James Heckman | |
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| Born | James Joseph Heckman (1944-04-19)April 19, 1944 (age 81) |
| Academic background | |
| Alma mater | Colorado College (BA) Princeton University (PhD) |
| Thesis | Three Essays on the Supply of Labor and the Demand for Goods (1971) |
| Doctoral advisors | Harry H. Kelejian Stanley Warren Black |
| Influences | Albert Rees Gary Becker Jacob Mincer |
| Academic work | |
| Discipline | Microeconomics |
| School or tradition | Chicago School of Economics |
| Institutions | University of Chicago University of Southern California Columbia University Chinese University of Hong Kong |
| Doctoral students | Carolyn Heinrich George Borjas Petra Todd Stephen Cameron Mark Rosenzweig Russ Roberts |
| Notable ideas | Heckman correction |
| Awards | John Bates Clark Medal (1983) Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics (2000) Frisch Medal (2014) |
James Joseph Heckman (born April 19, 1944) is an Americaneconomist and Nobel laureate who serves as theHenry Schultz Distinguished Service Professor in Economics at theUniversity of Chicago, where he is also a professor atthe college, a professor at theHarris School of Public Policy, Director of the Center for the Economics of Human Development (CEHD),[1] and co-director of Human Capital and Economic Opportunity (HCEO) Global Working Group.[2] He is also a professor of law atthe Law School, a senior research fellow at theAmerican Bar Foundation, and a research associate at theNBER. He received theJohn Bates Clark Medal in 1983, and theNobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 2000, which he shared withDaniel McFadden. He is known principally for his pioneering work ineconometrics andmicroeconomics.
Heckman is noted for his contributions toselection bias andself-selection in quantitative analysis in the social sciences, especially theHeckman correction, which earned him the Nobel Prize in Economics. He is also well known for his empirical research inlabor economics and his scholarship on the efficacy ofearly childhood education programs. As of June 2024, according toRePEc, he is the third-most influential economist in the world.[3]
Heckman was born to John Jacob Heckman and Bernice Irene Medley inChicago, Illinois.[4] He received his B.A. in mathematics fromColorado College in 1965 and hisPh.D. in economics fromPrinceton University in 1971 after completing a doctoral dissertation titled "Three essays on the supply of labor and the demand for goods" under the supervision of Stanley W. Black.[5][6]
He served as an assistant professor atColumbia University before he moved to theUniversity of Chicago, in 1973. He has been a dissertation advisor for over 70 students, includingCarolyn Heinrich,George Borjas,Stephen Cameron,Mark Rosenzweig, andRuss Roberts.[7]
In addition to serving as the Henry Schultz Distinguished Service Professor and director of the Economics Research Center in the department of economics, Heckman is also a professor of law at the Law School[8] and a professor at the Harris School of Public Policy, where he is director of both the Center for Social Program Evaluation and Center for the Study of Childhood Development. He also serves as a member of theBecker Friedman Institute for Research in Economics's Research Council. Heckman has held many appointments at other institutions and notably served as the Distinguished Chair of Microeconometrics atUniversity College London (2004–2008), a professor of Science and Society atUniversity College Dublin[9] (2005–2014), and as the Alfred Cowles Distinguished Visiting Professor atYale University (2008–2011). His current appointments include Presidential Scholar-in-Residence at theUniversity of Southern California's Leonard D. Schaeffer Center for Health Policy and Economics (2015–)[10] and International Research Fellow at theInstitute for Fiscal Studies (2014–).[11]
Founded in 2014 and directed by Heckman, the Center for the Economics of Human Development (CEHD), at the University of Chicago, umbrellas his multiple research areas and initiatives that encompass rigorous empirical research to determine effective human capital policies and program design. CEHD initiatives include the Human Capital and Economic Opportunity Global Working Group, the Pritzker Consortium on Early Childhood Development, theHeckman Equation, the Research Network on the Determinants of Life Course Capabilities and Outcomes, and the Asian Family in Transition Initiative.
Heckman is noted for his contributions toselection bias andself-selection analysis, especiallyHeckman correction, which earned him the Nobel Prize in Economics. He is also well known for his empirical research inlabor economics, particularly regarding the efficacy ofearly childhood education programs.
His work has been devoted to the development of a scientific basis for economic policy evaluation, with special emphasis on models of individuals and disaggregated groups, and the problems and possibilities created byheterogeneity, diversity, and unobserved counterfactual states. He developed a body of new econometric tools that address these issues. His research has given policymakers important new insights into areas such as education, jobtraining, the importance of accounting for general equilibrium in the analysis of labor markets, anti-discrimination law, and civil rights. He demonstrated a strong causal effect of theCivil Rights Act of 1964 in promotingAfrican-American economic progress. He has recently demonstrated that the high school dropout rate is increasing in the US. He has studied the economic benefits of sorting in the labor market, the ineffectiveness of active labor market programs, and the economic returns to education.
His recent research focuses on inequality, human development and lifecycle skill formation, with a special emphasis on the economics of early childhood education. He is currently conducting new social experiments on early childhood interventions and reanalyzing old experiments. He is also studying the emergence of the underclass in the US andWestern Europe. For example, he showed that a high IQ only improved an individual's chances of financial success by 1 or 2%.[12] Instead, "conscientiousness," or "diligence, perseverance and self-discipline," are what led to financial success.[12]
In the early 1990s, his pioneering research, on the outcomes of people who obtain theGED certificate, received national attention.
Heckman has published over 300 articles and several books. His books includeInequality in America: What Role for Human Capital Policy? (with Alan Krueger);Evaluating Human Capital Policy, Law, and Employment: Lessons from Latin America and the Caribbean (with Carmen Pages); theHandbook of Econometrics, volumes 5, 6A, and 6B (edited with Edward Leamer);Global Perspectives on the Rule of Law, (edited with R. Nelson and L. Cabatingan); andThe Myth of Achievement Tests: The GED and the Role of Character in American Life (with John Eric Humphries and Tim Kautz).
He is currently co-editor of theJournal of Political Economy. He is also a member of theNational Academy of Sciences (USA) and theAmerican Philosophical Society.[13] He is a fellow of theAmerican Academy of Arts and Sciences, theEconometric Society (of which he is also former president), theSociety of Labor Economics, theAmerican Statistical Association, and theInternational Statistical Institute.
Heckman has received numerous awards for his work, including theJohn Bates Clark Medal of the American Economic Association in 1983, the 2005 and 2007 Dennis Aigner Award for Applied Econometrics from theJournal of Econometrics, the 2005Jacob Mincer Award for Lifetime Achievement in Labor Economics, the 2005 Ulysses Medal from theUniversity College Dublin, the 2007 Theodore W. Schultz Award from theAmerican Agricultural Economics Association, the Gold Medal of the President of the Italian Republic awarded by the International Scientific Committee of thePio Manzú Centre in 2008, the Distinguished Contributions to Public Policy for Children Award from theSociety for Research in Child Development in 2009, the 2014Frisch Medal from theEconometric Society, the 2014 Spirit of Erikson Award from theErikson Institute, and the 2016Dan David Prize for Combating Poverty.[14][15]
Heckman in 1979 married sociologist Lynne Pettler-Heckman, who died July 8, 2017.[16] They had two children: a son, Jonathan (b. 1982) who is an associate professor of physics at theUniversity of Pennsylvania,[17] and a daughter, Alma (b. 1986), who is an associate professor of history at theUniversity of California at Santa Cruz.[4][18]
includes the Prize Lecture 8 December 2000Microdata, Heterogeneity and the Evaluation of Public Policy| Awards | ||
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| Preceded by | Laureate of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics 2000 Served alongside:Daniel L. McFadden | Succeeded by |
