James Heckman

This paper examines the case for randomized controlled trials in economics. I revisit my previous paper “Randomization and Social Policy Evaluation” and update its message.

James places Tinbergen’s work in context and discusses Tinbergen’s approach to using supply and demand to interpret the pricing of skills – a fundamental conceptual achievement. He shows how his work is related to the modern literature on hedonics and how it was and still is used to integrate the roles of technical change and supply side policies into a common equilibrium framework. Tinbergen’s research is then discussed on educational planning and his work on optimal inequality. In the final section, James assesses his contributions and discusses why they are relevant today. He speculates about why his work was neglected by many of his contemporaries.

This article examines the long-term impacts on health and healthy behaviour of two of the oldest and most widely cited US early childhood interventions evaluated by the method of randomisation with long-term follow-up.

This study compares twins, where one has suffered a health shock and the other has not, investigating how the family evens out the outcomes for the children.

This paper examines the long-term impacts on health and healthy behaviors of two of the oldest and most widely cited U.S. early childhood interventions evaluated by the method of randomization with long-term follow-up.

This paper develops and applies a Bayesian approach to Exploratory Factor Analysis that improves on ad hoc classical approaches.

Early childhood investments substantially boost adult health

This paper estimates marginal returns to college for individuals induced to enroll in college by different marginal policy changes.

This paper examines testable implications of the hypothesis that agents do not sort into treatment based on gains.

We analyze equilibria in hedonic economies and study conditions that lead to identification of structural preference parameters in hedonic economies with both additive and nonadditive marginal utility and marginal product functions.

Social experiments are powerful sources of information about the effectiveness of interventions.

Social experiments are powerful sources of information about the effectiveness of interventions.

This paper compares the economic questions addressed by instrumental variables estimators with those addressed by structural approaches.

This paper formulates and estimates multistage production functions for children's cognitive and noncognitive skills.