James Joseph Heckman is an American economist and Nobel laureate who serves as the Henry Schultz Distinguished Service Professor in Economics at the University of Chicago, where he is also a professor at the College, a professor at the Harris School of Public Policy, Director of the Center for the Economics of Human Development (CEHD), and Co-Director of Human Capital and Economic Opportunity (HCEO) Global Working Group. He is also a professor of law at the Law School, a senior research fellow at the American Bar Foundation, and a research associate at the NBER. He received the John Bates Clark Medal in 1983, and the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 2000, which he shared with Daniel McFadden. He is known principally for his pioneering work in econometrics and microeconomics.
Economic history is the study of history using methodological tools from economics or with a special attention to economic phenomena. Research is conducted using a combination of historical methods, statistical methods and the application of economic theory to historical situations and institutions. The field can encompass a wide variety of topics, including equality, finance, technology, labour, and business. It emphasizes historicizing the economy itself, analyzing it as a dynamic entity and attempting to provide insights into the way it is structured and conceived.
An economist is a professional and practitioner in the social science discipline of economics.
Simon Smith Kuznets was an American economist and statistician who received the 1971 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences "for his empirically founded interpretation of economic growth which has led to new and deepened insight into the economic and social structure and process of development."
Kevin Miles Murphy is the George J. Stigler Distinguished Service Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution.
Richard Barry Freeman is an economist. The Herbert Ascherman Professor of Economics at Harvard University and Co-Director of the Labor and Worklife Program at Harvard Law School, Freeman is also Senior Research Fellow on Labour Markets at the Centre for Economic Performance, part of the London School of Economics, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, the UK's public body funding social science. Freeman directs the Science and Engineering Workforce Project (SEWP) at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), a network focused on the economics of science, technical, engineering, and IT labor which has received major long-term support from the Sloan Foundation.
Heather Marie Boushey is an American economist. Boushey currently serves as a member of President Joe Biden's Council of Economic Advisers. She also serves as the Chief Economist for the Invest in America Cabinet at the White House. She previously was the president and CEO of the Washington Center for Equitable Growth. She has also worked as an economist at the Center for American Progress and the United States Congress Joint Economic Committee.
Alan Bennett Krueger was an American economist who was the James Madison Professor of Political Economy at Princeton University and Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. He served as Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy, nominated by President Barack Obama, from May 2009 to October 2010, when he returned to Princeton. He was nominated in 2011 by Obama as chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, and served in that office from November 2011 to August 2013.
Dale Weldeau Jorgenson was an American economist who served as the Samuel W. Morris University Professor at Harvard University. An influential econometric scholar, he was famed for his work on the relationship between productivity and economic growth, the economics of climate change, and the intersection between economics and statistics. Described as a "master" of his field, he received the John Bates Clark Medal in 1971, and was described as a worthy contender for the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences.
Claudia Dale Goldin is an American economic historian and labor economist. She is the Henry Lee Professor of Economics at Harvard University. In October 2023, she was awarded the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, "for having advanced our understanding of women's labor market outcomes”. She was the third woman to win the award, and the first woman to win the award solo.
The high school movement is a term used in educational history literature to describe the era from 1910 to 1940 during which secondary schools as well as secondary school attendance sprouted across the United States. During the early part of the 20th century, American youth entered high schools at a rapid rate, mainly due to the building of new schools, and acquired skills "for life" rather than "for college." In 1910 18% of 15- to 18-year-olds were enrolled in a high school; barely 9% of all American 18-year-olds graduated. By 1940, 73% of American youths were enrolled in high school and the median American youth had a high school diploma. The movement began in New England but quickly spread to the western states. According to Claudia Goldin, the states that led in the U.S. high school movement had a cohesive, homogeneous population and were more affluent, with a broad middle-class group.
The Institute for the Study of Labor awards a prize each year for outstanding academic achievement in the field of labor economics. The IZA Prize in Labor Economics has become a highly prestigious science award in international economics, is the only international science prize awarded exclusively to labor economists and is considered the most important award in labor economics worldwide. The prize was established in 2002 and is awarded annually through a nomination process and decided upon by the IZA Prize Committee, which consists of internationally renowned labor economists. As a part of the prize, all IZA Prize Laureates contribute a volume as an overview of their most significant findings to the IZA Prize in Labor Economics Series published by Oxford University Press.
The Erwin Plein Nemmers Prize in Economics is an academic prize awarded biennially by Northwestern University. It was initially endowed along with a companion prize, the Frederic Esser Nemmers Prize in Mathematics. Both are part a $14 million donation from the Nemmers brothers, who envisioned creating an award that would be as prestigious as the Nobel prize. Nine out of the past 15 Nemmers economics prize winners have gone on to win a Nobel Prize : Peter Diamond, Thomas J. Sargent, Robert Aumann, Daniel McFadden, Edward C. Prescott, Lars Peter Hansen, Jean Tirole, Paul R. Milgrom and, most recently, Claudia Goldin. Those who already have won a Nobel Prize are ineligible to receive a Nemmers prize. The Nemmers prizes are given in recognition of major contributions to new knowledge or the development of significant new modes of analysis in the respective disciplines. As of 2023, the prize carries a $300,000 stipend, among the largest monetary awards in the United States for outstanding achievements in economics.
Cecilia Elena Rouse is an American economist who was named as President of the Brookings Institution with an effective date of January 2024. She served as the 30th Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers between 2021 and 2023. She is the first Black American to hold this position. Prior to this, she served as the dean of the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University. Joe Biden nominated Rouse to be Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers in November 2020. Rouse was overwhelmingly confirmed by the Senate on March 2, 2021, by a vote of 95–4. She resigned on March 31, 2023 to return to teaching. On June 28, she was named the 9th President of the Brookings Institution.
William A. "Sandy" Darity Jr. is an American economist and social sciences researcher. Darity's research spans economic history, development economics, economic psychology, and the history of economic thought, but most of his research is devoted to group-based inequality, especially with respect to race and ethnicity. His 2005 paper in the Journal of Economics and Finance established Darity as the 'founder of stratification economics.' His varied research interests have also included the trans-Atlantic slave trade, African American reparations and the economics of black reparations, and social and economic policies that affect inequities by race and ethnicity. For the latter, he has been described as "perhaps the country’s leading scholar on the economics of racial inequality."
Betsey Ayer Stevenson is an economist and Professor of Economics and Public Policy at the University of Michigan Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy. Additionally, she is a fellow of the Ifo Institute for Economic Research in Munich, a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research and servers on the board of the American Economic Association. The Obama Administration announced her appointment as a Member of the Council of Economic Advisers, a post she served from 2013 through 2015. She previously served as Chief Economist of the U.S. Department of Labor under Secretary Hilda Solis from 2010 to 2011. Previously, she was an Assistant Professor of Business and Public Policy, at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.
David H. Autor is an American economist, public policy scholar, and professor of economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he also acts as co-director of the School Effectiveness and Inequality Initiative. Although Autor has contributed to a variety of fields in economics his research generally focuses on topics from labor economics.
Rhonda Michèle Williams was an American professor, activist and political economist whose work combined economics with multiple other social fields including race and gender analysis, law, politics, public policy and cultural studies. She aimed to show how the examination of the roles of race and gender in economics benefitted from an inclusive approach rather than a separate and fragmented analysis in order to ensure that issues of economic inequality and discrimination were aptly addressed. Williams was also noted as being consistent in aligning her own ethics with economic analysis resulting in a legacy in the political economy of race and gender.
Claudia Olivetti is an Italian economist specializing in the fields of labor economics and the economics of gender and family. She is the George J. Records 1956 Professor of Economics at Dartmouth College. and a Research Associate and Co-Director of the "Gender in the Economy" study group at the National Bureau of Economic Research. She was previously a professor of economics at Boston College and a Harvard Radcliffe Institute fellow.
The 2023 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences was awarded to the American economist Claudia Goldin "for having advanced our understanding of women's labour market outcomes." At age 77, she became the third woman to have won the economics Nobel, which was first awarded in 1969, and the first woman to win the award solo. The pressed release of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences noted:
"This year’s Laureate in the Economic Sciences, Claudia Goldin, provided the first comprehensive account of women’s earnings and labour market participation through the centuries. Her research reveals the causes of change, as well as the main sources of the remaining gender gap."
