James J. Heckman

James J. Heckman is an American economist who won the 2000 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics, along with Daniel McFadden, for the Heckman correction. The Heckman correction is a statistical method of correcting for self-selection bias in research. In addition to selection bias and self-selection, Heckman's research has focused on labor economics, human development and skill formation (especially early childhood development).

James J. Heckman was born in 1944 in Chicago. He earned a BA in Mathematics from Colorado College in 1965, and an MA in 1968 and Ph.D. in 1971 in Economics from Princeton University. In addition to the Nobel Prize in Economics, he has received numerous other awards for his work, including the John Bates Clark Medal of the American Economic Association in 1983, the Jacob Mincer Award for Lifetime Achievement in 2005 from the Society of Labor Economics and the Frisch Medal from the Econometric Society in 2014 for most outstanding paper in applied economics published in Econometrica in the previous five years.

Heckman was recruited to be part of the faculty at the University of Chicago in 1973, and spent the bulk of his career at that institution, though he spent two years teaching at Yale. He is one of the founders of the Harris School of Public Policy, where he maintains an appointment. He has been a research fellow at the American Bar Foundation, and holds a position at the Law School of the University of Chicago. He founded the Center for the Economics of Human Development at the University of Chicago in 2014.

Having been influenced by experiences with social change in his formative years, Heckman's professional research draws on many disciplines to focus on the origins of major social and economic problems related to inequality, social mobility and discrimination, and he seeks methods to correct these problems. He is well-known for his creation of the Heckman correction, as it won him a Nobel Prize. However, he also developed numerous new econometric tools and has produced much research on social inequalities, much of which has afforded valuable insights to policymakers in the areas of education, skill training and civil rights in general. Heckman has published over 300 articles and nine books