HCEO Co-director James J. Heckman has been elected a Distinguished Fellow of the American Economic Association. The Distinguished Fellow awards are given out each year to "recognize the lifetime research contributions of distinguished economists." 

Professor Heckman is "a phenomenally productive and influential scholar who has made fundamental contributions in both econometrics and labor economics," the AEA website notes in a statement on the award. "Although Heckman has made many methodological advances, it is his work as a labor economist that has made us rethink our models of lifecycle investment in health and human capital and altered our conceptions of important public policies such as the 1964 Civil Rights Act."

ECI/FI/IP network member Robert Pollak was also named a Distinguished Fellow for 2017, along with University of Chicago Professor Nancy Stokey and Northwestern University Professor Charles Manski. The recipients will be honored at the AEA Annual Meeting on January 5-7, 2018, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. 

James Heckman is the Henry Schultz Distinguished Service Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago. He was the recipient of the John Bates Clark Medal of the American Economic Association in 1983. Heckman shared the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2000 for his work on the microeconometrics of diversity and heterogeneity and for establishing a sound causal basis for public policy evaluation.

You can read more about the AEA awards here. You can read the AEA's statement on Professor Heckman's work here.