Dallas, TX
Pia Orrenius is vice president and senior economist in the research department of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, where she manages the regional group. She is executive editor of the quarterly publication Southwest Economy, and she co-edited Ten Gallon Economy: Sizing up Economic Growth in Texas (2015). She has also published extensively on the economics of immigration, unauthorized immigration and U.S. immigration policy. She is co-author of the book Beside the Golden Door: U.S. Immigration Reform in a New Era of Globalization (2010).
Orrenius is affiliated with several academic institutions. She is research fellow at the Tower Center for Political Studies at Southern Methodist University and at the IZA Institute of Labor Economics in Bonn, Germany, as well as adjunct scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. Orrenius is also adjunct professor at Baylor University (Dallas campus), where she teaches in the executive MBA program. She was senior economist on the Council of Economic Advisers in the executive office of the president, Washington D.C., in 2004–05, where she advised the George W. Bush administration on labor, health and immigration issues. Orrenius holds a PhD in economics from the University of California Los Angeles and bachelor degrees in economics and Spanish from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.