TY  - JOUR
AU  - Heckman,James L.
TI  - Causal Parameters and Policy Analysis in Economcs:  A Twentieth Century Retrospective
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 7333
PY  - 1999
Y2  - September 1999
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w7333
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w7333.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
James J. Heckman
Department of Economics
The University of Chicago
1126 E. 59th Street
Chicago, IL 60637
Tel: 773/702-0634
Fax: 773/702-8490
E-Mail: jjh@uchicago.edu
AB  - The major contributions of twentieth century econometrics to knowledge were the definition of causal parameters when agents are constrained by resources and markets and causes are interrelated, the analysis of what is required to recover causal parameters from data (the identification problem), and clarification of the role of causal parameters in policy evaluation and in forecasting the effects of policies never previously experienced.  This paper summarizes the development of those ideas by the Cowles Commission, the response to their work by structural econometricians and VAR econometricians, and the response to structural and VAR econometrics by calibrators, advocates of natural and social experiments, and by nonparametric econometricians and statisticians.
ER  -