Barbara M. Fraumeni, Distinguished Fellow 2025
Barbara M. Fraumeni is a Professor Emerita of Public Policy in the Muskie School of Public Service at the University of Southern Maine, where she was a Professor of Public Policy from 2005 to 2015. Since 2011, she also has been a Special-Term Professor at the China Center for Human Capital and Labor Market Research at the Central University of Finance and Economics. Prior to joining the University of Southern Maine, Fraumeni served from 1999–2005 as the Chief Economist for the US Bureau of Economic Analysis. Fraumeni was on the faculty at Northeastern University from 1984 to 2004, first as an assistant professor and then as associate and full professor.
Fraumeni is the author of over 130 articles, book chapters, and edited volumes. Her work has been fundamental to advancing our understanding and measurement of productivity and economic growth, technical change and measurement of intangibles. She has made particularly seminal contributions to estimating the value of human capital in the economy and to the conceptualization and incorporation of R&D as an investment in the measurement of National Income and Product Accounts. During her time as Chief Economist for the US Bureau of Economic Analysis, she pioneered the creation of an R&D Satellite Account that measures the role of R&D to economic growth and competitiveness. For this effort, in November 2007, she was awarded the Gold Medal by the US Department of Commerce, its highest honor.
Fraumeni has been instrumental in creating and strengthening women’s opportunities in the economics profession. She was a member of the Board of the Committee on the Status of Women in the Economics Profession (CSWEP) from 1990–2000 and 2002–2004, and she served as Chair of CSWEP from 2008–2011. In 1996, during her tenure as a program officer at the National Science Foundation, Fraumeni shepherded the early phase of the grant proposal for Creating Career Opportunities for Female Economists junior faculty pilot mentoring program (the precursor to CSWEP’s CeMENT program) for which she later served as a mentor. While on the CSWEP Board, she designed the Carolyn Shaw Bell Award as part of the 25th Anniversary celebration of CSWEP’s founding, and she chaired the Award Committee from 1998–2002. Fittingly, in 2006, Fraumeni herself was awarded the Carolyn Shaw Bell Award.
Fraumeni also has been a generous and dedicated provider of public goods to governments and organizations working to improve the measurement of human capital, R&D, productivity and well-being. She served as the 蝌蚪网 Representative to the Council on Professional Associations on Federal Statistics from 2010–2015, and she was a member of the 蝌蚪网’s Economics Statistics Committee from 2006–2011. She has served multiple times as a committee or panel member for the National Academy of Sciences, including as a member of the NAS CNSTAT Panel on Nonmarket Accounts from 2002–2005. She served as a Technical Advisor to the OECD Human Capital Consortium from 2009–2012, and as a member of the OECD/UN Economic Commission for Europe/Eurostat on Measuring Sustainable Development from 2009–2013. She also served as a task force member of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe, Conference of European Statisticians on Measuring Human Capital from 2014–2016, and Satellite Accounts for Education and Training from 2016–2018. Finally, she has been a central member of the National Bureau of Economic Research’s Productivity, Innovation and Entrepreneurship Group, providing many decades of invaluable feedback.