Daniel L. McFadden

Daniel L. McFaddenis an American economist and cowinner (with James J. Heckman) of the 2000 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences for his development of theory and methods used in the analysis of individual or household behaviour, such as understanding how people choose where to work, where to live, or when to marry.

After studying physics (B.S., 1957) and economics (Ph.D., 1962) at the University of Minnesota, McFadden taught economics at a number of institutions, including the University of California, Berkeley (1963–79), Yale University (1977–78), and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1978–91). In 1990 he returned to Berkeley and was named the E. Morris Cox Professor of Economics. He also served (1991–95, and again from 1996) as the director of the university’s Econometrics Laboratory. The recipient of numerous awards, McFadden was given the American Economic Association John Bates Clark Medal for his contributions to economic knowledge and thought in 1975 and was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1981.

McFadden’s work combined economic theory, statistical methods, and empirical applications toward the resolution of social problems. In 1974 he developed conditional logit analysis—a method for determining how individuals will choose between finite alternatives in order to maximize their utility. Through the analysis of discrete choice (i.e., the choices made between a finite set of decision alternatives), McFadden’s work helped predict usage rates for public transportation systems, and his statistical methods were applied to studies of labour-force participation, health care, housing (particularly for the elderly), and the environment. That same year, he was awarded Northwestern University’s Erwin Plein Nemmers Prize in Economics, the highest monetary award for outstanding achievement in the field of economics in the United States.