Information

Membership Number: FCA3606

Membership Type: Fellowship

Division: Social Sciences

Corresponding Email: *****man@uchicago.edu; ****assistant@gmail.com

Homepage(s): https://economics.uchicago.edu/directory/james-j-heckman 

https://harris.uchicago.edu/directory/james-heckman 

Present and Previous Positions

Henry Schultz Distinguished Service Professor of Economics and Public Policy, University of Chicago.

Director, Center for the Economics of Human Development, University of Chicago, founded by him in 2014.

Faculty member, Department of Economics, University of Chicago, since 1973.

Appointee / affiliated faculty member, Harris School of Public Policy, University of Chicago; CEHD states that he was one of the founders of the Harris School.

Appointee, University of Chicago Law School.

Founding Director, Human Capital and Economic Opportunity Global Working Group.

Senior Advisor, China Development Research Foundation. 

Fields of Scholarship and Research Interests

Economics; Econometrics; Labor Economics; Public Policy; Human Development; Skill Formation; Inequality and Social Mobility; Program Evaluation; Causal Inference; Economics of Education

Professor James J. Heckman is one of the most influential economists of the modern era. His work has profoundly shaped both econometric method and applied public policy research, especially in the analysis of selection bias, heterogeneity, treatment effects, labor markets, education, and the long-run formation of human capabilities. The Nobel Foundation states that he received the 2000 Prize in Economic Sciences for his development of theory and methods used in the analysis of individual and household behavior, including his seminal work on sample-selection problems and policy evaluation. 

A defining feature of his career is the unusual breadth of his influence. On the one hand, he is foundational in modern microeconometrics: the “Heckman correction” and his broader work on selection, heterogeneity, and causal inference transformed empirical research in economics and across the social sciences. On the other hand, his later work has significantly enlarged the field’s understanding of human development, especially the ways in which early childhood conditions, family environments, skill formation, and life-cycle capabilities shape inequality, mobility, health, and economic opportunity. University of Chicago and CEHD materials consistently present this interdisciplinary turn as central to his mature scholarship. His recent research has been especially important in connecting economics with psychology, neuroscience, epidemiology, genetics, and child development research. 

Through this work, he has helped reframe major policy questions concerning education, early intervention, social disadvantage, and intergenerational mobility. Rather than treating inequality only as an outcome observed in adulthood, his scholarship examines the developmental processes through which capabilities are formed from the earliest stages of life. This combination of deep theoretical rigor, econometric originality, and unusually broad interdisciplinary ambition is what makes his profile distinctive even among leading economists.

Honors, Awards and Other Membership

Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel (2000).

John Bates Clark Medal, American Economic Association (1983).

Jacob Mincer Award for Lifetime Achievement in Labor Economics, Society of Labor Economics (2005).

Dennis Aigner Award for Applied Econometrics, Journal of Econometrics (2005; 2007).

Ulysses Medal, University College Dublin (2006).

Theodore W. Schultz Award, American Agricultural Economics Association (2007).

Gold Medal of the President of the Italian Republic, awarded by the International Scientific Committee of the Pio Manzù Centre (2008).

Distinguished Contributions to Public Policy for Children Award, Society for Research in Child Development (2009).

Frisch Medal, Econometric Society (2014).

Dan David Prize (2016).

Distinguished Fellow, American Economic Association (2017).

Chinese Government Friendship Award (2019).

Member, National Academy of Sciences, USA.

Member, American Philosophical Society.

Fellow, American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Fellow, American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Fellow, Econometric Society.

Fellow, Society of Labor Economics.

Fellow, American Statistical Association.

Fellow, International Statistical Institute.

Member, National Academy of Education.

Foreign Member, Academia Sinica.

Foreign Member, Brazilian Academy of Sciences.

Selected Publications

Heckman, James J. “The Common Structure of Statistical Models of Truncation, Sample Selection and Limited Dependent Variables and a Simple Estimator for Such Models.” Annals of Economic and Social Measurement 5, no. 4 (1976): 475–492.

Heckman, James J. “Sample Selection Bias as a Specification Error.” Econometrica 47, no. 1 (1979): 153–161.

Heckman, James J., and Burton Singer. “A Method for Minimizing the Impact of Distributional Assumptions in Econometric Models for Duration Data.” Econometrica 52, no. 2 (1984): 271–320.

Heckman, James J., Hidehiko Ichimura, and Petra E. Todd. “Matching as an Econometric Evaluation Estimator: Evidence from Evaluating a Job Training Programme.” Review of Economic Studies 64, no. 4 (1997): 605–654.

Heckman, James J., Robert J. LaLonde, and Jeffrey A. Smith. “The Economics and Econometrics of Active Labor Market Programs.” In Handbook of Labor Economics, vol. 3, 1865–2097. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1999.

Heckman, James J., Jora Stixrud, and Sergio Urzua. “The Effects of Cognitive and Noncognitive Abilities on Labor Market Outcomes and Social Behavior.” Journal of Labor Economics 24, no. 3 (2006): 411–482.

Heckman, James J., Seong Hyeok Moon, Rodrigo Pinto, Peter A. Savelyev, and Adam Q. Yavitz. “The Rate of Return to the HighScope Perry Preschool Program.” Journal of Public Economics 94, nos. 1–2 (2010): 114–128.

García, Jorge Luis, James J. Heckman, Duncan Ermini Leaf, and María José Prados. “The Life-Cycle Benefits of an Influential Early Childhood Program.” Journal of Political Economy 128, no. 7 (2020): 2502–2541.

Heckman, James J., John Eric Humphries, and Tim Kautz, eds. The Myth of Achievement Tests: The GED and the Role of Character in American Life. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014.

Other Information

https://heckmanequation.org/ 

https://cehd.uchicago.edu/?page_id=71 

https://www.amacad.org/person/james-joseph-heckman 

https://www.nasonline.org/directory-entry/james-j-heckman-plr17c/ 

https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/economic-sciences/2000/heckman/biographical/