FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE -- 1/18/02 | Contact: Diana Smith, 719-389-6138  

COLORADO SPRINGS -- Dr. James J. Heckman, 2000 Nobel laureate, 1965 CC graduate and University of Chicago economics professor, will discuss "Understanding the Roles of Social Activism and Action in Accounting for the Economic Status of African-Americans over the Last 100 Years" at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, February 21, in Gates Common Room, located on the third floor of Colorado College's Palmer Hall.

Heckman, CC's first Nobel laureate, won the 2000 Nobel Prize in economics for his work in microeconometrics - how to analyze voter turnout, housing policies, and the way people make basic lifestyle decisions such as where to work or live. He is particularly interested in issues such as education, fairness in labor markets, and women's labor-force participation. His recent research deals with such issues as evaluation of social programs, econometric models of discrete choice and longitudinal data, the economics of the labor market, and alternative models of the distribution of income.

A fellow of the Econometric Society and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences, Heckman received the John Bates Clark Award of the American Economic Association in 1983. He holds a parallel appointment as director of social program evaluation at the Harris School of Public Policy at the University of Chicago, and is also a senior research fellow at the American Bar Foundation.

In addition to graduating summa cum laude in math from CC in 1965, Heckman was also Phi Beta Kappa, a Boettcher Scholar, and an editor of the college newspaper. In 1985, Colorado College presented him its Louis T. Benezet Award for accomplished alumni.

Free and open to the public, Heckman's talk is the W. P. Carey Nobel Laureates in Economics Lecture. The economists who have been invited to speak in the W. P. Carey Lecture Series - Lawrence Klein, Kenneth Arrow, James Tobin, Robert Fogel and Franco Modigliani - were all associated at one time with the Cowles Commission. Jan Kaerst, 1992 CC alumnus, initiated the series in 1991. The W. P. Carey Foundation is primarily concerned with national economic policy and has given a small endowment for the lectures.