Senior Economist and Research Officer
Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas

Pia Orrenius joined the Dallas Fed in 1999. As a labor economist and member of the regional group, she analyzes the regional economy, with special focus on the border region. Orrenius’s research also focuses on the causes and consequences of Mexico–U.S. migration, illegal immigration, and U.S. immigration policy. Orrenius spent the 2004–2005 academic year as senior economist on the Council of Economic Advisers in the Executive Office of the President, Washington D.C., where she advised the Bush administration on labor, health and immigration issues.

Orrenius is affiliated with several academic institutions. She is a Tower Center Fellow at the Tower Center for Political Studies at Southern Methodist University and a Research Fellow at the IZA Institute of Labor in Bonn, Germany. Orrenius is also an adjunct professor at Baylor University (Dallas campus), where she teaches in the executive MBA program. She holds a Ph.D. in economics from the University of California at Los Angeles and bachelor degrees in economics and Spanish from the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign.