
Research Professor
- 750 N. Lake Shore Drive
- 4th Floor
- Chicago, IL 60611
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Joint appointment
Henry Schultz Distinguished Service Professor, Department of Economics, University of Chicago
Education
Ph.D., Economics, Princeton University
Bio
James J. Heckman has devoted his professional life to understanding the origins of major social and economic problems related to inequality, social mobility, discrimination, skill formation and regulation, and to devising and evaluating alternative strategies for addressing those problems. His work is rooted in economics, but he actively collaborates across disciplines to get to the heart of…
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Research focus
The economics of human development, building theoretical and empirical models of human capacity formation; the development of a body of new econometric tools that address this issue; the development of a scientific basis for economic policy evaluation. This work emphasizes the role of the family in producing capacities and the effects of capacities on education, wages, health, crime, and other dimensions of lifetime achievement.