BEA Chief Economist Dennis Fixler was selected to receive the 2023 Julius Shiskin Memorial Award for Economic Statistics, which recognizes original and important contributions to statistics used to understand the economy.
The award highlights Fixler’s extensive contributions to economic research and cites several areas where he has made an impact. Specifically, he was recognized for:
- Developing ways to study the prices and value of financial intermediaries—institutions such as commercial banks or mutual funds that act as go-betweens in financial transactions. His methods were integrated into BEA’s national accounts as well as the producer price index of the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, where he worked before joining BEA in 2001.
- Improving the way property-casualty insurance services are measured, developing an approach that avoids implausibly large swings in the numbers in response to major disasters. These more reliable methods were adopted internationally.
- Leading development of indicators of inequality in personal income that show how the benefits of economic growth are distributed.
Fixler is the 53rd recipient of the Shiskin award, which is administered by the Washington Statistical Society, the National Association for Business Economics, and the Business and Economics Section of the American Statistical Association.
As chief economist at BEA, Fixler is responsible for the overall quality of BEA’s statistics, including source data, methods, dissemination, and research. In addition to the work cited in the award, he has published economic research on a wide range of topics, including measurement of prices, research and development, productivity, and reliability of GDP estimates. He is a longtime member of the United Nations Committee of Experts on Environmental-Economic Accounting.