Blau, Fran D

Professor

research

research and scholarship focus

  • affirmative action
  • discrimination
  • equal employment opportunity
  • gender and families
  • immigration and the labor force
  • labor economics
  • occupational segregation
  • policy and analysis
  • wage differentials and inequality
  • work and families

primary investigator of

international geographic focus

affiliations

faculty appointment in

member of graduate field

other Cornell affiliations

service

current professional activities

  • President of the Society of Labor Economics (currently)
  • President of the Industrial Relations Research Association
  • Vice President of the American Economic Association
  • President of the Midwest Economics Association
  • Chair of the American Economic Association Committee on the Status of Women in the Economics Profession
  • Fellow, Society of Labor Economics
  • Fellow, American Academy of Political and Social Science
  • associate editor, Labour Economics
  • editor, Journal of Labor Economics
  • Board of Editors, American Economic Review
  • Advisory Board, Journal of Economic Perspectives
  • associate editor, Journal of Economic Perspectives

background

educational background

  • Ph.D. (Economics), Harvard University, 1975
  • M.A. (Economics), Harvard University, 1969
  • B.S. (Industrial and Labor Relations), Cornell University, 1966

 

professional background

  • Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research in Cambridge, Massachusetts
  • Research Fellow of the Center for Economic Studies/Ifo Institute in Munich, Germany
  • Research Fellow of IZA in Bonn, Germany
Professor Blau has written extensively on gender issues, wage inequality and international comparisons of labor market outcomes. She has published articles in the American Economic Review, the Journal of Political Economy, the Quarterly Journal of Economics, Economica, the Review of Economics and Statistics, and other major journals.

awards and distinctions

  • Carolyn Shaw Bell Award, American Economic Association Committee on the Status of Women in the Economics Profession (2001)
  • Richard A. Lester Prize, At Home and Abroad: U.S. Labor Market Performance in International Perspective, for the outstanding book in labor economics and industrial relations (2002)

publications

selected publications (listing in progress)

Books

  • The Economics of Women, Men, and Work, 4th edition (with Marianne Ferber and Anne Winkler), Prentice-Hall ; 2006
  • At Home and Abroad: US Labor Market Performance in International Perspective (with Lawrence Kahn), New York, Russell Sage Foundation, 2002). 

Articles or Chapters

  • "Do Cognitive Test Scores Explain Higher US Wage Inequality?" (with Lawrence Kahn), Review of Economics and Statistcs, February 2005
  • "The Impact of Welfare Benefits on Single Motherhood and Headship of Young Women," (with Lawrence Kahn and Jane Waldfogel), Journal of Human Resources, Spring 2004.
  • "Institutions and Laws in the Labor Market," (with Lawrence Kahn) Handbook of Labor Economics, Vol. 3A ; The Netherlands: Elsevier Science, B.V., 1999
  • "The Well-being of American Women, 1970-1995," Journal of Economic Literature, March 1998
  • "International Differences in Male Wage Inequality," (with Lawrence M. Kahn) Journal of Political Economy, August 1996   
  • "Wage Structure and Gender Earnings Differentials: An International Comparison," (with Lawrence Kahn) Economica, 1996
  • "Black-White Earnings Over the 1970s and 1980s: Gender Differences in Trends," (with Andrea Beller) Review of Economics and Statistics, May 1992
  • "Black/White Differences in Wealth and Asset Composition," (with John Graham) Quarterly Journal of Economics, May 1990