Organizational Setting
The Statistics Division (ESdevelops and advocates for the implementation of methodologies and standards for data collection, validation, processing and analysis of food and agriculture statistics. In these statistical domains, it also plays a vital role in the compilation, processing and dissemination of internationally comparable data and provides essential capacity building support to Member Nations. In addition, the Division disseminates many publications, working papers and statistical yearbooks, that cover agricultural and food security relevant statistics (including prices, investments, production, trade and agrienvironmental statistical dat.
The work of the Division on social and economic statistics focuses on the contribution of agriculture to economic growth and food production, as well as rural livelihoods, poverty and resilience to disasters. Among other activities, the Social and Economic Statistics Team of the Division is responsible for collecting, compiling and disseminating statistics on prices of agricultural commodities and food products along the value chain which includes agriculture producer prices (AP, agriculture producer price indexes (APP, consumer price indexes (CPand food CPIs. At the same time, it is in charge of the development of methodologies to analyse price data and provides capacity development and training at country level for the development of producer price and APPI statistical programs.
The position is located in the Social and Economic Statistics Team of the Statistics Division at FAO headquarters in Rome, Italy.

Reporting Lines
Under the general supervision of the Director of ESS, the Statistician (Price Statisticreports to the Statistician/Team Leader of the Social and Economic Statistics Team.

Technical Focus
Updates and improvements of economic statistics published in FAOSTAT (FAO databasand other data platforms of FAO, in particular statistics on prices of agricultural commodities and food products. Methodological innovations in these data domains. Implementation of new methods within the Statistical Working System (SW. Availability and updates of related capacity development materials. Involvement in capacity development programmes.

Key Results
Research and analysis of information, data and statistics, statistical methods, statistical and econometric modelling. Development and maintenance of specialized tools, methodologies, systems and/or databases and the technical assistance services to support the implementation/delivery and monitoring of the programme of work and related products, projects, publications and services.

Key Functions
• Collects, reviews, processes and/or analyses key social/economic/environmental/indicators, based on both traditional statistical methods/sources or on unstructured sources and data science methods, to support the delivery of economic and social development programmes of work, which can be focused on products, projects, publications or services.
• Develops improved/updated technical, statistical and/or analytical tools, systems, databases.
• Conducts research, data collection, validation, analysis and/or reporting in support of the development of technical standards, international instruments, innovative tools and methodologies to be used within the Organization or by external stakeholders.
• Produces a variety of technical reports and provides input in technical documents, divisional publications and/or web pages.
• Provides response to requests and provides technical and/or policy advice, assistance and solutions to Regional, Subregional and Country Offices, including technical backstopping to field projects.
• Participates in multidisciplinary teams, collaborates with other Divisions/Offices/Centres on work groups and committees and promotes best practices.
•    Provides capacity development services, including the planning and organization of training workshops and seminars and preparation of related information, materials, online tools and information kits.
• Participates in divisional teams, Organizationwide committees, project teams and working groups and provides specialized expertise on international technical networks and or technical policy and standard setting bodies.
• Supports the organization, conduct and followup of meetings, consultations and conferences, the development/production of required materials and the provision of information and assistance to partners.
• Participates in resource mobilization activities in accordance with the Strategic Framework and divisional plans.
• Promotes international cooperation and collaboration, advocates best practices, knowledge sharing, increased policy dialogue and provides technical expertise at international meetings and conferences.

Specific Functions
• Supports the development and timely updates of data sources, methods, standards, tools, norms and classifications used in the production of price statistics and price indexes.
• Produces, processes, analyses and disseminates statistics on prices of agricultural commodities and food products in all segments of the value chain and associated indexes, including the ones related to consumer and producer prices collected from FAO questionnaires, the IMF (International Monetary Fun, the UN Statistics Division and country websites.
• Participates in the dispatch, followup, capture, processing and compilation of agriculture producer price statistics and indexes from the FAO questionnaire to countries and actively pursues the increase in the response of FAO’s statistical questionnaires.
• Tests and implements multivariate estimation methods for missing observations, series or countries for prices of agricultural commodities and food products, including agriculture producer and consumer prices and indexes.
• Provides and deploys technical assistance in support to countries for the compilation and dissemination of prices statistics of agricultural commodities and food products in all segments of the value chain.
• Collaborates with the FAO Price Statistics working group of the Data coordination Group (DCGto improve efficiency and harmonization and reduce duplication.
• Contributes, as part of a interinstitutional work, to developing a strategy to establish a global programme for the collection of retail food prices at different geographical levels, and on a periodic basis, from National Statistical Offices, to ensure sufficient frequency and timeliness of data availability and appropriate coverage to inform cost and affordability of healthy diets indicators; and performs editing and validation of the collected data, including quality control to guarantee data  accuracy, consistency and adherence to basic quality requirements.
• Contributes to the implementation of the corporate quality assurance framework for all basic data domains in FAOSTAT.
• Contributes to the enhancement of the presentation and accessibility of FAOSTAT data and addresses the needs of users for further statistical and economic analyses.
• Represents ESS in international meetings related to data quality management, as required
• Performs other related duties supporting the ESS mandate as requested.

CANDIDATES WILL BE ASSESSED AGAINST THE FOLLOWING

Minimum Requirements
• Advanced university degree in statistics, mathematics, economics, agricultural economics, or a related field.
• Five years of relevant experience in the compilation and analysis of food and agricultural statistics in national or international organizations with relevant knowledge and experience on price statistics and price indexes.
• Working knowledge (full proficiencylevel of English and limited knowledge (intermediate proficiencylevel of another FAO official language (Arabic, Chinese, French, Russian or Spanis.

Competencies
• Results Focus
• Teamwork
• Communication
• Building Effective Relationships
• Knowledge Sharing and Continuous Improvement

Technical/Functional Skills
• Work experience in more than one location or area of work, particularly in field positions.
• Strong command of statistical methods including: data presentation, analysis and descriptive statistics; main continuous and discrete random variables (binomial, normal, standard normal, lognormaand their properties; probability distributions; conditional probability, probabilities of intersections of events, Bayes’ theorem; correlation and rank correlation; sampling and sample size: simple, stratified, and multistage random sampling; Inference, confidence intervals, hypothesis testing and significance; linear regression (single and multiplcomparison of population means and variances, ANOVA; Chisquare and goodness of fit tests; nonlinear models: maximum likelihood estimation; elements of survey and questionnaire design.
• Extent and relevance of experience and knowledge of the main data sources and methods used for the compilation of price statistics.
• Extent and relevance of experience in the compilation, validation and analysis of price statistics.
• Demonstrated ability to conduct independent research under minimal supervision, present statistics materials lucidly and effectively and produce high quality research papers in English.
• Extent and relevance of experience in the advanced use and programming of statistical software, preferably R, Stata or Phyton.
• Extent and relevance of experience in designing and delivering capacity development programmes at country level.
• Ability to analyse complex statisticalrelated issues.