Professor James J. Heckman

Thank you for your interest in Professor Heckman and his work!  

James J. Heckman is the Henry Schultz Distinguished Service Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago, where he has served since 1973. In 2000, he shared the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel with Daniel McFadden. Heckman directs the Economics Research Center in the Department of Economics and the Center for Social Program Evaluation at the Harris School for Public Policy, and Professor of Law at the University of Chicago School of Law. In addition, he is Professor of Science and Society in University College Dublin and a Senior Research Fellow at the American Bar Foundation. His work has been devoted to the development of a scientific basis for economic policy evaluation. He has developed a body of new econometric tools that address these issues. 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 analyzing new social experiments on early childhood interventions and reanalyzing old experiments. He is studying the emergence of the underclass in the U.S. and Western Europe. Heckman has published over 280 articles and several books. Heckman has received numerous awards for his work, including the John Bates Clark Medal in 1983, the Jacob Mincer Award for Lifetime Achievement in 2005, the 2005 and 2007 Dennis Aigner Award for Applied Econometrics from the Journal of Econometrics, the Ulysses Medal from the University College Dublin in 2006, 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 also a member of the National Academy of Sciences, USA; a fellow of the American Philosophical Society; the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; the Econometric Society; the Society of Labor Economics; the American Statistical Association; the International Statistical Institute; the American Association for the Advancement of Science; and the National Academy of Education. Heckman is the past president of the Western Economics Association and Midwest Economics Association and first vice-president and president-elect of the Econometric Society, the leading world-wide organization for the study and promotion of quantitative economics.