FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: MONDAY, DEC. 16, 2013

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Census Bureau Researcher Receives Shiskin Award for Economic Statistics

John Haltiwanger — a senior research fellow in the U.S. Census Bureau’s Research and Methodology Directorate — is a co-recipient of the 2013 Julius Shiskin Memorial Award for Economic Statistics. The award recognizes unusually original and important contributions in the development of economic statistics or in the use of statistics in interpreting the economy.

Haltiwanger is recognized for initiatives to educate users and producers of key federal economic statistics. He has expanded access to Census Bureau microdata records and used these records to develop new statistical measures to analyze firm-level employment dynamics and productivity. Maurine Haver — founder and president of Haver Analytics, an economic information services company — is the other recipient of the Shiskin Award.

“The Shiskin Award is a fitting tribute to John Haltiwanger and the sustained excellence he has achieved in the field of economic statistics,” Census Bureau Director John H. Thompson said. “The rest of the world now knows what we at the Census Bureau have known for decades — that John is one of the best minds in economic statistics. His entrance into the illustrious group of Shiskin Award winners is a wonderful honor that makes all of us at the bureau proud.”

Haltiwanger, who is also a Distinguished University Professor of Economics at the University of Maryland, is the 40th recipient of the award, which is sponsored by the Washington Statistical Society, the National Association for Business Economics, and the Business and Economics Section of the American Statistical Association.

“A major aspect of Haltiwanger’s work has been his initiatives to educate and train data users and data producers,” said Katherine Wallman, chief statistician at the Office of Management and Budget. “He helped develop the Longitudinal Research Database at the Center for Economic Studies and helped develop the Census Bureau’s research data center network in 1990s. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Haltiwanger helped develop gross job creation and job destruction measures that have now become standard for statistical agencies worldwide.”

Haltiwanger joined the University of Maryland faculty in 1987 after teaching several years at UCLA and Johns Hopkins University. He began his association with the Census Bureau that year as a research associate at the Center for Economic Studies. He became the Census Bureau’s first chief economist in 1996 and headed the Center for Economic Studies from 1997 to 1999. He has continued his association with the Census Bureau as a research associate and as a senior research fellow for the Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics program. Currently, he is also a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research and the Institute for the Study of Labor and is actively engaged in foundation-funded research.

The Julius Shiskin Memorial Award for Economic Statistics, established in 1980, is named after Julius Shiskin. Shiskin, who died in 1978, was commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the chief statistician at the Office of Management and Budget, and chief economic statistician and assistant director at the Census Bureau.

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