Francine D. Blau
Francine D. Blau (born August 29, 1946, in New York City) is an American economist and a professor at Cornell University, where she holds the Frances Perkins Chair in Industrial and Labor Relations and also teaches economics. She is best known for her research on gender and labor market inequality.
Blau earned a B.S. in industrial and labor relations from Cornell in 1966, and an M.A. and Ph.D. in economics from Harvard (1969 and 1975). She began her career at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1975 and joined Cornell in 1994. She is a long-time research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research and a fellow at the Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA), among other organizations. She is married to economist Lawrence M. Kahn and they have two children.
Her work has earned major honors. In 2010, Blau became the first woman to receive the IZA Prize in Labor Economics for her contributions to understanding labor market inequality. In 2017, she received the Jacob Mincer Award for her lifetime contributions to the field of labor economics.
Blau has held leadership roles in several associations, including serving as president of the Society of Labor Economists, the Labor and Employment Relations Association, and the Midwest Economics Association, and as vice president of the American Economic Association. She has also held editorial positions with journals such as Labour Economics and the Journal of Economic Perspectives and has served on many editorial boards.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 16:27 (CET).