Charles F. Manski

Professor of Economics
Board of Trustees Professor in Economics
Faculty Fellow, Institute for Policy Research,
Northwestern University
PhD, Economics, Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, 1973
cfmanski@northwestern.edu
Curriculum Vitae
Additional biographical information

Charles F. Manski has been Board of Trustees Professor in Economics at Northwestern University since 1997. He was formerly a member of the faculty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (1983-98), the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (1979-83), and Carnegie Mellon University (1973-80).

Manski’s research spans econometrics, judgment and decision, and the analysis of social policy. He is the author of Identification for Prediction and Decision (Harvard University Press, 2007), Social Choice with Partial Knowledge of Treatment Response (Princeton University Press, 2005), Partial Identification of Probability Distributions (Springer-Verlag, 2003), Identification Problems in the Social Sciences (Harvard University Press, 1995) and Analog Estimation Methods in Econometrics (Chapman & Hall, 1988), co-author of College Choice in America (Harvard University Press, 1983), and co-editor of Informing America’s Policy on Illegal Drugs (National Academy Press, 2001), Evaluating Welfare and Training Programs (Harvard University Press, 1992) and Structural Analysis of Discrete Data with Econometric Applications (MIT Press, 1981).

Manski has been editor of the Journal of Human Resources (1991-94), co-editor of the Econometric Society Monograph Series (1983-88), member of the editorial board of the Annual Review of Economics (from 2007), and associate editor of the Annals of Applied Statistics (from 2006), Journal of Economic Perspectives (1986-89), Econometrica (1980-88), the Journal of the American Statistical Association (1983-85, 2002-2004), and Transportation Science (1978-84).

He has served as director of the Institute for Research on Poverty (1988-91) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and as chair of the Board of Overseers of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (1994-98). At the National Research Council, he has been chair of the Committee on Data and Research for Policy on Illegal Drugs (1998-2001), a member of the Board on Mathematical Sciences and their Applications (2004-2007), the Committee on Law and Justice (from 2009), the Committee on National Statistics (1996-2000), the Commission on Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education (1992-98), the Committee on the Federal Role in Education Research (1991-92), the Committee on Research on Law Enforcement and the Administration of Justice (1985-87), and the Panel on Research on Criminal Careers (1983-86). Manski is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences and an elected fellow of the Econometric Society, The American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Current Projects

Social Choice with Partial Knowledge of Treatment Response. Economists have long sought to learn the effect of a "treatment" on some outcome of interest, just as doctors do with their patients. A central practical objective of research on treatment response is to provide decision makers with information useful in choosing treatments. Often the decision maker is a social planner who must choose treatments for a heterogeneous population—for example, a physician choosing medical treatments for diverse patients or a judge choosing sentences for convicted offenders. But research on treatment response rarely provides all the information that planners would like to have. How then should planners use the available evidence to choose treatments? Manski’s research addresses key aspects of this broad question, exploring and partially resolving pervasive problems of identification and statistical inference that arise when studying treatment response and making treatment choices.

Selected Publications

Books and Edited Volumes

Manski, Charles F. Identification for Prediction and Decision. Harvard University Press (2007).

Manski, Charles F. Social Choice with Partial Knowledge of Treatment Response. Princeton: Princeton University Press (2005).

Manski, Charles F. Partial Identification of Probability Distributions. New York: Springer-Verlag (2003).

Manski, Charles F., with J. Pepper and C. Petrie, eds. Informing America’s Policy on Illegal Drugs: What We Don’t Know Keeps Hurting Us. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press (2001).

Manski, Charles F., with B. Fischhoff, eds. 2000. Elicitation of Preferences. Kluwer Academic Publishers (2000). Originally published in 1999 in the Journal of Risk and Uncertainty 19(1/3).

Manski, Charles F. Identification Problems in the Social Sciences. Cambridge: Harvard University Press (1995).

Manski, Charles F., with I. Garfinkel, eds. Evaluating Welfare and Training Programs. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press (1992).

Manski, Charles F. Analog Estimation Methods in Econometrics. London: Chapman and Hall (1988).

Manski, Charles F., with D. Wise. College Choice in America. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press (1983).

Manski, Charles F., with D. McFadden, eds. Structural Analysis of Discrete Data with Econometric Applications. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press (1981).

Published Articles

Manski. C. F. 2009. Social Planning with Partial Knowledge of Social Interactions. Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics 165: 146-158.

Manski, C. F. with J. Engelberg and J. Williams. 2009. Comparing the Point Predictions and Subjective Probability Distributions of Professional Forecasters. Journal of Business and Economic Statistics 165: 146-158.

Manski, C. F., with F. Molinari. 2008. Skip sequencing: A decision problem in questionnaire design. Annals of Applied Statistics 2(1): 264-85.

Manski, C. F. 2007. Partial identification of counterfactual choice probabilities. International Economic Review 48(4): 1393-410.

Manski, C. F. 2007. Minimax-regret treatment choice with missing outcome data. Journal of Econometrics 139(1): 105-15.

Manski, C. F., with A. Tetenov. 2007. Admissible treatment rules for a risk-averse planner with experimental data on an innovation. Journal of Statistical Planning and Inference 137(6): 1998-2010.

Manski, C. F., with J. Dominitz. 2007. Expected equity returns and portfolio choice: evidence from the Health and Retirement Study. Journal of the European Economic Association 5(2-3): 369-79.

Manski, C. F. 2006. Search profiling with partial knowledge of deterrence. The Economic Journal 116(515): F385-F401.

Manski, C. F., with J. Horowitz. 2006. Identification and estimation of statistical functionals using incomplete data. Journal of Econometrics 132:445-59.

Manski, C. F., with J. Dominitz. 2006. Measuring pension-benefit expectations probabilistically. Labour 20(2): 201-236.

Manski, C. F. 2006. Interpreting the predictions of prediction markets. Economic Letters 91:425-29.