Although attendance at JSM 2010 in Vancouver, BC, was expected to be less than JSM 2009 in Washington, DC, the Business and Economics Statistics Section was active. The section sponsored four invited sessions and many more topic-contributed sessions, which were well-attended, as well as contributed, poster, and panel sessions. Topics included Bayesian econometrics, forecasting, seasonal adjustment, benchmarking, and volatility estimation.

Zellner Thesis Award Nominations Needed

The Business and Economic Statistics Section announces the competition for the 2011 Zellner Thesis Award. The award is named for Arnold Zellner, a pioneer in econometrics, and given for the best PhD thesis dealing with an applied problem in business and economic statistics. It is intended to recognize outstanding work by promising young researchers in the field. The winner of the award, which consists of a $1,500 prize, will be announced at JSM 2011 in Miami, Florida, and a portion of the winning thesis is eligible for publication in the Journal of Business & Economic Statistics (JBES). The deadline to submit a thesis is March 31, 2011.

Topics
The range of topics includes econometric methods, statistical problems in forecasting, seasonal adjustment, data quality, empirical studies including finance, industrial organization, health, labor, general micro and macroeconomic analysis, and policy evaluations. Theses in the areas of computation, simulation, and graphics are eligible as long as the research is of direct interest to applied workers.

Criteria
Review standards place substantial weight on research with significant results, high-quality methodological work, substantial empirical content, and good exposition. The research should be of immediate and practical value for applications in business and economic statistics.

Eligibility
Theses are eligible for the Zellner award if they have been defended in the preceding two years, January 2009 to December 2010, and have not previously been considered for the award.

Awards Committee
The editors of JBES convene the awards committee in consultation with the current chair of the Business and Economic Statistics Section. Members of the committee are selected from the section membership and editorial board of JBES.

Submission Procedure
Entrants must supply a URL from which a PDF copy of the thesis can be downloaded. After posting a thesis, entrants should send an email with their name and contact information, the date and institution of their defended thesis, and the URL to the Zellner Awards Committee at jbes-asa@hotmail.com. Entrants will receive confirmation that their submission was received.

Visit the Business and Economics Statistics Section website for more information about the Zellner Award.

The section also announced several awards, most of which included travel support or a cash prize. The 2010 Zellner Thesis award—sponsored by the section, Journal of Business & Economic Statistics (JBES), and Thomson Reuters—was shared by Franscesco Bianchi of Princeton and Roopesh Ranjan of the University of Washington. The award is given annually for the best PhD thesis dealing with an applied problem in business and economic statistics. A portion of the winning thesis is eligible for publication in JBES.

Bianchi is an assistant professor in the economics department at Duke University, while Ranjan is employed in the Computing and Decision Sciences Laboratory at GE Global Research, Bangalore, India.

The Julius Shiskin award, which recognizes original and important contributions to economic statistics, was presented to Dale Jorgensen of Harvard University for his contributions to the measurement of productivity, innovation, capital, human capital, and poverty and for his leadership in the integration of the U.S. National Accounts.

Finally, the winners of the student travel awards were Ghanem Dalia of the University of California, San Diego; Na Cai of North Carolina State University; and Xingye Qiao of The University of North Carolina. Honorable mentions went to Sungil Kim of Georgia Institute of Technology, Melinda Thielbar of North Carolina State University, and Shan Hu of the University of Connecticut.

Visit the Business and Economics Statistics Section website for more information about these awards.

The section also sponsored an economic outlook luncheon, at which Hal Varian of Google discussed Google’s data analytic tools. The event had high attendance, and section members are encouraged to continue their support of these informal lectures at future meetings.

Those interested in organizing topic-contributed sessions for JSM 2011 in Miami, Florida, are encouraged to contact potential speakers now and communicate the proposal to Bonnie Ray, 2011 Business and Economic Statistics Section program chair.