2024 Washington Statistical Society Roger Herriot Award Seminar

This seminar is being held in recognition of the 2024 Roger Herriot Award winner, Dr. Susan Fleck. The annual Roger Herriot Award for Innovation in Federal Statistics is co-sponsored by the Washington Statistical Society, the Social Statistics Section, and the Government Statistics Section of the American Statistical Association. This award is given in recognition of individuals or teams who develop unique and innovative approaches to the solution of statistical problems in federal data collection programs. Dr. Fleck will be presented as the 2024 awardee and will present on her work at the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Date: Tuesday, December 3, 2024

Time: 2:30 – 3:30 PM EST

Location: Mathematica, 1100 First Street, NE, 12th Floor Washington, DC 20002

Registration: Registration is free but required to attend. Please register via EventBrite before December 1st at 5 PM EST.

Title: Innovations in Measuring the Economy – A New Approach to Price Statistics

Speaker: Susan Fleck, PhD, Bureau of Labor Statistics

Abstract:

The backbone of official economic statistics has been voluntary participation of individuals and businesses in government surveys. As the U.S. economy grows while sample sizes shrink or stay the same, new approaches are urgently needed to measure the economy. One of these new approaches is being implemented by the Bureau of Labor Statistics for the U.S. import and export price indexes for merchandise goods – to replace nearly half of the target survey population with administrative trade records that provide comparable coverage and quality. Up to now, this set of principal federal economic indicators has depended on a labor-intensive business survey model. But ever-increasing challenges to secure cooperation for the International Price Survey required a rethink of data collection and economic measurement. The innovative replacement of survey data with administrative data will be put in place in 2025 after five years of preparation; 10 million government records for internationally traded goods will be processed monthly to calculate hundreds of thousands of prices, saving on survey costs and respondent burden by more than half a million dollars, while using existing resources and technology available at BLS. In this lecture, Dr. Fleck will discuss this exciting project, describe the work to seek alternatives to survey data collection for price statistics, and share her views on innovation in economic measurement.

About the speaker:

Dr. Susan Fleck is a senior executive in the federal government, with 25 years of leadership experience on international trade, labor, and development topics. She has led programs in the Departments of State, Homeland Security, and Labor; with the Department of Labor, she has directed two of the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ six Principal Federal Economic Indicator programs. As Assistant Commissioner of the International Price Program, she oversees the collection and publication of price measures on imports and exports. Her previous positions include work as deputy political counselor in the US Embassy in Honduras, lead economist for the ‘million dollar’ visa program (EB5) in the Citizenship and Immigration Service, and director of the nonfarm business productivity economic measure. Previous to federal government, she worked on development, labor, and gender portfolios in non-profit and multilateral organizations. Dr. Fleck received her PhD in Economics and has published on topics of prices and productivity in the United States as well as international labor comparisons.

For additional information about this event, please contact Katherine Irimata ([email protected]), WSS Methodology Program Chair.

Host or Publisher Washington Statistical Society