Home » A Statistician's Life, Celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month

Mario Marazzi

1 September 2020 2,848 views One Comment

Educational Background: PhD, Economics, Cornell University; MSc, Economics, London School of Economics; BA, Economics, Harvard University

Mario Marazzi was born in Puerto Rico and lived in Washington and Boston in his younger years. His father was an Argentinian engineer and his mother was a Puerto Rican political scientist, so he was drawn to mathematics and the social sciences early on.

Back in Puerto Rico during his high-school years, he became interested in the use of data to measure all aspects of the human experience. At the time, the government of Puerto Rico began to face questions about the methodologies of its official statistics. One day, gathered around the dining table, his father said, “What Puerto Rico needs is an independent institute of statistics.” Twenty years later, that is exactly what Marazzi would lead.

After finishing his university education with a doctorate from Cornell University, Marazzi served as research economist at the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System in Washington, DC, where he was able to work on the macroeconometric forecast models of the US economy, used by the Federal Reserve to set interest rates. His research led to changes in the way the board forecasts US import prices and challenged prevailing views on the extent of monetary policy tightening necessary to offset the potential inflationary effects of a significant and sustained dollar depreciation.

In 2007, Marazzi was appointed by a board of directors—composed largely of university professors—as the first executive director of the new Puerto Rico Institute of Statistics (PRIS), which was established by the government of Puerto Rico in a bid to improve the quality of its official statistics. He built PRIS from the ground up and participated directly in some of its most important technical initiatives, including the reestimation of Puerto Rico’s Consumer Price Index, the identification of thousands of deaths that had not been included in Puerto Rico’s official mortality statistics, and the development of several web-based platforms for the exchange of open data.

In 2016, a bipartisan congressional task force on the economic growth of Puerto Rico stated PRIS “had emerged as a highly professional, autonomous, and apolitical organization that is bringing greater transparency to economic, financial, and fiscal conditions on the island” and recommended PRIS “continue to protect its independence” from the government of Puerto Rico.

In 2018, Mario led a global effort to protect the independence of PRIS from a proposed reorganization that would have eliminated the organization’s ability to work free from political influence. At the time, Puerto Rico was recovering from the effects of Hurricane Maria and grappling with the undercount in the official death toll. The American Statistical Association was joined by a plethora of organizations from around the world in making sure the proposed reorganization did not take place.

Marazzi is the first Puerto Rican to be elected a member of the International Statistical Institute. He has served on the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Data Users Advisory Committee and is a current member of the Census Scientific Advisory Committee.

Marazzi is the proud father of a 3-year-old, Marco, who has already begun to show an interest in math.

1 Star2 Stars3 Stars4 Stars5 Stars (No Ratings Yet)
Loading...

One Comment »

  • Ana Maria Cintron said:

    Marco is a very fortunate kid, what a delight to have such an amazing Dad, who will lead by example.