John M. Abowd is the Edmund Ezra Day Professor of Economics, Professor of Statistics and Information Science at Cornell University. His primary appointment is in Cornell’s ILR School. He is also a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), a Research Affiliate at the Centre de Recherche en Economie et Statistique (CREST), and a Research Fellow at both the Institute for Labor Economics (IZA) and the IAB (Institut für Arbeitsmarkt-und Berufsforschung).
Currently, Abowd serves as the Director of the Labor Dynamics Institute (LDI) at Cornell. His distinguished leadership career includes serving as the past President of the Society of Labor Economists and past Chair of the Business and Economic Statistics Section of the American Statistical Association. He is an Elected Member of the International Statistical Institute and a Fellow of the Econometric Society.
Having served as a Distinguished Senior Research Fellow at the United States Census Bureau from 1998 to 2015, Prof. Abowd will transition to the role of Associate Director for Research and Methodology and Chief Scientist at the U.S. Census Bureau on June 1, 2016. He also contributes his expertise to the National Academies’ Committee on National Statistics and the American Economic Association’s Committee on Economic Statistics.
His current research focuses on the creation, dissemination, and privacy protection of linked, longitudinal data. At the Census Bureau, he leads the Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics (LEHD) Program. This program produces vital public-use data products such as the Quarterly Workforce Indicators and OnTheMap, a tool for studying commuting patterns.
Prof. Abowd has published extensively in premier journals including the American Economic Review, Econometrica, and the Journal of the American Statistical Association. Before joining the Cornell faculty in 1987, he taught at Princeton University, the University of Chicago, and MIT. Outside of his professional life, he enjoys polishing his French, touring wine country, and riding his bike.
