Francine Dee Blau (born August 29, 1946 in New York City) is an American economist and professor of economics at Cornell University. In 2010 Blau was the first woman to receive the prestigious IZA Prize in Labor Economics for her "seminal contributions to the economic analysis of labor market inequality."
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.
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 (IZA), and a research fellow at the Center for Economic Studies. She is a fellow of the Society of Labor Economists, 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 (Stanford University) and a research fellow at the Compensation Research Initiative (Cornell University).
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 Midwest Economics Association. She is on the editorial board of the Journal of Labor Economics, Journal of Labor Research, and the Industrial and Labor Relations Review. She was formerly on the editorial board of the American Economic Review. She also serves on the advisory board of Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society. Moreover, she is currently an associate editor of Labour Economics and was formerly an editor of the Journal of Labor Economics. She was also an associate editor and on the advisory board of the Journal of Economic Perspectives.
1993 Burlington Northern Faculty Achievement Award for outstanding teaching and research, University of Illinois
2001 The Carolyn Shaw Bell Award, awarded by the American Economic Association Committee on the Status of Women in the Economics Profession for furthering the status of women in the economics profession
2002 Richard A. Lester Prize for the outstanding book in labor economics and industrial relations for At Home and Abroad: U.S. Labor Market Performance in International Perspective (with Lawrence Kahn)
2010 IZA Prize in Labor Economics
Blau, Francine D. (1977). Equal Pay in the Office. Lexington, Mass: Lexington Books. ISBN 978-0-669-01003-9.
Blau, Francine D.; Ehrenberg, Ronald G. (eds.) (2000). Gender and Family Issues in the Workplace. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. ISBN 978-0-87154-122-2.
Blau, Francine D.; Kahn, Lawrence M. (2002). At home and abroad: U.S. labor-market performance in international perspective. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. ISBN 978-0-87154-100-0.
Blau, Francine D.; Brinton, Mary C.; Grusky, David B. (2006). The declining significance of gender? New York: Russell Sage Foundation. ISBN 978-0-87154-092-8.
Blau, Francine D.; Eds. Anne C. Gielen, and Klaus F. Zimmermann (2012). Gender, inequality, and wages. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19966-585-3.
Blau, Francine D; Ferber, Marianne A; Winkler, Anne E (2014). The economics of women, men, and work (7th ed.). Boston: Pearson. ISBN 9780132992817.
Articles
Blau, Francine D.; Jusenius, Carol L. (1976). "Economists' approaches to sex segregation in the labor market: an appraisal." Signs 1 (3): 181–199.
Blau, Francine D.; Hendricks, Wallace E. (1979). "Occupational segregation by sex: Trends and prospects." Journal of Human Resources 14 (2): 197–210.
Blau, Francine D.; Kahn, Lawrence M. (1981). "Race and sex differences in quits by young workers." Industrial and Labor Relations Review 34 (4): 563–577.
Blau, Francine D. (1984). "The Use of Transfer Payments by Immigrants". Industrial and Labor Relations Review 37 (2): 222–239.
Blau, Francine D.; Beller, Andrea H. (1987). "Trends in earnings differentials by gender 1971–1981." Indus. & Lab. Rel. Rev. 41 (4): 513–529.
Blau, Francine D.; Graham, John W. (1990). "Black-White Differences in Wealth and Asset Composition". Quarterly Journal of Economics 105 (2): 321–339. doi:10.1111/j.1465-7295.1997.tb01920.x
Blau, Francine D.; Ferber, Marianne A. (1991). "Career Plans and Expectations of Young Women and Men: The Earnings Gap and Labor Force Participation". Journal of Human Resources 26 (4): 581–607.
Blau, Francine D.; Beller, Andrea (1992). "Black-White Earnings Over the 1970s and 1980s: Gender Differences in Trends". Review of Economics and Statistics 74 (2): 276–286.
Blau, Francine D.; Grossberg, Adam (1992). "Maternal Labor Supply and Children's Cognitive Development". Review of Economics and Statistics 74 (3): 474–481.
Blau, Francine D.; Kahn, Lawrence M. (1992). "The gender earnings gap: learning from international comparisons." The American Economic Review 82 (2): 533-538.
Blau, Francine D.; Kahn, Lawrence M. (1996). "International Differences in Male Wage Inequality: Institutions versus Market Forces". Journal of Political Economy 104 (4): 791–837.
Blau, Francine D.; Kahn. Lawrence M. (1996). "Wage Structure and Gender Earnings Differentials: An International Comparison". Economica 63 (250): 29–62.
Blau, Francine D.; Kahn, Lawrence M. (1997). "Swimming Upstream: Trends in the Gender Wage Differential in the 1980s". Journal of Labor Economics 15 (1): 1–42. doi:10.1086/209845
Blau, Francine D. (1998). "Trends in the Well-Being of American Women, 1970–1995". Journal of Economic Literature 36 (2): 112–165.
Blau, Francine D.; Kahn, Lawrence M. (1999). "Institutions and laws in the labor market." Handbook of labor economics 3 (A): 1399–1461. doi:10.1016/S1573-4463(99)03006-0
Blau, Francine D.; Kahn, Lawrence M. (2000). "Gender Differences in Pay". Journal of Economic Perspectives 14 (4) 75–99.
Bertola, Giuseppe; Blau, Francine D.; Kahn, Lawrence M. (2001). "Comparative analysis of labor market outcomes: lessons for the US from international long-run evidence." No. w8526. National Bureau of Economic Research.
Blau, Francine D.; Kahn, Lawrence M. (2003). "Understanding International Differences in the Gender Pay Gap". Journal of Labor Economics 21 (1): 106–144.
Blau, Francine D.; Kahn, Lawrence M. (2005). "Do Cognitive Test Scores Explain Higher U.S. Wage Inequality?" Review of Economics and Statistics 87 (1): 184–193.
Blau, Francine D.; Kahn, Lawrence M. (2006). "The U.S. Gender Pay Gap in the 1990s: Slowing Convergence". Industrial and Labor Relations Review 60 (1): 45–66.
Bertola, Giuseppe; Blau, Francine D.; Kahn, Lawrence M. (2007). "Labor market institutions and demographic employment patterns." Journal of Population Economics 20 (4): 833–867. doi:10.1007/s00148-007-0137-8
Blau, Francine D.; Kahn, Lawrence M. (2007). "Changes in the Labor Supply Behavior of Married Women: 1980–2000". Journal of Labor Economics 25 (3): 393–438.
Blau, Francine D.; Curie, Janet M.; Croson, Rachel T.A.; Ginther, Donna K. (2010). "Can Mentoring Help Female Assistant Professors? Interim Results from a Randomized Trial". The American Economic Review 100 (2): 348–352. doi:10.1257/aer.100.2.348
Blau, Francine D.; Kahn, Lawrence M.; Papps, Kerry (2011). "Gender, Source Country Characteristics and Labor Market Assimilation Among Immigrants". Review of Economics and Statistics 93 (1): 43–58. doi:10.1162/REST a 00064
Blau, Francine D.; Peter Brummund; Albert Yung-Hsu Liu (2012). "Trends in occupational segregation by gender 1970–2009: Adjusting for the impact of changes in the occupational coding system." Demography 50 (2): 471–492. doi:10.1007/s13524-012-0151-7
Blau, Francine D.; Kahn, Lawrence M.; Liu, Albert Y.; Papps, Kerry L. (2013) "The transmission of women’s fertility, human capital, and work orientation across immigrant generations." Journal of Population Economics 26 (2): 405–435. doi:10.1007/s00148-012-0424-x
Blau, Francine D., and Lawrence M. Kahn (2013). "Female Labor Supply: Why Is the United States Falling Behind?." American Economic Review 103 (3): 251–56. doi: 10.1257/aer.103.3.251
