Profile

James Joseph Heckman (born April 19, 1944) is a Nobel Memorial in Economic Sciences Prize-winning American economist at the University of Chicago, where he is The Henry Schultz Distinguished Service Professor in Economics and the College; Professor at the Harris 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 Professor of Law at the Law School, a senior research fellow at the American Bar Foundation, and a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. In 2000, Heckman shared the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences with Daniel McFadden, for his pioneering work in econometrics and microeconomics. As of December 2020, according to RePEc, he is the second-most influential economist in the world.[3] Heckman is noted for his contributions to selection bias and self-selection in quantitative analysis in the social sciences, especially the Heckman correction, which earned him the Nobel Prize in Economics. He is also well known for his empirical research in labor economics and his scholarship on the efficacy of early childhood education programs.