NBER profile: James J. Heckman.

James J. Heckman, who shared the 2000 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, is a Research Associate in the NBER's Program on Labor Studies. He is also the Henry Schultz Distinguished Service Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago, where he has served since 1973, and where he directs the Economics Research Center and the Center for Social Program Evaluation at the Harris School. In addition, he is the Professor of Science and Society in University College Dublin and a Senior Research Fellow at the American Bar Foundation.

Heckman received his B.A. in mathematics from Colorado College in 1965 and his Ph.D. in economics from Princeton University in 1971. 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 has developed a body of new econometric tools that address these problems and possibilities. He established a strong causal effect of the 1964 Civil Rights Act on promoting African-American economic progress. He established that GEDs are not the equivalent of high school graduates and perform only slightly better than high school dropouts who do not exam certify. GEDs are as smart as high school graduates but lack noncognitive skills. He has built on this work to develop the economics of personality and motivation.

His recent research focuses on human development and lifecycle skill formation, with a special emphasis on the economics of early childhood. He is currently conducting new social...