Short answers, pulled from the story.
James Heckman won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 2000 for his work on selection bias and self-selection in quantitative analysis, particularly the development of the Heckman correction. He shared the prize with Daniel McFadden.
The Heckman correction is a two-step statistical procedure that accounts for self-selection bias in non-experimental data, allowing researchers to recover unbiased estimates when study participants have chosen to take part rather than being randomly assigned.
James Heckman serves as the Henry Schultz Distinguished Service Professor in Economics at the University of Chicago. He also holds appointments at the Harris School of Public Policy and the Law School, and directs the Center for the Economics of Human Development.
Heckman's research showed that a high IQ improved an individual's chances of financial success by only 1 or 2 percent. He found that "conscientiousness" - defined as diligence, perseverance, and self-discipline - was a stronger predictor of financial success than cognitive ability alone.
The Center for the Economics of Human Development (CEHD) was founded in 2014 at the University of Chicago and is directed by Heckman. It supports empirical research on human capital policies and houses initiatives including the Pritzker Consortium on Early Childhood Development and the Heckman Equation.
Heckman received the John Bates Clark Medal from the American Economic Association in 1983, the Jacob Mincer Award for Lifetime Achievement in Labor Economics in 2005, the Frisch Medal from the Econometric Society in 2014, and the Dan David Prize for Combating Poverty in 2016, among other honors.