Finis R. Welch

Finis R. Welch is Founder and President of Welch Consulting. He is also Professor Emeritus of Economics at UCLA, and Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Economics at Texas A&M University. Welch is Chairman of Unicon Research Corporation and StataCorp LP. He also owns the Center Ranch in Leon County, Texas. Welch has made many contributions to the entire span of labor economics. These contributions include his pioneering research on racial differences in economic outcomes as well as his extremely influential work on the distribution of income-fields where his work has had a lasting and profound impact on several generations of students and scholars. Welch's contributions also include his mentoring of a long series of highly successful graduate and undergraduate students at the City University of New York, UCLA, and finally at Texas A&M University. Welch has been a pioneer in the development of the infrastructure of the data and analyses now used routinely for studies of the labor market. His development of the software package STATA© (he remains Chairman of the Board of STATA llp) has been a benefit to all economists. Welch began working in litigation in the early 1970s and has testified many times in Federal and State Courts as well as before Congressional Committees and regulatory bodies. In 2003-04 Welch served as President of the Society of Labor Economists, and he was Vice President of the American Economic Association in 2002.