Research[edit]
Heckman is noted for his contributions to selection bias and self-selection analysis, especially Heckman correction, which earned him the Nobel Prize in Economics. He is also well known for his empirical research in labor economics, particularly regarding the efficacy of early childhood education programs.
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 the problems and possibilities created by heterogeneity, diversity, and unobserved counterfactual states. He developed a body of new econometric tools that address these issues. His research has given policymakers important new insights into areas such as education, jobtraining, the importance of accounting for general equilibrium in the analysis of labor markets, anti-discrimination law, and civil rights. He demonstrated a strong causal effect of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 in promoting African-American economic progress. He has recently demonstrated that the high school dropout rate is increasing in the US. He has studied the economic benefits of sorting in the labor market, the ineffectiveness of active labor market programs, and the economic returns to education.
His recent research focuses on inequality, human development and lifecycle skill formation, with a special emphasis on the economics of early childhood education. He is currently conducting new social experiments on early childhood interventions and reanalyzing old experiments. He is also studying the emergence of the underclass in the US and Western Europe. For example, he showed that a high IQ only improved an individual's chances of financial success by 1 or 2%.[12] Instead, "conscientiousness," or "diligence, perseverance and self-discipline," are what led to financial success.[12]
In the early 1990s, his pioneering research, on the outcomes of people who obtain the GED certificate, received national attention.
Heckman has published over 300 articles and several books. His books include Inequality in America: What Role for Human Capital Policy? (with Alan Krueger); Evaluating Human Capital Policy, Law, and Employment: Lessons from Latin America and the Caribbean (with Carmen Pages); the Handbook of Econometrics, volumes 5, 6A, and 6B (edited with Edward Leamer); Global Perspectives on the Rule of Law, (edited with R. Nelson and L. Cabatingan); and The Myth of Achievement Tests: The GED and the Role of Character in American Life (with John Eric Humphries and Tim Kautz).
He is currently co-editor of the Journal of Political Economy. He is also a member of the National Academy of Sciences (USA) and the American Philosophical Society.[13] He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Econometric Society (of which he is also former president), the Society of Labor Economics, the American Statistical Association, and the International Statistical Institute.
