About the Author

Cornelia J. Strawser, PhD, is the senior economic consultant to Bernan Press. She edited the seventh through thirteenth editions and was the co-editor of two previous editions of Business Statistics. She was co-editor of Foreign Trade of the United States, 2001, and also worked on the Handbook of U.S. Labor Statistics. She was formerly a senior economist for the U.S. House of Representatives Budget Committee and has also served at the Senate Budget Committee, at the Congressional Budget Office, and on the Federal Reserve Board staff. Her initial experience consisted of compiling and analyzing the Board's Index of Industrial Production. In subsequent positions, she specialized in critical analysis of incoming economic data and advice to policy makers on subjects such as the interpretation of the position of the economy relative to the business cycle, the interactions between monetary and fiscal policy and the economy, and issues of income growth, income distribution, and poverty. Currently, she continually monitors the press and new government data releases in order to keep Business Statistics up to date and relevant, and also on occasion contributes corrections of mis-stated economic data to major daily newspapers. She holds a bachelor's degree from Stanford University and a Ph.D. from George Washington University, both in economics.