 2/21/2013 • Page 1 We congratulate John Gawalt, on his appointment as director of the National Science Foundation’s National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics, effective December 16, 2012. NCSES is part of the Directorate for Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences at NSF. Previously, he served as deputy director of NCSES from 2010-2012, and as program director of the Information and Technology Services Program at NSF. He received a B.S. in natural resources from the University of Rhode Island and did graduate studies in resource economics at URI. We congratulate Erica Groshen on her confirmation by the U.S. Senate, January 2, 2013, as commissioner of the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. She was nominated for the position by President Obama on February 16, 2012. She earned a B.S. in economics and mathematics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and an M.A. and Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University. She has held positions at the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland and from 1994-2012 at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, where she served as head of international research (1994-1997); head of domestic research (1997-1999); assistant vice president, Microeconomic and Regional Studies (2000-2006); vice president and director of Regional Affairs (2006-2010); and vice president and economist in the Regional Analysis Function of the Research and Statistics Group (2010-2012). She held an appointment as a visiting economist at the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland, from 1999 to 2000. We note that principal deputy director William Sabol is now acting director of the Bureau of Justice Statistics. As noted earlier in the September CNSTAT News, former director Jim Lynch accepted a position as professor and chair of the Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Maryland, beginning January 1, 2013. We congratulate five members of the CNSTAT and DBASSE extended family who were elected as 2012 fellows of the American Association for Advancement of Science (AAAS): • Barry Graubard, senior investigator, National Cancer Institute/NIH, elected to the Section on Statistics. • Karen Kafadar, Rudy professor of statistics at Indiana State University, former member of CNSTAT, and chair of the steering committee for the CNSTAT Workshop on the Future of the NSF National Patterns of R&D Program, elected to the Section on Statistics. • Martin Storksdieck, director of the DBASSE Board on Science Education (BOSE), elected to the Section on Education. • Richard Suzman, associate director for behavioral and social research at the National Institute on Aging/NIH, elected to the Section on Social, Economic, and Political Sciences. • Ronald Wasserstein, executive director of the American Statistical Association, elected to the Section on Statistics. We congratulate three members of the CNSTAT and DBASSE extended family who will be welcomed as fellows of the American Academy of Political and Social Science (AAPSS) in spring 2013: • Norman Bradburn, senior fellow with the Cultural Policy Center at NORC at the University of Chicago, former member and chair of CNSTAT, and member of the CNSTAT Panel on Measuring Subjective Well-Being in a Policy-Relevant Framework. • David Card, class of 1950 professor of economics at the University of California, Berkeley, and member of CNSTAT. • Robert Hauser, executive director of the NAS Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education (DBASSE), former member of CNSTAT, and Vilas research professor of sociology (emeritus) at the University of Madison-Wisconsin. News from CNSTAT • 2/21/2013 • Page 2 We congratulate James Jackson, director of the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan and a member of the joint Space Studies Board-CNSTAT Committee on Human Spaceflight, on his election as president of the Consortium of Social Science Associations (COSSA) for a 2-year term beginning January 1, 2013. We congratulate William Nordhaus, Sterling professor of economics at Yale University and former CNSTAT member, on becoming president-elect of the American Economic Association, beginning January 1, 2013. Please see the “CNSTAT News” page on CNSTAT’s web site for announcements of upcoming C-SPAN Washington Journal sessions on “America by the Numbers,” which feature interviews with federal statistical agency heads and senior staff. The programs highlight trends and allow the public to call in or email their views. Information on previous C-SPAN programs is available at the Census Bureau’s web site. Nominations are now invited for the 2013 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 can be in development of new statistical measures, statistical research, use of economic statistics to analyze and interpret economic activity, development of statistical tools, management of statistical programs, or application of data production techniques. The award is cosponsored by the Washington Statistical Society, the National Association for Business Economics, and the Business and Economics Statistics Section of the American Statistical Association. The award will be presented with an honorarium of $1000 plus additional recognition from the sponsors. A nomination form is available at www.amstat.org/sections/bus_econ/shiskin.html. Completed nominations must be received by March 15, 2012. For more information please contact Steven Paben, [email protected]. The Nonresponse Challenge to Surveys and Statistics, edited by Douglas Massey and Roger Tourangeau, and published in the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 645 (January 2013). This volume of papers is based on material presented at a workshop meeting of the CNSTAT Panel on a Research Agenda for the Future of Social Science Data Collection, funded by the Russell Sage Foundation. Options for Estimating Illegal Entries at the U.S.-Mexico Border, the final report of a CNSTAT panel chaired by Alicia Carriquiry (Iowa State University) for the Office of Immigration Statistics in the Department of Homeland Security, was released in prepublication form on November 14, 2012. It is available in PDF; printed copies will be available shortly. Measuring What We Spend—Toward a New Consumer Expenditure Survey, the final report of a CNSTAT panel chaired by Don Dillman (Washington State University) for the Bureau of Labor Statistics, was released in prepublication form on October 5, 2012. It is available in PDF; printed copies will be available shortly. The report was the main topic at the upcoming meeting of the Federal Economic Statistics Advisory Committee, December 14, 2012, at the U.S. Census Bureau in Suitland, MD. News from CNSTAT • 2/21/2013 • Page 3 The Subjective Well-Being Module of the American Time Use Survey: Assessment for Its Continuation, report of a CNSTAT panel chaired by Arthur Stone (Stony Brook University) for the National Institute on Aging, was released on October 5, 2012. It is available in PDF. Medical Care Economic Risk—Measuring Financial Vulnerability from Spending on Medical Care, the final report of a CNSTAT panel chaired by Michael O’Grady (West Health Policy Center) for the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation, U.S.