Grad school alum wins Nobel Prize

James Heckman GS '71 was awarded the Nobel Prize in economics yesterday.

Heckman and Daniel McFadden of the University of California at Berkeley received the award together, and will split the prize, which is worth $915,000 this year.

Heckman, who has served as the Henry Schultz Distinguished Service Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago since 1995, received his Ph.D. in economics from Princeton in 1971.

Developing techniques to look at how people make lifestyle decisions, Heckman and McFadden's work contributed to the design of educational training programs, urban transportation systems and housing for the elderly, according to the Royal Swedish Academy — which awards the Nobel Prizes.

Heckman was in Brazil yesterday to present a paper on the relationship between government policy and unemployment and could not be reached for comment by phone or e-mail.

University of Chicago spokesman Bill Harms said Heckman is best known for his studies of labor patterns — for example, examining when and how much married women work.

In his studies of education's impact on the labor market, Heckman found that the level of the education of a country is directly proportional to the prosperity of that nation, according to Harms.

Princeton economics professor Bo Honore studied under Heckman at the University of Chicago.

Honore said Heckman enjoys being heavily involved in his graduate students' work, adding that Heckman often collaborates with graduate students on papers and research projects.

"Jim Heckman has made contributions in many areas of empirical microeconomics and econometrics," Honore said in an e-mail. "His work on sample selection models is especially important."

Honore said Heckman is a tremendously hard worker. He frequently works seven days per week for long hours and expects his students to do the same.

"When I would go home [at about 1 a.m.], his light was always on," Honore recalled. "[It was often] the only one on in the whole building."

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While no Princeton faculty members have yet won a Nobel Prize in 2000, the University has picked up more than its fair share in recent years.

The University's last Nobel Prize winner was electrical engineering professor Daniel Tsui, who won the award in 1998 for his discovery that electrons behave more like fluids than particles — a phenomena called the fractional quantum Hall effect.

(The Associated Press contributed to this report.)