Francine D. Blau


Francine Dee Blau is an American economist and professor of economics as well as Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell University. In 2010, Blau was the first woman to receive the IZA Prize in Labor Economics for her "seminal contributions to the economic analysis of labor market inequality." She was awarded the 2017 Jacob Mincer Award by the Society of Labor Economists in recognition of lifetime of contributions to the field of labor economics.

Personal life and education

Blau was born to parents Harold Raymond Blau and Sylvia Blau, née Goldberg, in New York City. Her parents divorced when she was six years old. She and her brother lived with their mother until Sylvia Blau became ill. After that, the children went to live with their father. Harold Blau supported Francine's wish to become an economist.
Blau graduated from Forest Hills High School in Queens in 1963, after which she entered Cornell University and received her B.S. in industrial and labor relations in 1966. She received her M.A. in economics from Harvard University in 1969 and her Ph.D. in economics from the same university in 1975.
Blau is married to Lawrence M. Kahn, also an economics professor at Cornell University. Together they have two children.

Career

Blau is currently the Frances Perkins Professor of Industrial and Labor Relations and Professor of Economics at Cornell University. Before coming to Cornell in 1994, she was an assistant, associate, and professor of Economics and Labor and Industrial Relations at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where she joined the faculty in 1975. Prior to that, she was a research associate at Ohio State University and a visiting lecturer at Yale University.
Blau is a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, a research fellow at the Institute for the Study of Labor, and a research fellow at the Center for Economic Studies. She is a fellow of the , the American Academy of Political and Social Science, and the Labor and Employment Relations Association. She is also a fellow at the Center for the Study of Poverty and Inequality and a research fellow at the Compensation Research Initiative.
She has served as vice president of the American Economic Association, president of the Society of Labor Economists, the Labor and Employment Relations Association, and the . She is an Associate Editor of Labour Economics and was formerly an editor of the Journal of Labor Economics and an Associate Editor of the Journal of Economic Perspectives. She serves or has served on numerous Editorial Boards, including the American Economic Review, the Journal of Labor Economics, the Journal of Economic Perspectives, the ILR Review, the Journal of Labor Research, and The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, among others.

Awards

Books