James Heckman
Encyclopedia
James Joseph Heckman is an American economist
Economist
An economist is a professional in the social science discipline of economics. The individual may also study, develop, and apply theories and concepts from economics and write about economic policy...

 and Nobel laureate. He is the Henry Schultz Distinguished Service Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by the American Baptist Education Society with a donation from oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and incorporated in 1890...

, Professor of Science and Society at University College Dublin
University College Dublin
University College Dublin ) - formally known as University College Dublin - National University of Ireland, Dublin is the Republic of Ireland's largest, and Ireland's second largest, university, with over 1,300 faculty and 17,000 students...

 and a Senior Research Fellow at the American Bar Foundation
American Bar Foundation
Established in 1952, the ' is an independent, nonprofit national research institute located in Chicago, Illinois committed to objective empirical research on law and legal institutions...

.

Heckman shared the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics in 2000 with Daniel McFadden
Daniel McFadden
Daniel Little McFadden is an econometrician who shared the 2000 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences with James Heckman ; McFadden's share of the prize was "for his development of theory and methods for analyzing discrete choice". He was the E. Morris Cox Professor of Economics at the...

 for his pioneering work in econometrics
Econometrics
Econometrics has been defined as "the application of mathematics and statistical methods to economic data" and described as the branch of economics "that aims to give empirical content to economic relations." More precisely, it is "the quantitative analysis of actual economic phenomena based on...

 and microeconomics
Microeconomics
Microeconomics is a branch of economics that studies the behavior of how the individual modern household and firms make decisions to allocate limited resources. Typically, it applies to markets where goods or services are being bought and sold...

. He is considered to be among the ten most influential economists in the world.

Early years

Heckman was born to John Jacob Heckman and Bernice Irene Medley in Chicago, Illinois. Heckman received his B.A. in mathematics from Colorado College
Colorado College
The Colorado College is a private liberal arts college in Colorado Springs, Colorado, United States, in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. It was founded in 1874 by Thomas Nelson Haskell...

, and received his Ph.D.
Doctor of Philosophy
Doctor of Philosophy, abbreviated as Ph.D., PhD, D.Phil., or DPhil , in English-speaking countries, is a postgraduate academic degree awarded by universities...

 from Princeton University
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....

 in economics in 1971. Heckman then served as an Assistant Professor at Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...

 before moving to the University of Chicago
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by the American Baptist Education Society with a donation from oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and incorporated in 1890...

 in 1973. In addition to serving as the Henry B. Schultz Distinguished Service Professor of Economics, Heckman is also the director of the Economics Research Center and the Center for Social Program Evaluation at the Irving B. Harris School of Public Policy. In 2004, he was appointed as the Distinguished Chair of Microeconometrics at University College London
University College London
University College London is a public research university located in London, United Kingdom and the oldest and largest constituent college of the federal University of London...

. In June 2006 he was appointed as the Professor of Science and Society at University College Dublin
University College Dublin
University College Dublin ) - formally known as University College Dublin - National University of Ireland, Dublin is the Republic of Ireland's largest, and Ireland's second largest, university, with over 1,300 faculty and 17,000 students...

. Heckman is also a senior research fellow at the American Bar Foundation
American Bar Foundation
Established in 1952, the ' is an independent, nonprofit national research institute located in Chicago, Illinois committed to objective empirical research on law and legal institutions...

.

Research

Heckman is noted for his contributions to selection bias
Selection bias
Selection bias is a statistical bias in which there is an error in choosing the individuals or groups to take part in a scientific study. It is sometimes referred to as the selection effect. The term "selection bias" most often refers to the distortion of a statistical analysis, resulting from the...

 and self-selection
Self-selection
In statistics, self-selection bias arises in any situation in which individuals select themselves into a group, causing a biased sample with nonprobability sampling...

 analysis especially Heckman correction
Heckman correction
The Heckman correction is any of a number of related statistical methods developed by James Heckman in 1976 through 1979 which allow the researcher to correct for selection bias...

, for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics. He is also well known for his empirical research in labor economics, particularly regarding the efficacy of early 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 to the problems and possibilities created by heterogeneity, 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, job-training, 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 the 1964 Civil Rights Act
Civil Rights Act
Civil Rights Act may refer to several acts in the history of civil rights in the United States, including:-Federal legislation:* Civil Rights Act of 1866, extending the rights of emancipated slaves...

 in promoting African-American economic progress. He has recently demonstrated that the high school dropout rate is increasing in the U.S. 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. 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 U.S. and Western Europe.

In the early 1990s, his pioneering research on the outcomes of people who obtain the GED
GED
General Educational Development tests are a group of five subject tests which, when passed, certify that the taker has American or Canadian high school-level academic skills...

 certificate received national attention.

His recent research focuses on human development and lifecycle skill formation, with a special emphasis on the economics of early childhood education.

Heckman has published over 270 articles and several books. His books include Inequality 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); the Handbook of Econometrics, volumes 5, 6A, and 6B (edited with Edward Leamer); and Global Perspectives on the Rule of Law, (edited with R. Nelson and L. Cabatingan). New York: Routledge, 2010.

Heckman has contributed policy analysis to Barack Obama
Barack Obama
Barack Hussein Obama II is the 44th and current President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office. Obama previously served as a United States Senator from Illinois, from January 2005 until he resigned following his victory in the 2008 presidential election.Born in...

's 2008 presidential campaign.

Awards

Heckman has received numerous awards for his work, including the John Bates Clark Medal
John Bates Clark Medal
The John Bates Clark Medal is awarded by the American Economic Association to "that American economist under the age of forty who is adjudged to have made a significant contribution to economic thought and knowledge"...

 of the American Economic Association in 1983, the 2005 and 2007 Dennis Aigner Award for Applied Econometrics from the Journal of Econometrics
Journal of Econometrics
The Journal of Econometrics is a leading scholarly journal in econometrics. It was first published in 1973. Its current editors are A.R. Gallant, J.F. Geweke, C. Hsiao, and P.M...

, the 2005 Jacob Mincer Award for Lifetime Achievement in Labor Economics, the 2005 Ulysses Medal from the University College Dublin, the 2007 Theodore W. Schultz Award from the American Agricultural Economics Association, the Gold Medal of the President of the Italian Republic, awarded by the International Scientific Committee of the Pio Manzú Centre in 2008, and the Distinguished Contributions to Public Policy for Children Award from the Society for Research in Child Development in 2009. He is currently Associate Editor of the Journal of Labor Economics and the Journal of Applied Econometrics. He is also a member of the National Academy of Sciences
United States National Academy of Sciences
The National Academy of Sciences is a corporation in the United States whose members serve pro bono as "advisers to the nation on science, engineering, and medicine." As a national academy, new members of the organization are elected annually by current members, based on their distinguished and...

 USA; a member of the American Philosophical Society
American Philosophical Society
The American Philosophical Society, founded in 1743, and located in Philadelphia, Pa., is an eminent scholarly organization of international reputation, that promotes useful knowledge in the sciences and humanities through excellence in scholarly research, professional meetings, publications,...

; a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
American Academy of Arts and Sciences
The American Academy of Arts and Sciences is an independent policy research center that conducts multidisciplinary studies of complex and emerging problems. The Academy’s elected members are leaders in the academic disciplines, the arts, business, and public affairs.James Bowdoin, John Adams, and...

; the Econometric Society
Econometric Society
The Econometric Society is an international society for the advancement of economic theory in its relation with statistics and mathematics. It was founded on December 29, 1930 at the Stalton Hotel in Cleveland, Ohio....

 (of which he is also president-elect); the Society of Labor Economics; the American Statistical Association
American Statistical Association
The American Statistical Association , is the main professional US organization for statisticians and related professions. It was founded in Boston, Massachusetts on November 27, 1839, and is the second oldest, continuously operating professional society in the United States...

; and the International Statistical Institute
International Statistical Institute
The International Statistical Institute is a professional association of statisticians. The Institut International de Statistique or International Statistical Institute was founded in 1885 although there had been international congresses from 1853.. The Institute publishes a variety of books and...

.

Personal life

Heckman is married to sociologist Lynne Pettler-Heckman, with whom he has two children; son Jonathan (b. 1982), a physicist, and daughter Alma (b. 1986), a Fulbright scholar.

Jonathan Heckman was married to Darlyn Pirakitikulr in 2009.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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